Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

Summary

Pragmatism collects eight popular lectures that William James gave at the Lowell Institute in Boston in November and December 1906 and at Columbia University in January 1907. Published that year and dedicated to the memory of John Stuart Mill, the book presents pragmatism as both a method for settling disputes and a theory of what truth is. Lecture I, The Present Dilemma in Philosophy, opens with G. K. Chesterton's remark that a person's view of the universe is the most practical thing about him. James argues that the history of philosophy is largely a clash of temperaments and sorts thinkers into the tender-minded (rationalistic, idealistic, religious, free-willist, monistic, dogmatic) and the tough-minded (empiricist, materialistic, irreligious, fatalistic, pluralistic, sceptical). Most people want both facts and religion; empiricism offers facts without religion, rationalism religion without facts. Pragmatism is offered as a mediator. Lecture II, What Pragmatism Means, begins with the squirrel. On a camping trip, friends argue whether a man circling a tree goes round a squirrel that keeps the trunk between them. James resolves it by distinguishing two practical meanings of going round. The pragmatic method, which he credits to Charles Peirce's 1878 essay How to Make Our Ideas Clear, asks of every notion what difference it would make in practice if it were true. Each word must yield its cash-value in experience; theories become instruments rather than answers in which we can rest. Borrowing an image from the Italian Giovanni Papini, James calls pragmatism a corridor in a hotel off which many rooms open. With F. C. S. Schiller and John Dewey he holds that ideas are true insofar as they help us get into satisfactory relation with other parts of experience. Lecture III applies the method to substance, materialism versus theism, design and free will, asking in each case what the alternatives promise for the future. Lecture IV examines in what ways the world is one and in what ways many. Lecture V treats the categories of common sense as ancient discoveries that have proved their worth, alongside the later stages of science and critical philosophy. Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth, is the centre of the book. True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify; truth happens to an idea and is made true by events. A traveller lost in the woods who thinks of a house at the end of a cow-path shows why true thoughts matter: they lead us usefully. The true is the expedient in our thinking, as the right is the expedient in our behaving, in the long run and on the whole. Lecture VII discusses Schiller's humanism and the human share in shaping truth. Lecture VIII, Pragmatism and Religion, defends meliorism, the view that the world's salvation is possible but not guaranteed, and concludes that if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense, it is true.

Top Lessons

• Ask what difference it makes

  The squirrel dispute in Lecture II shows how an argument can go on endlessly because the parties mean different things by the same words. James's method is to ask what practical difference each answer would make. Where none can be found, the dispute is verbal; where one can, the dispute becomes worth having.

• Temperament shapes philosophy

  Lecture I argues that philosophers are moved by temperament as much as by evidence, and that most people are a mixture of tender- and tough-minded. Knowing one's own temperament can make a thinker more honest about where his reasons come from. James does not say temperament settles what is true.

• Truth as something that works

  Lecture VI defines true ideas as those we can verify and calls truth the expedient in thinking. James adds that this means expedient in the long run and on the whole, and that true beliefs must fit with older truths and with facts. The definition has drawn criticism from the start, and weighing it is part of reading the book.

• Faith as a venture

  Lecture VIII presents meliorism: the world's salvation is neither certain nor impossible but depends partly on us. James values religious belief for what it does in a life and invites each listener to make his own faith-venture. Christian readers can engage both his respect for faith and his reluctance to say more about God than experience shows.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

James trained as a physician and wrote The Principles of Psychology before turning to philosophy, and Pragmatism keeps a clinician's interest in how beliefs function in a life. Lecture VI likens truth to health and wealth as goods made in the course of experience, and Lecture VIII contrasts healthy and morbid replies to the question of whether one would accept a world not certain to be saved, echoing the healthy-minded and sick-souled types of The Varieties of Religious Experience. James's own early depression and his account of recovering through an act of will are well documented in his letters and diaries, though not discussed in this book; links between his life and his philosophy remain interpretive.

• Lecture VI

  Truth compared with health, wealth and strength as names for processes that are made in the course of experience.

• Lecture VIII

  The healthy and the morbid responses to an offered world whose salvation is possible but not guaranteed.