display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 18986 | Truth is just a name for verification-processes [James] |
| Full Idea: Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification-processes, just as 'health' is a name for other processes in life. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: So the slogan is 'truth is success in belief'? Suicide and racist genocide can be 'successful'. I would have thought that truth was the end of a process, rather than the process itself. |
| 18983 | In many cases there is no obvious way in which ideas can agree with their object [James] |
| Full Idea: When you speak of the 'time-keeping function' of a clock, it is hard to see exactly what your ideas can copy. ...Where our ideas cannot copy definitely their object, what does agreement with that object mean? | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: This is a very good criticism of the correspondence theory of truth. It looks a lovely theory when you can map components of a sentence (like 'the pen is in the drawer') onto components of reality - but it has to cover the hard cases. |
| 18972 | Ideas are true in so far as they co-ordinate our experiences [James] |
| Full Idea: Pragmatists say that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |
| A reaction: I'm struck by the close similarity (at least in James) of the pragmatic view of truth and the coherence theory of truth (associated later with Blanshard). Perhaps the coherence theory is one version of the pragmatic account |
| 18973 | New opinions count as 'true' if they are assimilated to an individual's current beliefs [James] |
| Full Idea: A new opinion counts as 'true' just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |
| A reaction: Note the tell-tale locution 'counts as' true, rather than 'is' true. The obvious problem is that someone with a big stock of foolish beliefs will 'count as' true some bad interpretation which is gratifyingly assimilated to their current confusions. |
| 18984 | True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify (and false otherwise) [James] |
| Full Idea: True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: The immediate question is why you should label something as 'false' simply on the grounds that you can't corroborate it. Proving the falsity is a stronger position than the ignorance James seems happy with. 'Assimilate' implies coherence. |