Prgamatic Theories of Truth
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This essay supports the thesis that pragmatic theories of truth are not convincing. For the purpose of this analysis, the pragmatic approaches of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), and John Dewey (1859-1952) are examined and analyzed. The pragmatist theory of truth consists of the idea that candidates for truth are basically not descriptions but predictions. What they predict is the culmination of a possible action. However, empiricism is fundamentally retrospective in its viewpoint: the credentials which it requires of a concept before allowing it into the region of truth are those which certify its beginnings. Unless a proposition is generated either from sensation or else from reflection on the relations of ideas among themselves, it must be considered to be lacking in verisimilitude. But pragmatism, regardless of its dependence on the genetic method, turns here, not to the start of the idea, but to its destination. What is important is not its antecedents, but what we can do with the idea. Knowledge is not only a record of the past. It is a restructuring of the present pointed toward fulfillments in the forthcoming future. Pragmatism of the idea that descriptions but conceives of a true proposition as being something like 'correspondent' in a divorce case. The truth of a proposition is a matter of its interaction with things and does not consist in some abstract resemblance to facts. A true proposition corresponds t
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rtain of our ideas. It means their 'agreement,' as falsity means their disagreement, with 'reality.' Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept this definition as a matter of course. They begin to quarrel only after the question is raised as to what may precisely be meant by the term agreement, I and what by the term 'reality,' when reality is taken as something for our ideas to agree with . . . The popular notion is that a true idea must copy its reality. Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. 'Grant an idea or belief to be true,' it says, 'what concrete difference will its being true make in any one's actual life?'" (James 132-133). And so James goes on to assert: "True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot" (James 133). This appears to be a more empirical approach than the position taken by Peirce; however, there is still considerable subjectivity in James's pragmatism. Certainly, the truth of objective reality should not depend on the difference it makes in our lives. The scientific method does not rely on this standard for truth because it depends on the objective results of empirical evidence. James's pragmatic truth seems
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Approximate Word count = 1501
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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