Past Qs:

- Discuss Pragmatism with special reference to William James. (20 marks) (2016)
- (Short note) Explain and criticize Pragmatic Theory of Truth. (10 marks) (2021)

I. Introduction:
a. The theory that finding true beliefs is less important than finding beliefs that work,
practically, in the living of your life.
b. William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce were the founders of
pragmatism.
c. All three were near contemporaries.
d. An American philosophical movement which flowered during the last 30 years of 19th
century and the first 20 years of the 20th century.
e. It argued that knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action.
f. Nothing is true or false, it either works or it does not.
g. Pragmatism is a philosophy deeply embedded in the reality of life and concerned firstly
with the individual’s direct experience of the world he or she inhabits.
h. In essence, practical application is all.
II. The basis of pragmatism
a. Reaction to abstract absolutist conceptions and mirror representation about truth and
reality prevailing in that time.
b. In post-civil-war America, there was great capitalist development so the Americans no
longer inclined towards European thinking of old.
III. William James’s Pragmatism
a. He was the popularizer of this movement.
b. Plurality of useful truths:
i. Unlike Pierce, James opened up the possibility that if truth really is, what
works.
ii. If it is simply useful to believe, then what is true for someone may not be true
for someone else and so forth.
c. No rational way of settling religious belief:
i. This was particularly evident in his approach to religious belief.
ii. On the question of God’s existence, he thought that there is no actual rational
way of settling the matter.
iii. Therefore, we are perfectly justified in using non-rational means to determine
whether or not we believe in God.
d. Usefulness of religious belief:
i. He thought it was important for three reasons:
1. Because it was a live and not settled matter.
2. You are somehow forced to take a stance on it. (by society etc.)
3. It has a major impact on how you lead your life.
e. Common ground with Pierce:
i. Both Pierce and James agreed that what was true was what was more useful.
f. Difference with Pierce:
 i. But they had very different views on what that meant in terms of whether we
settle on one truth or whether we have to accept a plurality of truths.
IV. John Dewey’s Pragmatism:
a. Interested in application of Pragmatism to Society:
i. He was less interested in theoretical concepts of pragmatism and more
interested in how pragmatism was applied to society.
b. Anti-intellectual Pragmatism:
i. He described his pragmatism as anti-intellectual.
ii. What he meant was that philosophy ought to be responsive to social change.
iii. Also, philosophy ought to be informed by society.
c. Collective and Social Perspective regarding enquiry:
i. His view of enquiry was that it was something collective and social.
ii. Exchanging views and sharing evidence etc.
d. Inquiry should only begin from need to solve a problem:
i. He also thought that enquiry began from something practical.
ii. Problem solving.
iii. It started with some problem to solve.
iv. You do not know how to do something so you do enquiry.
e. Evolution of knowledge with time:
i. He believed that historically our knowledge and amount of evidence will
increase with time as well as the quality of our evidence.
f. Notion of warranted assertions
i. He also related the truth to what is useful to believe.
ii. He thought that for a statement to be warrantedly assertible, you have to have
sufficient reason to state it and present it as true to another person.
g. Knowledge as output of competent inquiry:
i. He thought that knowledge is nothing more than the output of competent
enquiry.
ii. In this sense, truth is just what competent enquiry deems it to be with reason.
h. Difference with Pierce:
i. Dewey was against the idea that truth was a separate independent reality.
i. Relation of hand with nature:
i. He positioned himself against the view that the mind is in some way a mirror of
nature, it reflects the way things are out there in nature and if the conceptions
in the mind are true to what is out there in nature, it is because of this relation
of correspondence between them.
ii. Dewey said that there is not a relation between mind and nature, the
relationship is much more of a as the relation of hand to reality.
iii. Not the spectator perspective but the participant perspective.
iv. Therefore, knowledge is practice and truth is a matter of warranted
assertability.
j. Against Cartesian Skepticism:
i. Dewey thought that cartesian skepticism was a silly intellectual game and
philosophy should not be asking these sorts of questions.
 ii. Starting with the idea that truth is internal to enquiry is something which is,
owing to the nature of enquiry, readily available to us.
iii. It is just what we have reason to present as true closes off this question of there
being a gap between how things seem according to our best reasons and how
they actually are.
k. Americanness of Dewey’s philosophy and Influence on American Society
i. Finding solutions to our problems is a communal one, it's not an individual one.
ii. Pragmatism moves away from the idea about just reasoning a priori on their
own in their garage.
iii. According to Dewey, society was not giving enough thought about how it
educated people for life in that society.
iv. He was tremendously interested in education.
o He founded the laboratory school at the university of Chicago where he emphasized
learning through doing.
o The moment of optimism coincided with the rise of pragmatism.
o It also influenced American feminist philosophers because pragmatism advocated
democracy and social change and so did feminists.
o In a way, pragmatism is a philosophy without deep foundations in the same sense as
America is a country without those deep foundations.
o From the point of view of white Americans, America was a clean slate on which they
went and built their new way of life from scratch, finding out what worked as they went.
 Whereas, Europeans are concerned with ultimate foundations of philosophy
and philosophy are.
o So, in this way, pragmatism is connected with American national mythology.
V. Charles Pierce’s Pragmatism
a. Inventor of Pragmatism:
i. Credited with inventing the name Pragmatism.
ii. He was a polymath genius academic.
b. Definition of truth according to Pierce:
i. For pierce, truth was what works.
ii. However, he thought there would be some kind of agreement in the long run.
c. Emphasis on scientific method for discovering truth:
i. He thought the scientific method was the best method for discovering truth.
ii. He believed that in the long run all intelligent enquiries would lead on to one
view.
d. Two truths of Pierce:
i. So, although in one sentence it debunks the old idea of truth as something out
there, absolute, to be revered and discovered.
ii. On the other hand, he retains that view that there is an ultimately a one truth
but not quite what we think of as truth.
e. Has edge over James and Dewey:
i. Pierce has an edge over James and Dewey, because, although he maintains a
connection between what is useful and true, he idealized conception of truth so
truth is finding the ideal end point of science for him.
 ii. So, for him, there can be a distinction between what seems to be true and
what is actually true.
iii. Actual modes of enquiry currently in our imperfect state of evidence and
theorizing may seem to be true, they may be warrantedly assertible, they may
be agreed by all, may be extremely useful, but they might be false.
iv. But the standard of falsity is that at an ideal endpoint of scientific enquiry, we
would be able to see that they were false.
v. So, he retains this idea that truth is, in principle, accessible; it is internal to our
modes of enquiry but internal of the idealized end whereas James and Dewey
could not maintain this distinction between what seems to be true with
competent enquiry and what in fact is true.