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    Pragmatism
    Pragmatism
    Pragmatism
    Ebook191 pages4 hours

    Pragmatism

    By William James

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    A profoundly influential figure in American psychology, William James (1842–1910) was also a philosopher of note who adopted Charles S. Peirce's theories as a basis for his own conception of pragmatism. For James, this meant an emphasis on "radical empiricism" and the concept that the meaning of any idea — philosophical, political, social, or otherwise — has validity only in terms of its experiential and practical consequences.
    In this book, James tests competing systems of thought in the "marketplace of actual experience" to determine their validity. In other words, he examines whether adopting a particular philosophical theory or way of looking at the world makes an actual difference in individual conduct. James not only makes a strong case for his own ideas but also mounts a powerful attack against the transcendental and rationalist tradition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateSep 12, 2018
    ISBN9780486834726
    Author

    William James

    William James (1842–1910) was an American philosopher, physician, and psychologist. The brother of novelist Henry James, William James is remembered for his contributions to the fields of pragmatism and functional psychology. 

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    2.5/5

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    • 3/5
      James is too happy for my tastes.
    • 3/5
      It's easy to see how this would be so readily adopted by Dewey and other reformers, since Truth is really just a conveyance to an end. I'm not quite as critical as that might seem. James is convincing in his argument that the other philosophers rely too much on abstraction and logic, when much of that rationality becomes too unwieldy for use.
    • 2/5
      bought 2/21/2014. Is from lectures delivered at Harvard--long sentences, hard to get the point.

    Book preview

    Pragmatism - William James

    P

    RAGMATISM

    William James

    DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

    MINEOLA, NEW YORK

    DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

    GENERAL EDITOR: SUSAN L. RATTINER

    EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: TERRI ANN GEUS

    Copyright

    Copyright © 1995, 2018 by Dover Publications, Inc.

    All rights reserved.

    Bibliographical Note

    This Dover edition, first published in 2018, is an unabridged republication of the work first published in 1907 by Longmans, Green and Company, New York, as Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, and previously reprinted by Dover in 1995 with a new set of footnotes (numbered) appearing along with James's own (starred and daggered) footnotes, as well as an introductory Note.

    International Standard Book Number

    ISBN-13: 978-0-486-82662-2

    ISBN-10: 0-486-82662-7

    Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

    82662701 2018

    www.doverpublications.com

    Note

    A founding figure of the science of psychology as well as one of America's most distinguished and influential philosophers, William James (1842–1910) lived through an epoch that saw unprecedented developments in mankind's ability to observe, control, and transform the physical world. Dizzying advances in transportation, communications, warfare, industrial production, and the sciences — conjoined with an increasingly federalized and secular political and economic structure — contributed to widespread dissatisfaction with traditional idealistic and religious belief systems, and a search for new answers to perennial questions of ethics and epistemology.

    One response to these searchings was the development of the philosophy of Pragmatism. Initially formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce—an American philosopher and scientist whose seminal writings remain comparatively neglected — in the 1870s, Pragmatism attempted to formulate a philosophy shorn of idealistic dogma and subject to the type of rigorous standards developed in the physical sciences. The ideas of Peirce and others were developed and given a popular expression by James during the first decade of the twentieth century; Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907) collected a lecture series presented by the philosopher in Boston in 1906.

    To the Memory of John Stuart Mill from whom I first learned the pragmatic openness of mind and whom my fancy likes to picture as our leader were he alive to-day

    Preface

    The lectures that follow were delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston in November and December, 1906, and in January, 1907, at Columbia University, in New York. They are printed as delivered, without developments or notes. The pragmatic movement, so-called — I do not like the name, but apparently it is too late to change it — seems to have rather suddenly precipitated itself out of the air. A number of tendencies that have always existed in philosophy have all at once become conscious of themselves collectively, and of their combined mission; and this has occurred in so many countries, and from so many different points of view, that much unconcerted statement has resulted. I have sought to unify the picture as it presents itself to my own eyes, dealing in broad strokes, and avoiding minute controversy. Much futile controversy might have been avoided, I believe, if our critics had been willing to wait until we got our message fairly out.

    If my lectures interest any reader in the general subject, he will doubtless wish to read farther. I therefore give him a few references.

    In America, John Dewey's 'Studies in Logical Theory'¹ are the foundation. Read also by Dewey the articles in the Philosophical Review, vol. xv, pp. 113 and 465, in Mind, vol. xv, p. 293, and in the Journal of Philosophy, vol. iv, p. 197.

    Probably the best statements to begin with however, are F. C. S. Schiller's in his 'Studies in Humanism,'² especially the essays numbered i, v, vi, vii, xviii and xix. His previous essays and in general the polemic literature of the subject are fully referred to in his footnotes.

    Furthermore, see G. Milhaud: le Rationnel, 1898,³ and the fine articles by Le Roy⁴ in the Revue de Métaphysique, vols. 7, 8 and 9. Also articles by Blondel and de Sailly⁵ in the Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, 4me Série, vols. 2 and 3. Papini announces a book on Pragmatism, in the French language, to be published very soon.

    To avoid one misunderstanding at least, let me say that there is no logical connexion between pragmatism, as I understand it, and a doctrine which I have recently set forth as 'radical empiricism.' The latter stands on its own feet. One may entirely reject it and still be a pragmatist.

    Harvard University, April, 1907.

    ¹ John Dewey (1859–1952), American philosopher, psychologist and educator; one of the founders of the Pragmatist school. Studies in Logical Theory, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1903.

    ² Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (1864–1937), British Pragmatist philosopher. Studies in Humanism, Macmillan, London, 1907.

    ³ Gaston Samuel Milhaud (1858–1918), French Pragmatist philosopher. Le Rationnel, Félix Alcan, Paris, 1898.

    ⁴ Edouard Le Roy (1870–1954), French Pragmatist philosopher.

    ⁵ Maurice Blondel (1861–1949), French Pragmatist philosopher who sometimes assumed the nom de plume Bernard de Sailly.

    Contents

    LECTURE I

    The Present Dilemma in Philosophy

    Chesterton quoted. Everyone has a philosophy. Temperament is a factor in all philosophizing. Rationalists and empiricists. The tender-minded and the tough-minded. Most men wish both facts and religion. Empiricism gives facts without religion. Rationalism gives religion without facts. The layman's dilemma. The unreality in rationalistic systems. Leibnitz on the damned, as an example. M. I. Swift on the optimism of idealists. Pragmatism as a mediating system. An objection. Reply: philosophies have characters like men, and are liable to as summary judgments. Spencer as an example.

    LECTURE II

    What Pragmatism Means

    The squirrel. Pragmatism as a method. History of the method. Its character and affinities. How it contrasts with rationalism and intellectualism. A 'corridor theory.' Pragmatism as a theory of truth, equivalent to 'humanism.' Earlier views of mathematical, logical, and natural truth. More recent views. Schiller's and Dewey's 'instrumental' view. The formation of new beliefs. Older truth always has to be kept account of. Older truth arose similarly. The 'humanistic' doctrine. Rationalistic criticisms of it. Pragmatism as mediator between empiricism and religion. Barrenness of transcendental idealism. How far the concept of the Absolute must be called true. The true is the good in the way of belief. The clash of truths. Pragmatism unstiffens discussion.

    LECTURE III

    Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered

    The problem of substance. The Eucharist. Berkeley's pragmatic treatment of material substance. Locke's of personal identity. The problem of materialism. Rationalistic treatment of it. Pragmatic treatment. 'God' is no better than 'Matter' as a principle, unless he promise more. Pragmatic comparison of the two principles. The problem of design. 'Design' per se is barren. The question is what design. The problem of 'free-will.' Its relations to 'accountability.' Free-will a cosmological theory. The pragmatic issue at stake in all these problems is what do the alternatives promise.

    LECTURE IV

    The One and the Many

    Total reflection. Philosophy seeks not only unity, but totality. Rationalistic feeling about unity. Pragmatically considered, the world is one in many ways. One time and space. One subject of discourse. Its parts interact. Its oneness and manyness are co-ordinate. Question of one origin. Generic oneness. One purpose. One story. One knower. Value of pragmatic method. Absolute monism. Vivekananda. Various types of union discussed. Conclusion: We must oppose monistic dogmatism and follow empirical findings.

    LECTURE V

    Pragmatism and Common Sense

    Noetic pluralism. How our knowledge grows. Earlier ways of thinking remain. Prehistoric ancestors discovered the common sense concepts. List of them. They came gradually into use. Space and time. 'Things.' Kinds. 'Cause' and 'law.' Common sense one stage in mental evolution, due to geniuses. The 'critical' stages: 1) scientific and 2) philosophic, compared with common sense. Impossible to say which is the more 'true.'

    LECTURE VI

    Pragmatism's Conception of Truth

    The polemic situation. What does agreement with reality mean? It means verifiability. Verifiability means ability to guide us prosperously through experience. Completed verifications seldom needful. 'Eternal' truths. Consistency, with language, with previous truths. Rationalist objections. Truth is a good, like health, wealth, etc. It is expedient thinking. The past. Truth grows. Rationalist objections. Reply to them.

    LECTURE VII

    Pragmatism and Humanism

    The notion of the Truth. Schiller on 'Humanism.' Three sorts of reality of which any new truth must take account. To 'take account' is ambiguous. Absolutely independent reality is hard to find. The human contribution is ubiquitous and builds out the given. Essence of pragmatism's contrast with rationalism. Rationalism affirms a transempirical world. Motives for this. Tough-mindedness rejects them. A genuine alternative. Pragmatism mediates.

    LECTURE VIII

    Pragmatism and Religion

    Utility of the Absolute. Whitman's poem 'To You.' Two ways of taking it. My friend's letter. Necessities versus possibilities. 'Possibility' defined. Three views of the world's salvation. Pragmatism is melioristic. We may create reality. Why should anything be? Supposed choice before creation. The healthy and the morbid reply. The 'tender' and the 'tough' types of religion. Pragmatism mediates.

    LECTURE I

    The Present Dilemma in Philosophy

    In the preface to that admirable collection of essays of his called 'Heretics,' Mr. Chesterton¹ writes these words: There are some people — and I am one of them — who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them.

    I think with Mr. Chesterton in this matter. I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds. You know the same of me. And yet I confess to a certain tremor at the audacity of the enterprise which I am about to begin. For the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos. I have no right to assume that many of you are students of the cosmos in the class-room sense, yet here I stand desirous of interesting you in a philosophy which to no small extent has to be technically treated. I wish to fill you with sympathy with a contemporaneous tendency in which I profoundly believe, and yet I have to talk like a professor to you who are not students. Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind! I have heard friends and colleagues try to popularize philosophy in this very hall, but they soon grew dry, and then technical, and the results were only partially encouraging. So my enterprise is a bold one. The founder of pragmatism himself recently gave a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute with that very word in its title — flashes of brilliant light relieved against Cimmerian darkness! None of us, I fancy, understood all that he said —yet here I stand, making a very similar venture.

    I risk it because the very lectures I speak of drew — they brought good audiences. There is, it must be confessed, a curious fascination in hearing deep things talked about, even tho neither we nor the disputants understand them. We get the problematic thrill, we feel the presence of the vastness. Let a controversy begin in a smoking-room anywhere, about free-will or God's omniscience, or good and evil, and see how everyone in the place pricks up his ears. Philosophy's results concern us all most vitally, and philosophy's queerest arguments tickle agreeably our sense of subtlety and ingenuity.

    Believing in philosophy myself devoutly, and believing also that a kind of new dawn is breaking upon us philosophers, I feel impelled, per fas aut nefas,² to try to impart to you some news of the situation.

    Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens out the widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread,' as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage; and repugnant as its manners, its doubting and challenging, its quibbling and dialectics, often are to common people, no one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world's perspectives. These illuminations at least, and the contrast-effects of darkness and mystery that accompany them, give to what it says an interest that is much more than professional.

    The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments. Undignified as such a treatment may seem to some of my colleagues, I shall have to take account of this clash and explain a good many of the divergencies of philosophers by it. Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of opposite temper to be out of key with the world's character, and in his heart considers them incompetent and 'not in it,' in the philosophic business, even tho they may far excel him in dialectical ability.

    Yet in the forum he can make no claim, on the bare ground of his temperament, to superior discernment or authority. There arises thus a certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest of all our premises is never mentioned. I am sure it would contribute to clearness if in these lectures we should break this rule and mention it, and I accordingly feel free to do so.

    Of course I am talking here of very positively marked men, men of radical idiosyncracy, who have set their stamp and likeness on philosophy and figure in its history. Plato, Locke, Hegel, Spencer, are such temperamental thinkers. Most of us have, of course, no very definite intellectual temperament, we are a mixture of opposite ingredients, each one present very moderately. We hardly know our own preferences in abstract matters; some of us are easily talked out of them, and end by following the fashion or taking up with the beliefs of the most impressive philosopher in our neighborhood, whoever he may be. But the one thing that has counted so far in philosophy is that a man should see things, see them straight in his own peculiar way, and be dissatisfied with any opposite way of seeing them. There is no reason to suppose that this strong temperamental vision is from now onward to count no longer in the history of man's beliefs.

    Now the particular difference of temperament that I have in mind in making these remarks is one that has counted in literature, art, government and manners as well as in philosophy. In manners we find formalists and free-and-easy persons. In government, authoritarians and anarchists. In literature, purists or academicals, and realists. In

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