This being, then, the state of the case, I think I may at least plead that we have grounds for suspense of judgment as to whether what I see does not really exist; grounds, too, for renewed enquiry, more careful than such enquiry has sometimes been in the past.
[1] Not now in 1921.
[WILLIAM JAMES]
My object in this paper is to discuss some of the things which Prof. William James says about truth in the recent book, to which he has given the above name.[1] In Lecture VI he professes to give an account of a theory, which he calls "the pragmatist theory of truth;" and he professes to give a briefer preliminary account of the same theory in Lecture II. Moreover, in Lecture VII, he goes on to make some further remarks about truth. In all these Lectures he seems to me to make statements to which there are very obvious objections; and my main object is to point out, as clearly and simply as I can, what seem to me to be the principal objections to some of these statements.
We may, I think, distinguish three different things which he seems particularly anxious to assert about truth.
(I) In the first place, he is plainly anxious to assert some connection between truth and "verification" or "utility." Our true ideas, he seems to say, are those that "work," in the sense that they are or can be "verified," or are "useful."
(II) In the second place, he seems to object to the view that truth is something "static" or "immutable." He is anxious to assert that truths are in some sense "mutable."