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
Another great reason--beside economy of time--for waiving complete
verification in the usual business of life is that all things exist
in kinds and not singly. Our world is found once for all to have that
peculiarity. So that when we have once directly verified our ideas about
one specimen of a kind, we consider ourselves free to apply them to
other specimens without verification. A mind that habitually
discerns the kind of thing before it, and acts by the law of the
kind immediately, without pausing to verify, will be a 'true' mind
in ninety-nine out of a hundred emergencies, proved so by its conduct
fitting everything it meets, and getting no refutation.
INDIRECTLY OR ONLY POTENTIALLY VERIFYING PROCESSES MAY THUS BE TRUE AS
WELL AS FULL VERIFICATION-PROCESSES. They work as true processes would
work, give us the same advantages, and claim our recognition for the
same reasons. All this on the common-sense level of, matters of fact,
which we are alone considering.
But matters of fact are not our only stock in trade. RELATIONS AMONG
PURELY MENTAL IDEAS form another sphere where true and false beliefs
obtain, and here the beliefs are absolute, or unconditional. When they
are true they bear the name either of definitions or of principles. It
is either a principle or a definition that 1 and 1 make 2, that 2 and 1
make 3, and so on; that white differs less from gray than it does from
black; that when the cause begins to act the effect also commences. Such
propositions hold of all possible 'ones,' of all conceivable 'whites'
and 'grays' and 'causes.' The objects here are mental objects.
Their relations are perceptually obvious at a glance, and no
sense-verification is necessary. Moreover, once true, always true, of
those same mental objects. Truth here has an 'eternal' character. If you
can find a concrete thing anywhere that is 'one' or 'white' or 'gray,'
or an 'effect,' then your principles will everlastingly apply to it. It
is but a case of ascertaining the kind, and then applying the law of its
kind to the particular object. You are sure to get truth if you can but
name the kind rightly, for your mental relations hold good of everything
of that kind without exception. If you then, nevertheless, failed to get
truth concretely, you would say that you had classed your real objects
wrongly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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