PROFESSOR HEBERT ON PRAGMATISM [Footnote: Reprint from the Journal of
Philosophy for December 3, 1908 (vol. v, p. 689), of a review of Le
Pragmatisme et ses Diverses Formes Anglo-Americaines, by Marcel Hebert.
(Paris: Librairie critique Emile Nourry. 1908. Pp. 105.)]
Professor Marcel Hebert is a singularly erudite and liberal thinker
(a seceder, I believe, from the Catholic priesthood) and an uncommonly
direct and clear writer. His book Le Divin is one of the ablest reviews
of the general subject of religious philosophy which recent years have
produced; and in the small volume the title of which is copied above he
has, perhaps, taken more pains not to do injustice to pragmatism than
any of its numerous critics. Yet the usual fatal misapprehension of its
purposes vitiates his exposition and his critique. His pamphlet seems to
me to form a worthy hook, as it were, on which to hang one more attempt
to tell the reader what the pragmatist account of truth really means.
M. Hebert takes it to mean what most people take it to mean, the
doctrine, namely, that whatever proves subjectively expedient in the way
of our thinking is 'true' in the absolute and unrestricted sense of the
word, whether it corresponds to any objective state of things outside of
our thought or not. Assuming this to be the pragmatist thesis, M. Hebert
opposes it at length. Thought that proves itself to be thus expedient
may, indeed, have every OTHER kind of value for the thinker, he says,
but cognitive value, representative value, VALEUR DE CONNAISSANCE
PROPREMENT DITE, it has not; and when it does have a high degree of
general utility value, this is in every case derived from its previous
value in the way of correctly representing independent objects that have
an important influence on our lives. Only by thus representing things
truly do we reap the useful fruits. But the fruits follow on the truth,
they do not constitute it; so M. Hebert accuses pragmatism of telling us
everything about truth except what it essentially is. He admits, indeed,
that the world is so framed that when men have true ideas of realities,
consequential utilities ensue in abundance; and no one of our critics,
I think, has shown as concrete a sense of the variety of these utilities
as he has; but he reiterates that, whereas such utilities are secondary,
we insist on treating them as primary, and that the connaissance
objective from which they draw all their being is something which we
neglect, exclude, and destroy. The utilitarian value and the strictly
cognitive value of our ideas may perfectly well harmonize, he says--and
in the main he allows that they do harmonize--but they are not logically
identical for that. He admits that subjective interests, desires,
impulses may even have the active 'primacy' in our intellectual life.
Cognition awakens only at their spur, and follows their cues and aims;
yet, when it IS awakened, it is objective cognition proper and not
merely another name for the impulsive tendencies themselves in the state
of satisfaction. The owner of a picture ascribed to Corot gets uneasy
when its authenticity is doubted. He looks up its origin and is
reassured. But his uneasiness does not make the proposition false, any
more than his relief makes the proposition true, that the actual Corot
was the painter. Pragmatism, which, according to M. Hebert, claims that
our sentiments MAKE truth and falsehood, would oblige us to conclude
that our minds exert no genuinely cognitive function whatever.
This subjectivist interpretation of our position seems to follow from my
having happened to write (without supposing it necessary to explain that
I was treating of cognition solely on its subjective side) that in the
long run the true is the expedient in the way of our thinking, much as
the good is the expedient in the way of our behavior! Having previously
written that truth means 'agreement with reality,' and insisted that the
chief part of the expediency of any one opinion is its agreement
with the rest of acknowledged truth, I apprehended no exclusively
subjectivistic reading of my meaning. My mind was so filled with the
notion of objective reference that I never dreamed that my hearers
would let go of it; and the very last accusation I expected was that
in speaking of ideas and their satisfactions, I was denying realities
outside. My only wonder now is that critics should have found so silly
a personage as I must have seemed in their eyes, worthy of explicit
refutation.
The object, for me, is just as much one part of reality as the idea
is another part. The truth of the idea is one relation of it to the
reality, just as its date and its place are other relations. All three
relations CONSIST of intervening parts of the universe which can in
every particular case be assigned and catalogued, and which differ in
every instance of truth, just as they differ with every date and place.
The pragmatist thesis, as Dr. Schiller and I hold it,--I prefer to let
Professor Dewey speak for himself,--is that the relation called 'truth'
is thus concretely DEFINABLE. Ours is the only articulate attempt in the
field to say positively what truth actually CONSISTS OF. Our denouncers
have literally nothing to oppose to it as an alternative. For them, when
an idea is true, it IS true, and there the matter terminates; the word
'true' being indefinable. The relation of the true idea to its object,
being, as they think, unique, it can be expressed in terms of nothing
else, and needs only to be named for any one to recognize and understand
it. Moreover it is invariable and universal, the same in every single
instance of truth, however diverse the ideas, the realities, and the
other relations between them may be.
Our pragmatist view, on the contrary, is that the truth-relation is a
definitely experienceable relation, and therefore describable as well
as namable; that it is not unique in kind, and neither invariable nor
universal. The relation to its object that makes an idea true in any
given instance, is, we say, embodied in intermediate details of reality
which lead towards the object, which vary in every instance, and which
in every instance can be concretely traced. The chain of workings which
an opinion sets up IS the opinion's truth, falsehood, or irrelevancy,
as the case may be. Every idea that a man has works some consequences
in him, in the shape either of bodily actions or of other ideas. Through
these consequences the man's relations to surrounding realities are
modified. He is carried nearer to some of them and farther from others,
and gets now the feeling that the idea has worked satisfactorily, now
that it has not. The idea has put him into touch with something that
fulfils its intent, or it has not.
This something is the MAN'S OBJECT, primarily. Since the only realities
we can talk about are such OBJECTS-BELIEVED-IN, the pragmatist, whenever
he says 'reality,' means in the first instance what may count for the
man himself as a reality, what he believes at the moment to be such.
Sometimes the reality is a concrete sensible presence. The idea, for
example, may be that a certain door opens into a room where a glass of
beer may be bought. If opening the door leads to the actual sight and
taste of the beer, the man calls the idea true. Or his idea may be
that of an abstract relation, say of that between the sides and the
hypothenuse of a triangle, such a relation being, of course, a reality
quite as much as a glass of beer is. If the thought of such a relation
leads him to draw auxiliary lines and to compare the figures they make,
he may at last, perceiving one equality after another, SEE the relation
thought of, by a vision quite as particular and direct as was the taste
of the beer. If he does so, he calls THAT idea, also, true. His idea
has, in each case, brought him into closer touch with a reality felt at
the moment to verify just that idea. Each reality verifies and validates
its own idea exclusively; and in each case the verification consists in
the satisfactorily-ending consequences, mental or physical, which
the idea was able to set up. These 'workings' differ in every single
instance, they never transcend experience, they consist of particulars,
mental or sensible, and they admit of concrete description in every
individual case. Pragmatists are unable to see what you can possibly
MEAN by calling an idea true, unless you mean that between it as a
terminus a quo in some one's mind and some particular reality as a
terminus ad quem, such concrete workings do or may intervene. Their
direction constitutes the idea's reference to that reality, their
satisfactoriness constitutes its adaptation thereto, and the two things
together constitute the 'truth' of the idea for its possessor.
Without such intermediating portions of concretely real experience the
pragmatist sees no materials out of which the adaptive relation called
truth can be built up.
The anti-pragmatist view is that the workings are but evidences of the
truth's previous inherent presence in the idea, and that you can wipe
the very possibility of them out of existence and still leave the truth
of the idea as solid as ever. But surely this is not a counter-theory
of truth to ours. It is the renunciation of all articulate theory. It is
but a claim to the right to call certain ideas true anyhow; and this is
what I meant above by saying that the anti-pragmatists offer us no real
alternative, and that our account is literally the only positive theory
extant. What meaning, indeed, can an idea's truth have save its power of
adapting us either mentally or physically to a reality?
How comes it, then, that our critics so uniformly accuse us of
subjectivism, of denying the reality's existence? It comes, I think,
from the necessary predominance of subjective language in our analysis.
However independent and elective realities may be, we can talk about
them, in framing our accounts of truth, only as so many objects
believed-in. But the process of experience leads men so continually
to supersede their older objects by newer ones which they find it more
satisfactory to believe in, that the notion of an ABSOLUTE reality
inevitably arises as a grenzbegriff, equivalent to that of an object
that shall never be superseded, and belief in which shall be endgueltig.
Cognitively we thus live under a sort of rule of three: as our private
concepts represent the sense-objects to which they lead us, these being
public realities independent of the individual, so these sense-realities
may, in turn, represent realities of a hypersensible order, electrons,
mind-stuff. God, or what not, existing independently of all human
thinkers. The notion of such final realities, knowledge of which would
be absolute truth, is an outgrowth of our cognitive experience from
which neither pragmatists nor anti-pragmatists escape. They form an
inevitable regulative postulate in every one's thinking. Our notion of
them is the most abundantly suggested and satisfied of all our beliefs,
the last to suffer doubt. The difference is that our critics use this
belief as their sole paradigm, and treat any one who talks of
human realities as if he thought the notion of reality 'in itself'
illegitimate. Meanwhile, reality-in-itself, so far as by them TALKED OF,
is only a human object; they postulate it just as we postulate it; and
if we are subjectivists they are so no less. Realities in themselves
can be there FOR any one, whether pragmatist or anti-pragmatist, only by
being believed; they are believed only by their notions appearing true;
and their notions appear true only because they work satisfactorily.
Satisfactorily, moreover, for the particular thinker's purpose. There is
no idea which is THE true idea, of anything. Whose is THE true idea of
the absolute? Or to take M. Hebert's example, what is THE true idea of a
picture which you possess? It is the idea that most satisfactorily meets
your present interest. The interest may be in the picture's place, its
age, its 'tone,' its subject, its dimensions, its authorship, its price,
its merit, or what not. If its authorship by Corot have been doubted,
what will satisfy the interest aroused in you at that moment will be
to have your claim to own a Corot confirmed; but, if you have a normal
human mind, merely calling it a Corot will not satisfy other demands of
your mind at the same time. For THEM to be satisfied, what you learn of
the picture must make smooth connection with what you know of the rest
of the system of reality in which the actual Corot played his part.
M. Hebert accuses us of holding that the proprietary satisfactions of
themselves suffice to make the belief true, and that, so far as we are
concerned, no actual Corot need ever have existed. Why we should be thus
cut off from the more general and intellectual satisfactions, I know
not; but whatever the satisfactions may be, intellectual or proprietary,
they belong to the subjective side of the truth-relation. They found our
beliefs; our beliefs are in realities; if no realities are there, the
beliefs are false but if realities are there, how they can even be KNOWN
without first being BELIEVED; or how BELIEVED except by our first having
ideas of them that work satisfactorily, pragmatists find it impossible
to imagine. They also find it impossible to imagine what makes the
anti-pragmatists' dogmatic 'ipse dixit' assurance of reality
more credible than the pragmatists conviction based on concrete
verifications. M. Hebert will probably agree to this, when put in
this way, so I do not see our inferiority to him in the matter of
connaissance proprement dite.
Some readers will say that, altho I may possibly believe in realities
beyond our ideas Dr. Schiller, at any rate, does not. This is a great
misunderstanding, for Schiller's doctrine and mine are identical,
only our exposition follow different directions. He starts from the
subjective pole of the chain, the individual with his beliefs, as the
more concrete and immediately given phenomenon. 'An individual claims
his belief to be true,' Schiller says, 'but what does he mean by true?
and how does he establish the claim?' With these questions we embark
on a psychological inquiry. To be true, it appears, means, FOR THAT
INDIVIDUAL, to work satisfactorily for him; and the working and the
satisfaction, since they vary from case to case, admit of no universal
description. What works is true and represents a reality, for the
individual for whom it works. If he is infallible, the reality is
'really' there; if mistaken it is not there, or not there as he thinks
it. We all believe, when our ideas work satisfactorily; but we don't yet
know who of us is infallible; so that the problem of truth and that of
error are EBENBURTIG and arise out of the same situations. Schiller,
remaining with the fallible individual, and treating only
of reality-for-him, seems to many of his readers to ignore
reality-in-itself altogether. But that is because he seeks only to tell
us how truths are attained, not what the content of those truths, when
attained, shall be. It may be that the truest of all beliefs shall be
that in transsubjective realities. It certainly SEEMS the truest for
no rival belief is as voluminously satisfactory, and it is probably
Dr. Schiller's own belief; but he is not required, for his immediate
purpose, to profess it. Still less is he obliged to assume it in advance
as the basis of his discussion.
I, however, warned by the ways of critics, adopt different tactics. I
start from the object-pole of the idea-reality chain and follow it in
the opposite direction from Schiller's. Anticipating the results of the
general truth-processes of mankind, I begin with the abstract notion
of an objective reality. I postulate it, and ask on my own account, I
VOUCHING FOR THIS REALITY, what would make any one else's idea of it
true for me as well as for him. But I find no different answer from that
which Schiller gives. If the other man's idea leads him, not only
to believe that the reality is there, but to use it as the reality's
temporary substitute, by letting it evoke adaptive thoughts and acts
similar to those which the reality itself would provoke, then it is
true in the only intelligible sense, true through its particular
consequences, and true for me as well as for the man.
My account is more of a logical definition; Schiller's is more of a
psychological description. Both treat an absolutely identical matter of
experience, only they traverse it in opposite ways.
Possibly these explanations may satisfy M. Hebert, whose little
book, apart from the false accusation of subjectivism, gives a fairly
instructive account of the pragmatist epistemology.