Rethinking Pragmatism

From William James to Contemporary Philosophy

Robert Schwartz

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118253694
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Rethinking Pragmatism explores the work of the American Pragmatists, particularly James and Dewey, challenging entrenched views of their positions on truth, meaning, instrumentalism, realism, pluralism and religious beliefs. It clarifies pragmatic ideas and arguments spelling out the significant implications they have for present-day philosophical controversies.

• Explores the work of the American Pragmatists, especially James and Dewey, on the issues of truth, reference, meaning, instrumentalism, essences, realism, pluralism and religious beliefs.
• The only available publication to provide a detailed commentary on James's book, Pragmatism, while exploring the implications of the American Pragmatists' ideas and arguments for contemporary philosophical issues
• Challenges standard readings of the American Pragmatists' positions in a way that illuminates and questions the assumptions underlying current discussions of these topics.
• Coherently arranged by structuring the book around the themes discussed in each chapter of James's original work.
• Provides a new analysis and understanding of the pragmatic theory of truth and semantics.

1

The Place of Values in Inquiry (Lecture I)

In Lecture I James sets the stage for the lectures to follow, situating his project with respect to what he takes to be deep concerns of his audience. James believes that questions about the meaning of life and one’s place in the order of things are troubling and on the minds of many thoughtful people. He says the primary purpose of his lectures is to explore “what life honestly and deeply means” [P, 9] to each of us. James worries that such existential questions are no longer of central interest to academic philosophers. He also assumes that members of the audience may not be familiar with the positions and arguments of those who are. Thus James will attempt to avoid technical matters as best he can. He will be “dealing in broad strokes, and avoiding minute controversy” [P, 5]. He will, nonetheless, have to examine a number of philosophical assumptions and doctrines, since they stand in the way of solving the problems he will address.

Having presented his overall plan for the lectures, James then argues that answers to these important existential questions are influenced by an individual’s philosophy. When he uses the term “philosophy” here James is not referring to a person’s particular set of beliefs or principles but to his or her approach and attitudes toward the issue at stake. The claim that a person’s philosophy has a major impact on judgment is a commonplace. We often explain and predict someone’s views and decisions on the basis of such things as his or her judicial philosophy, economic philosophy, educational philosophy, or political philosophy. These “philosophies” affect how people describe the phenomena, how the problems are formulated, what evidence is taken to be relevant and what weight is given to the evidence.

James holds that the concepts brought to inquiry have an especially strong influence on the conclusions reached. First, they affect the way one divides and categorizes the domain under study, highlighting some groupings and ignoring others. Without such organizing schemes there is no way for inquiry to get off the ground. We cannot conduct inquiry absent a description and conceptualization of the domain to be studied. Second, even if organizing schemes pick out and highlight the same things, they may conceptualize them differently. In turn, the nature of the problem, the type of solutions sought, and the course of inquiry may diverge. It seems obvious that in current public debates in the United States it makes a difference if the tax law under consideration is called an “inheritance tax” or a “death tax,” or if the educational policy being examined is labeled “affirmative action” as opposed to “quotas.”

James is clear, however, that “philosophies” are not free from challenge. Some may have no legitimate or plausible justification from the start. Others do, but new evidence and new understandings can come along that undermine their grounds. A large part of Pragmatism is devoted to doing just this, criticizing “philosophies” that inform and shape philosophical claims he wishes to challenge. As a pluralist, though, James is willing to allow that there may be more than one acceptable solution to a problem, and that the conflicting “philosophies” that underpin the conclusions reached may each offer a legitimate approach to the issue.

To be influenced by a “philosophy” is not necessarily an indication of subjectivity or bias. One might in fact question the intellectual seriousness of a judge who has no overall conception of the law and its applications. Judges who harbor distinct judicial philosophies, however, will approach cases from different perspectives, will differ in what they see as the relevant precedents, and will evaluate the evidence accordingly. As a result they may reach conflicting decisions on the same case. Still, if they adhere to the epistemic standards and rules of judicial practice, their verdicts will have been objectively decided and justified. By contrast, judges whose decisions are influenced by race, color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and the like have overstepped the norms and bounds of judicial fairness. One might wish to call these biases “philosophies,” but this does not mitigate the fact that verdicts so influenced are unjustified and not to be tolerated. As will become clearer further along in this study, the Pragmatists also held that the standards or norms of practice are not fixed. They evolve hand in hand with practice and are constrained by inquiry.

James calls the factors that characterize a philosophy “temperaments.” People of different temperaments have different philosophies that significantly influence which among competing theories and hypotheses they find convincing. James notes that the idea of temperament being a legitimate factor in the fixation of belief does not generally go down well with philosophers. They hold that “Temperament is no recognized reason … so [the philosopher] urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions” [P, 11]. James argues that this view of objectivity distorts the actual nature of inquiry, including that of philosophy. “The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of temperaments” [P, 11]. Dewey often echoes James’s warning that the tendency of philosophers to deny the influence of temperament, education, and history on their own positions has a serious negative impact on their work.

In arguing that there is a place for temperaments (or as he sometimes calls them “sentiments”) in inquiry, James does not believe that he is turning his back on reason and empirical evidence. Not all temperamental factors are legitimate influences on the fixation of belief. Being dour, bashful, greedy, generous, high-spirited, and temperamental are personality traits that have no place in conducting and evaluating inquiry. The temperamental factors that count must always be responsive to established fact and to sound practices of reason.

In order to get a better picture of James’s position on the influence of temperament on the acquisition and fixation of belief, I think it helpful to review some earlier writings where he elaborates his views. James holds that hypothesis acceptance is the work of the will, and he devotes a chapter of The Principles of Psychology to presenting an account of how the will operates. He writes: “we reach the heart of our inquiry into volition when we ask by what process it is that the thought of any given object comes to prevail stably in the mind” [PP II, 561]. In the Principles, James sees it as his business to explore subjective, pathological decisions as well as objective normal ones. For our purposes it is enough to summarize what he says about the latter.¹

James, along with the other Pragmatists, maintains that, strictly speaking, cognitive actions that are fully under the control of habit are not episodes of thinking. When all goes well we have no need to question belief habits that “prevail stably in the mind.” Thinking occurs when available habitual responses are not satisfactory for coping with a problem. Then it is necessary to deliberate, search for, and adopt a solution that can relieve the pressure. Once a satisfactory solution to the problem is found there is no need to continue thinking about it. What counts as satisfactory, however, can differ from case to case, and there are alternative mechanisms by means of which the will settles on acceptable answers.

In many situations the will is passive. No noticeable deliberation takes place. The observational evidence is compelling and the belief appears forced. Your cat leaps onto your lap, and the will automatically endorses the hypothesis that there is now a cat present. The will is also passive in certain situations where actual deliberation does take place. In searching for a solution to a problem, we hit upon a promising hypothesis but realize immediately that it follows from firm beliefs previously adopted. Once this connection is recognized, the fund of established beliefs brings its force to bear, and the will cannot resist the pressure to accept the hypothesis.

James discusses a range of other types of decision-making in the fixation of belief. He is especially interested in cases where conflicting hypotheses are equally well supported by the available evidence. When this occurs it may seem that the only responsible thing to do is suspend judgment and await additional data. This is a standard practice in scientific inquiry. But sometimes it is not possible to adhere to this policy; a choice is needed immediately. It is necessary to make a decision and to turn the decision into action. James recognizes that there are many who feel decisions so made are in some sense not fully rational or are lacking in epistemic justification. They assume that once human preferences enter into the process the decision is no longer bound by the evidence and hence is not objective. James demurs. He is convinced that it is a psychological fact that the fixation of belief is in the end more a matter of “sensibility” than calculation. The hypothesis chosen is the one that feels right, the one the reflective will is most at home with.²

Cases where “sentiments” influence forced decisions are familiar phenomena. A person must choose between colleges, jobs, or houses, and the evidence available concerning the choice is not compelling. There are pros and cons to all the alternatives: one is better on this count another better on that. The decision deadline approaches. The worst anyone can do is to be tied in knots and make no decision at all. This is pathological behavior. Usually a decision is made. In the course of mulling over the college, job, or house options one choice surfaces as the best, and the person feels most comfortable with the solution. On occasion it may take a jolt for awareness of a preference to kick in. A person cannot make a decision and in desperation turns to flipping a coin – heads it is A, tails it is B. But when the coin lands tails she is uneasy with the decision rendered: B just does not feel right; A seems the better fit, and she goes with and endorses A.

While sentiments have a say, these decisions are neither whimsical nor arbitrary. The available evidence eliminates a host of options right from the start, and established facts about the pros and cons of the remaining options must be taken into account. The comfort, ease, and sense of satisfaction required to justify a decision is that of a knowledgeable will, one constrained by evidence, reason, and principles of sound inquiry. There is a significant distinction between objective sanctioned decisions and subjective unacceptable decisions, even if the boundary between them is not sharp or well defined.

In an early paper, “The Sentiments of Rationality,” James argues that in scientific inquiry, too, hypothesis acceptance is never solely a matter of evidence and logic. Other epistemic considerations have a say [WB, 63–110]. As a fallibilist, he assumes that no amount of positive evidence can warrant being certain about any belief. Moreover, in principle, there will always be competing hypotheses that fit all the accepted empirical evidence. Thus appeals to observation and reason alone will not be sufficient to sanction a unique choice between supported but conflicting hypotheses. Human factors must enter to tip the balance.

Human preferences for simplicity, conserving existing theory, wide scope, and cognitive economy have a significant effect on hypothesis acceptance.³ This does not mean that scientific inquiry is at root subjective or non-rational, rather there can be no fruitful inquiry independent of such preferences. James believes as well that a study of scientific practice shows that scientists do not always agree as to how they evaluate and order these preferences. Their “philosophies” differ, and there may be more than one legitimate weighting scheme, each favoring competing hypotheses. Sound scientific inquiry, like sound judicial inquiry, can justify alternative decisions. Nowadays factors such as simplicity, conservatism, scope, and economy are often said to be epistemic values or virtues and their indispensability is recognized in introductory philosophy of science texts.

In “The Sentiments of Rationality” James notes that Hume, in his analysis of induction, had already shown the need to recognize an ineliminable human element. Observation and reason alone cannot justify accepting the principle of the uniformity of nature. Our practice of predicting the future on the basis of past regularities is a preference we bring to inquiry. James sees nothing wrong in saying that we employ the principle as a matter of “faith.” Many have argued that if induction is founded on faith, skepticism inevitably follows. James thinks this is not the best way to understand matters. We should recognize that sentiments go into the construction of the standards of sound inquiry, rather than cling to traditional assumptions or intuitions about objectivity and rationality. Sentiments not only play a role in rational hypothesis choice; their influence cannot be ignored without distorting the nature of objective inquiry.

In another early, even more discussed paper, “The Will to Believe” [WB, 1–31], James offers an elegant but different critique of the claim that temperament should have no place in evaluating hypotheses. His target here is W. K. Clifford’s doctrine that the ethics of belief obligates us to take only impersonal factors into account. James argues that in practice this position is untenable. All judgments are fallible, so adding a belief to the corpus always entails risk. If we are unwilling to take some risk, inquiry comes to a halt. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. In the pursuit of knowledge, science seeks both to acquire truths and to avoid error. These desiderata, though, set off in different directions. Minimizing error would entail never moving beyond tautologies. Maximizing the number of beliefs accepted would encourage adding hypotheses to the corpus willy-nilly. Exclusive adoption of either strategy is not viable; nor can they simply be combined.

The fixation of belief requires compromise, tradeoffs between credibility and coverage, and there are no a priori or absolute standards for making these tradeoffs. Alternative compromises are reasonable. Scientists of cautious temperament will lean toward maximizing credibility; those of less cautious demeanor will lean toward maximizing coverage. Within limits both “temperaments” are rational, and both allow for conducting inquiry in accord with the dictates of the scientific method. Such intrusion of temperament in the decision-making processes of both science and everyday life does not mean the choices are unconstrained. The evidence must adequately support the hypothesis, and the new hypothesis must reasonably cohere with beliefs taken as settled. There will be only a restricted range of hypotheses that are reasonable to consider, and the assessments of the costs and benefits of each must be made in accord with the evidence. Everything does not go. Whether tolerance for risk is to be understood as an “epistemic” value may be debatable. What James feels is not debatable is that this and other factors of temperament are part and parcel of objective inquiry.⁴

In light of these features of the actual practices of inquiry James is convinced that there can be no rules for the direction of mind, decision procedures, or formal principles of inductive logic for deciding which hypotheses to accept. “The absurd abstraction of an intellect verbally formulating all its evidence and carefully estimating the probability thereof by a vulgar fraction by the size of whose denominator and numerator alone it is swayed, is ideally as inept as it is actually impossible” [“The Sentiment of Rationality,” in WB, 92–93]. It is also a mistake t...