Philosophical Pragmatism

values by directing to human, religious and moral experience as a direct basis. His outlook on these themes were offered in the lectures and essays published in such books as The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), Human Immortality (1898), and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). The last is a compassionate psychological explanation of religious and mystical occurrences.

Later lectures published as Pragmatism: A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking (1907)  finalized James’s innovative offerings to the theory called pragmatism. James universalized the pragmatic method, mounting it from an analysis of the logical foundation of the sciences into a foundation for the assessment of all knowledge. He argued that the meaning of ideas is established only in relation to their probable results. If results are short, ideas are worthless. James argued that this is the technique used by scientists to describe their stipulations and to check their hypotheses, which, if significant, involve forecasts. The hypotheses can be regarded correct if the forecasted events occur. Conversely, most metaphysical theories are hollow, because they involve no testable predictions. Significant theories, James disputed, are tools for handling troubles that come up in knowledge.

According to James’s pragmatism, truth is that which works. One decides what works by examining proposals in experience. By this method, one discovers that some propositions become correct.

Pluralism, Pragmatism, and Instrumental Truth” William James (From A Pluralistic Universe, New York, 1909, pp. 321-4 and Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking [1907], New York, l909, pp. 52-61)

What at bottom is

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