Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of ThinkingJames, William
Philosophy
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
James, William
Pragmatism
When we talk of reality 'independent' of human thinking, then, it seems
a thing very hard to find. It reduces to the notion of what is just
entering into experience, and yet to be named, or else to some imagined
aboriginal presence in experience, before any belief about the presence
had arisen, before any human conception had been applied. It is what is
absolutely dumb and evanescent, the merely ideal limit of our minds.
We may glimpse it, but we never grasp it; what we grasp is always some
substitute for it which previous human thinking has peptonized and
cooked for our consumption. If so vulgar an expression were allowed us,
we might say that wherever we find it, it has been already FAKED. This
is what Mr. Schiller has in mind when he calls independent reality a
mere unresisting [u lambda nu], which IS only to be made over by us.
That is Mr. Schiller's belief about the sensible core of reality.
We 'encounter' it (in Mr. Bradley's words) but don't possess it.
Superficially this sounds like Kant's view; but between categories
fulminated before nature began, and categories gradually forming
themselves in nature's presence, the whole chasm between rationalism and
empiricism yawns. To the genuine 'Kantianer' Schiller will always be to
Kant as a satyr to Hyperion.
Other pragmatists may reach more positive beliefs about the sensible
core of reality. They may think to get at it in its independent nature,
by peeling off the successive man-made wrappings. They may make theories
that tell us where it comes from and all about it; and if these theories
work satisfactorily they will be true. The transcendental idealists say
there is no core, the finally completed wrapping being reality and truth
in one. Scholasticism still teaches that the core is 'matter.' Professor
Bergson, Heymans, Strong, and others, believe in the core and bravely
try to define it. Messrs. Dewey and Schiller treat it as a 'limit.'
Which is the truer of all these diverse accounts, or of others
comparable with them, unless it be the one that finally proves the most
satisfactory? On the one hand there will stand reality, on the other
an account of it which proves impossible to better or to alter. If
the impossibility prove permanent, the truth of the account will be
absolute. Other content of truth than this I can find nowhere. If the
anti-pragmatists have any other meaning, let them for heaven's sake
reveal it, let them grant us access to it!
Not BEING reality, but only our belief ABOUT reality, it will contain
human elements, but these will KNOW the non-human element, in the only
sense in which there can be knowledge of anything. Does the river make
its banks, or do the banks make the river? Does a man walk with his
right leg or with his left leg more essentially? Just as impossible may
it be to separate the real from the human factors in the growth of our
cognitive experience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account