I
[Footnote: Reprinted from the Journal of Philosophy, etc., August 15,
1907 (vol. iv, p. 464).]
Professor J. B. Pratt's paper in the Journal of Philosophy for June 6,
1907, is so brilliantly written that its misconception of the pragmatist
position seems doubly to call for a reply.
He asserts that, for a pragmatist, truth cannot be a relation between
an idea and a reality outside and transcendent of the idea, but must
lie 'altogether within experience,' where it will need 'no reference to
anything else to justify it'--no reference to the object, apparently.
The pragmatist must 'reduce everything to psychology,' aye, and to the
psychology of the immediate moment. He is consequently debarred from
saying that an idea that eventually gets psychologically verified WAS
already true before the process of verifying was complete; and he is
equally debarred from treating an idea as true provisionally so long as
he only believes that he CAN verify it whenever he will.
Whether such a pragmatist as this exists, I know not, never having
myself met with the beast. We can define terms as we like; and if that
be my friend Pratt's definition of a pragmatist, I can only concur with
his anti-pragmatism. But, in setting up the weird type, he quotes words
from me; so, in order to escape being classed by some reader along with
so asinine a being, I will reassert my own view of truth once more.
Truth is essentially a relation between two things, an idea, on the one
hand, and a reality outside of the idea, on the other. This relation,
like all relations, has its fundamentum, namely, the matrix of
experiential circumstance, psychological as well as physical, in which
the correlated terms are found embedded. In the case of the relation
between 'heir' and 'legacy' the fundamentum is a world in which there
was a testator, and in which there is now a will and an executor; in the
case of that between idea and object, it is a world with circumstances
of a sort to make a satisfactory verification process, lying around
and between the two terms. But just as a man may be called an heir and
treated as one before the executor has divided the estate, so an idea
may practically be credited with truth before the verification process
has been exhaustively carried out--the existence of the mass of
verifying circumstance is enough. Where potentiality counts for
actuality in so many other cases, one does not see why it may not so
count here. We call a man benevolent not only for his kind acts paid in,
but for his readiness to perform others; we treat an idea as 'luminous'
not only for the light it has shed, but for that we expect it will
shed on dark problems. Why should we not equally trust the truth of our
ideas? We live on credits everywhere; and we use our ideas far oftener
for calling up things connected with their immediate objects, than for
calling up those objects themselves. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred
the only use we should make of the object itself, if we were led up to
it by our idea, would be to pass on to those connected things by its
means. So we continually curtail verification-processes, letting our
belief that they are possible suffice.
What CONSTITUTES THE RELATION known as truth, I now say, is just the
EXISTENCE IN THE EMPIRICAL WORLD OF THIS FUNDAMENTUM OF CIRCUMSTANCE
SURROUNDING OBJECT AND IDEA and ready to be either short-circuited
or traversed at full length. So long as it exists, and a satisfactory
passage through it between the object and the idea is possible, that
idea will both BE true, and will HAVE BEEN true of that object, whether
fully developed verification has taken place or not. The nature and
place and affinities of the object of course play as vital a part in
making the particular passage possible as do the nature and associative
tendencies of the idea; so that the notion that truth could fall
altogether inside of the thinker's private experience and be something
purely psychological, is absurd. It is BETWEEN the idea and the object
that the truth-relation is to be sought and it involves both terms.
But the 'intellectualistic' position, if I understand Mr. Pratt rightly,
is that, altho we can use this fundamentum, this mass of go-between
experience, for TESTING truth, yet the truth-relation in itself remains
as something apart. It means, in Mr. Pratt's words, merely 'THIS SIMPLE
THING THAT THE OBJECT OF WHICH ONE IS THINKING IS AS ONE THINKS IT.'
It seems to me that the word 'as,' which qualifies the relation here,
and bears the whole 'epistemological' burden, is anything but simple.
What it most immediately suggests is that the idea should be LIKE the
object; but most of our ideas, being abstract concepts, bear almost no
resemblance to their objects. The 'as' must therefore, I should say, be
usually interpreted functionally, as meaning that the idea shall lead
us into the same quarters of experience AS the object would. Experience
leads ever on and on, and objects and our ideas of objects may both
lead to the same goals. The ideas being in that case shorter cuts, we
SUBSTITUTE them more and more for their objects; and we habitually waive
direct verification of each one of them, as their train passes through
our mind, because if an idea leads AS the object would lead, we can say,
in Mr. Pratt's words, that in so far forth the object is AS we think it,
and that the idea, verified thus in so far forth, is true enough.
Mr. Pratt will undoubtedly accept most of these facts, but he will deny
that they spell pragmatism. Of course, definitions are free to every
one; but I have myself never meant by the pragmatic view of truth
anything different from what I now describe; and inasmuch as my use of
the term came earlier than my friend's, I think it ought to have the
right of way. But I suspect that Professor Pratt's contention is not
solely as to what one must think in order to be called a pragmatist. I
am cure that he believes that the truth-relation has something MORE in
it than the fundamentum which I assign can account for. Useful to
test truth by, the matrix of circumstance, he thinks, cannot found the
truth-relation in se, for that is trans-empirical and 'saltatory.'
Well, take an object and an idea, and assume that the latter is true of
the former--as eternally and absolutely true as you like. Let the object
be as much 'as' the idea thinks it, as it is possible for one thing to
be 'as' another. I now formally ask of Professor Pratt to tell what this
'as'-ness in itself CONSISTS in--for it seems to me that it ought to
consist in something assignable and describable, and not remain a pure
mystery, and I promise that if he can assign any determination of it
whatever which I cannot successfully refer to some specification of what
in this article I have called the empirical fundamentum, I will confess
my stupidity cheerfully, and will agree never to publish a line upon
this subject of truth again.