Teacher: Reply. Many intellectualists have now gone so far as to admit that verification is the testing of a judgment by the consequence it imports, the difference it makes—its working. But they still deny any organic connection between the “antecedent” truth property of ideas and the verification (or “making true”) process. Surely they admit either too much or too little. (i) If an idea about a past event is already true because of some mysterious static correspondence that it possesses to that past event, how in the world can its truth be proved by the future consequences of that idea? Why is it that the intellectualist has not produced any positive theory about the relation of verification to his notion of truth? (ii) Moreover, if verification consists in the experimental working out of a belief, the intellectualist thereby admits that his own theory of truth can be known to be true only as it is verified by its workings. But if the theory that truth is a ready-made static property of judgments is true, how in the world can it be verified by making any specific differences in the course of events? Everywhere we have to proceed as if the pragmatic theory were the right one. (iii) If he admits that the pragmatic theory of verification is true, what meaning remains to the statement that the idea had the truth property in advance? Why, simply that it had the property of ability to work—an ability revealed by its actual working. How can a given fact be an objection to the pragmatic theory when that fact has a definitely assignable meaning on the pragmatic theory, while upon the anti-pragmatic theory it just has to be accepted as an ultimate, unanalyzable fact?
As to your remark about verification being merely psychological, I have something to say. Colleagues of mine are steadily at work in various laboratories on various researches, forming hypotheses, experimenting, testing, corroborating, refuting, modifying ideas. One of them, for example, recently put an immense pendulum in place in order to repeat and test Foucault’s experiment with reference to the earth’s rotation. Do you regard such verification processes as merely psychological?
Pupil. I don’t know. Why do you ask?
Teacher. Because if the objector means that such experimental provings are merely psychological, he has of course relegated to the merely psychological (wherever that may be) all the technique of all the physical sciences—a rather high price to pay for the confutation of the pragmatist. The intellectualist is thus in the dilemma either of conceding to the pragmatist the whole sphere of concrete scientific logic or else of himself regarding all science as merely subjective? Which horn does he choose?
Pupil: Objection Six. I noticed a moment ago that you spoke of the pragmatic theory of truth being true. Surely the pragmatist does not live up to his reputation of having a sense of humor when he claims assent to his theory on the ground that it is true. What is this but to admit intellectualism?
Teacher: Reply. My son, we are evidently nearing the end. Naturally, the pragmatist claims his theory to be true in the pragmatic sense of truth: it works, it clears up difficulties, removes obscurities, puts individuals into more experimental, less dogmatic, and less arbitrarily sceptical relations to life; aligns philosophic with scientific method; does away with self-made problems of epistemology; clarifies and reorganizes logical theory, etc. He is quite content to have the truth of his theory consist in its working in these various ways, and to leave to the intellectualist the proud possession of a static, unanalyzable, unverifiable, unworking property.
Pupil: Objection Seven. Nevertheless, the pragmatist is always appealing to the judgments of others to corroborate his own judgment. Surely this admits the principle of a judgment that is correct, true, in se.
Teacher: Reply. The pragmatist says that judgment is pragmatic, i.e., originated under conditions of need for a survey and statement, and tested by efficiency in meeting this need. And then you think you have refuted him by saying that any appeal to judgment is intellectualistic! Such begging of the question convinces me that the radical difficulty of the intellectualist is that he conceives of the pragmatist as beginning with a theory of truth, when in reality the latter begins with a theory about judgments and meanings of which the theory of truth is a corollary.
Pupil: Objection Eight. Nevertheless, you are endeavoring to convert your opponent to a certain theory. Surely that is an intellectual undertaking, and in theory (at least) the theoretical criterion, as Mr. Bradley has well said, must be supreme.
Teacher: Reply. A little reflection will convince you that you are going around in the same old circle. Since men have to act together, since the individual subsists in social bonds and activities, to convert another to a certain way of looking at things is to make social ties and functions better adapted, more prosperous in their workings. Only if the pragmatist held the intellectualist’s position, would he appeal to other than what is ultimately a practical need and a practical criterion in endeavoring to convert others.