Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

Traditionally, philosophy held that truth is a relationship between the knower and the thing known, expressed as the agreement between the mind and reality. James rejects this theory in favor of one that sees truth as a process or an achievement of the human mind. In Lecture 6, James defines true ideas as “those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot” (77). This is a pragmatic definition—it expresses the practical effect that having true ideas has. James’s definition also implies that truth is the result of a process of thinking rather than a simple, immediate relationship with reality. This leads James to argue that:

The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation (77–78).

James describes this “verification” as a “function of agreeable leading” (78), whereby the mind is guided through a chain of inference or logic from the original idea to other “parts of experience” (78) that harmonize with the idea. Thus, the mind decides that the idea is true because it agrees with experience and with the previously held stock of ideas.

James rejects the idea that knowledge consists of an abstract and static truth. Instead, he sees truth as doing things and producing results. Truth is plural and cumulative. There is no single Truth; many truths exist, and they build on each other. James sees truth not as “an end in itself” but as “only a preliminary means towards other vital satisfactions” (78). Truth, in other words, is useful; it has practical benefits and consequences. To illustrate the logical progression his version of truth necessarily sets up, James gives the example of a cow path which indicates the presence of a house at the end of it, thus leading a lost person out of the woods.

James emphasizes that we can also accept truths without having personally verified them; such truths exist “on a credit system” (80). Yet someone, somewhere, has to have verified these truths, which we then take on the basis of trust or belief. 

James argues that not only do our “ascertainments of truth” (87) change, but also reality and truth themselves are subject to development or change. This is because, for James, reality as we relate to it means “experienceable reality,” which is “everlastingly in process of mutation” (87). This truth process is the result of the continuous interaction of two variables. First, the facts we observe determine our beliefs. Second, when we act on our beliefs, this brings into existence “new facts” which cause us to modify our beliefs and thus “reveal new truth” (87). In this way, our knowledge advances and we are able to adapt ourselves to reality. James compares the process to the building of a snowball: The snowball keeps growing because of pressure from the human body, with the two always interacting. For James, this is how knowledge progresses, both in an individual mind and in civilization as a whole.