The difference between the position of Peirce and of James may be stated in another way as constituted by the fact that James introduces the factor of value as a criterion for meaning and for truth, while for Peirce these elements did not enter the question at all. For James the value of a belief is an apparent evidence for its truth, while for Peirce value had no relation to truth. For an account of this development of the pragmatic doctrine we pass on now to a discussion of James.
CHAPTER II.
The Interpretation Given to Pragmatism by James.
James first uses the term ‘pragmatism’, as Peirce had done, to refer to a method for attaining clearness. When, in 1898, he brought again before the public the original article by Peirce, he was simply expounding the Peircian doctrine without making any attempt to pass beyond it. But, as we have just seen, he later gave it a construction, an interpretation as a theory of truth, with which its originator could not agree. In this chapter we may, therefore, look first at his exposition of the doctrine of clearness, and after that, in order to understand James’ development of the doctrine into a theory of truth, we may turn back for a moment to some of his previous publications on the question of truth. It will then be possible to trace chronologically his developing attitude toward the truth controversy. From this we may pass finally to an indication of some of the difficulties in which he becomes involved. The most important of these, it may be said again, is that he construes the test of truth of an idea to be, not merely that the idea leads to expected consequences, but that it leads to predominantly desirable consequences. The outcomes which stand as evidence for truth are then not merely outcomes bringing fulfilled expectations but outcomes bringing happiness.
James’ Exposition of Peirce.
James in expounding the doctrine of Peirce explains the pragmatic principle as a method of investigating philosophic controversies, reducing them to essentials (clear meanings), and selecting those worthy of discussion.[2] “Suppose”, he says, “that there are two different philosophical definitions, or propositions, or maxims, or what not, which seem to contradict each other, and about which men dispute. If, by assuming the truth of the one, you can foresee no practical consequence to anybody, at any time or place, which is different from what you would foresee if you assumed the truth of the other, why then the difference between the two propositions is no real difference—it is only a specious and verbal difference, unworthy of future contention…. There can be no difference which does not make a difference—no difference in the abstract truth which does not express itself in a difference of concrete fact, and of conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed upon somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen…. The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it would make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the one which is true”. (p.675).
This doctrine is illustrated by using it to secure the essence of two philosophical questions, materialism vs. theism and the one vs. the many. If we suppose for an instant, he suggests, that this moment is the last moment of the universe’s existence, there will be no difference between materialism and theism. All the effects that might be ascribed to either have come about.
“These facts are in, are bagged, are captured; and the good that’s in them is gained, be the atom or be the God their cause.” (p. 677). “The God, if there, has been doing just what the atom could do—appearing in the character of atoms, so to speak, and earning such gratitude as is due to atoms, and no more”. Future good or ill is ruled out by postulate. Taken thus retrospectively, there could be no difference between materialism and theism.
But taken prospectively, they point to wholly different consequences. “For, according to the theory of mechanical evolution, the laws of redistribution of matter and motion, though they are certainly to thank for all the good hours which our organisms have ever yielded us and all the ideals which our minds now frame, are yet fatally certain to undo their work again, and to redissolve everything that they have evolved…. We make complaint of |materialism| for what it is not—not a permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller of our remotest hopes…. Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; theism means the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope. Surely here is an issue genuine enough for anyone who feels it….
“[And] if there be a God, it is not likely that he is confined solely to making differences in the world’s latter end; he probably makes differences all along its course. Now the principle of practicalism says that that very meaning of the conception of God lies in the differences which must be made in experience if the conception be true. God’s famous inventory of perfections, as elaborated by dogmatic theology, either means nothing, says our principle, or it implies certain definite things that we can feel and do at certain definite moments of our lives, things that we could not feel and should not do were no God present and were the business of the universe carried on by material atoms instead. So far as our conceptions of the Deity involve no such experiences, they are meaningless and verbal,—scholastic entities and abstractions, as the positivists say, and fit objects for their scorn. But so far as they do involve such definite experiences, God means something for us, and may be real”. (pp.678-680).