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Full Idea
Peirce was not in the slightest bit tempted by the thought that a belief is true if it is useful.
Gist of Idea
Peirce did not think a belief was true if it was useful
Source
report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2
Book Ref
'New Pragmatists', ed/tr. Misak,Cheryl [OUP 2009], p.73
A Reaction
All students of the pragmatic theory of truth should start with this idea, because it rejects the caricature view of pragmatic truth, a view which is easily rebutted. James seems to have been guilty of this sin.
Related Idea
Idea 2914 One must never ask whether truth is useful [Nietzsche]
| 21489 | Super-ordinate disciplines give laws or principles; subordinate disciplines give concrete cases [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| 19095 | Pragmatic 'truth' is a term to cover the many varied aims of enquiry [Peirce, by Misak] |
| 19097 | Peirce did not think a belief was true if it was useful [Peirce, by Misak] |
| 21494 | If truth is the end of enquiry, what if it never ends, or ends prematurely? [Atkin on Peirce] |
| 19102 | Bivalence is a regulative assumption of enquiry - not a law of logic [Peirce, by Misak] |
| 10352 | The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down [Peirce] |
| 21491 | Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| 16376 | The possible can only be general, and the force of actuality is needed to produce a particular [Peirce] |
| 13498 | Peirce and others began the mapping out of relations [Peirce, by Hart,WD] |
| 19107 | Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog [Peirce] |
| 21493 | Pure mathematics deals only with hypotheses, of which the reality does not matter [Peirce] |