PRAGMATISM – All you want to know

The failure of theoretical and even purely factual tests for truth lends support to a pragmatic test. Pragmatists contend that one cannot think or even feel truth, but he can discover it by attempting to live it. Truth is not what is consistent or what is empirically adequate but what is exponentially workable.

Did not even Jesus say that “by their fruits, you shall know them”? Although Christian apologists of the pragmatic variety have not been abundant, they are by no means nonexistent. Indeed, sophisticated philosophical systems have been built on a pragmatic theory of meaning and/or truth.

An Examination of Pragmatic Approaches to Meaning and Truth

Kant used the word pragmatic to mean a “contingent belief, which yet forms the ground for the actual employment of means to certain actions.… ”¹ But the thought of developing Kant’s use of “pragmatic” into a theory of meaning or test for truth was not German but American in origin.

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914): Pragmatic Theory of Meaning

Properly speaking, Peirce did not offer pragmatism as a test for truth but as a theory of meaning. He was not concerned as such with verification of a theory but with clarification of thought.

The Four Methods of Belief. After dismissing Francis Bacon’s approach to science as cavalier and Descartes’ starting point in doubt as difficult if not impossible to attain, Peirce suggests that beliefs may be fixed in a much better way. First, our problem would be greatly simplified if instead of speaking of “truth” one would/could attain belief unassailable by doubt, namely, a state of confidence. The process of attaining this he calls “The Fixation of Belief.” Peirce declares that there are only four methods of stabilizing one’s beliefs:

(1) The method of tenacity is evident when “a man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinions.…” Despite the satisfaction and peace of mind, this method may bring to the individual, it “will be unable to hold its ground in practice. The social impulse is against it. The man who adopts it will find that other men think differently from him.…” It would work only for a hermit but is ineffective for a community.

(2) The method of authority backing one’s belief by social convention, by creating a priesthood or aristocracy to pontificate. Although Peirce granted this method “immeasurable mental and moral superiority to the method of tenacity,” he considered it unfeasible. For “no institution can undertake to regulate opinions upon every subject.” Some minor freedoms must be allowed, and these will always be the breeding grounds for major dissent.

(3) The a priori method of fixing beliefs is one which is “agreeable to reason.” This method “is far more intellectual and respectable from the point of view of reason than either of the others which we have noticed,” wrote Peirce. However, “its failure has been the most manifest. It makes of inquiry something similar to the development of taste.” For the unshakable views of today are tomorrow out of fashion.

(4) Only the method of science is sufficient for fixing beliefs. The fundamental thesis of this is that “there are real things, whose … realities affect our senses according to regular laws … yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain how things really are.” Furthermore, “any man, if he has sufficient experience and reason enough about it, will be led to the one true conclusion.”²

The evidence Peirce offers for this is fourfold: First, even if investigation cannot prove this thesis, “no doubts of the method … necessarily arise from its practice, as is the case with all the others.” Second, “nobody … can really doubt that there are realities, for, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction.”

For doubt always results from the repugnance of two propositions that presuppose the reality of “some one thing to which a proposition should conform.” Third, “everybody uses the scientific method about a great many things, and only ceases to use it when he does not know how to apply it.” Fourth, “experience of the method has not led us to doubt it, but, on the contrary, scientific investigation has had the most wonderful triumphs in the way of settling opinion.”

Hence, “this is the only one of the four methods which presents any distinction of a right and wrong way. If I adopt the method of tenacity, and shut myself out from all influences, whatever I think necessary to doing this, is necessary according to that method.” Likewise, “with the method of authority … the only test on that method is what the state thinks; so it cannot pursue the method wrongly. So with the a priori method. The very essence of it is to think as one is inclined to think.” And on this ground, of course, one can never be wrong. “But with the scientific method the case is different,” concludes Peirce.

For “the test of whether I am truly following the method is not an immediate appeal to my feelings and purposes, but, on the contrary, itself involves the application of the method.” In this way the person who confesses that there is such a thing as truth as versus falsity simply says this: “that if acted on it will carry us to the point we aim at and not astray.…”³

The Pragmatic Clarification of Ideas. From the principles set forth in the foregoing scientific or pragmatic method Peirce believes he has reached “a clearness of thought of a far higher grade than the ‘distinctness’ of the logicians.” For “the essence of belief is the establishment of a habit, and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.”

If beliefs do not differ in this practical way, then “no mere differences in the manner of consciousness of them can make them different beliefs, any more than playing a tune in different keys is playing different tunes.” In short, the final rule for attaining “clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have.

Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.” Or, in other words, the meaning of anything is to be found in its practical results. The final differential is a pragmatic one. A mere difference in mode of conception is not a clear and distinct difference. But a practical difference in experienced results is a clearly distinct difference.⁴

The components of a belief, then, are three: first, it is something of which we are aware. Second, it satisfies the irritation caused by doubt. And finally, it involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of action or a habit. Thus Peirce wrote elsewhere, “Belief is not a momentary mode of consciousness; it is a habit of mind essentially enduring for some time, and mostly (at least) unconscious.”⁵ So the essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by different modes of action to which they give rise.

The Concept of God Clarified. Peirce held that any normal man would come naturally to act as if there were a God. This would simply be the pragmatic clarification of an implicit belief that he possessed. It would be an overt action that demonstratively clarified that covert belief.⁶ In another place Peirce said, “So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of God, I answer. Yes. I further opine that pretty nearly everybody more or less believes this, including many of the scientific men of my generation who are accustomed to think that belief is entirely unfounded.”

And “if a pragmaticist is asked what he means by the word ‘God,’ he can only say that just as long acquaintance with a man of great character may deeply influence one’s whole manner of conduct, so that a glance at his portrait may make a difference, … then that analogue of a mind—for it is impossible to say that any human attribute is literally applicable—is what he means by “God.”

However, our knowledge of God is more than purely negative “because the discoveries of science, their enabling us to predict what will be the course of nature, is proof conclusive that, though we cannot think any thought of God’s, we can catch a fragment of His Thought, as it were [in nature].”⁷

As to whether there really is such a being as God, “the only guide to the answer to this question lies in the power of the passion of love which more or less overmasters every agnostic scientist and everybody who seriously and deeply considers the universe.” Peirce quickly adds, “But whatever there may be of argument in all this is as nothing, the merest nothing in comparison to its force as an appeal to ones’ own instinct, which is to argument what substance is to shadow, what bedrock is to the built foundation of a cathedral.”

The idea of God comes, then, from direct experience. “As to God, open your eyes—and your heart, which is also a perceptive organ—and you see him.” Of course delusions are possible. “I may think a thing is black, and on close examination it may turn out to be bottle-green. But I cannot think a thing is black if there is no such thing to be seen as black.” Likewise, one cannot be totally deceived as to the reality of God, however wrong he may be about his precise nature.⁸

William James: The Pragmatic Test for Truth

James’s first major venture into religious writing was one of descriptive psychology. His description is classic, and it sets the stage for his pragmatism.

A Description of Religious Experience. Upon examining religion on the experiential level he concluded there are two types: the “once-born” and the “twice-born.” The former is optimistic in outlook and the latter is pessimistic. The one maximizes good and the other evil. The first type is healthy-minded and the second is sick-souled. For the once-born are born with a sense of harmony but the twice-born have inner discord naturally.

For the former, happiness is the evidence of God;but for the latter, unhappiness manifests man’s need for the Divine. In the case of once-born men there is a continuity with God. At worst man is only maladjusted and is naturally curable. But in the case of the twice-born there is discontinuity with God based on a sense of man’s essential evil which calls for supernatural help.

According to James, the Latins tend to be once-born type and the Germanic peoples tend to be twice-born type. In terms of conceptualization, the first group tend to be pantheistic and the last group theistic. Emerson and Whitman illustrate the former while Luther and Bunyan are examples of the latter.⁹

James described the characteristics of two types of conversion: gradual and sudden. Both are characterized by:

(1) a change in the habitual center of personal energy (i.e., self-surrender),

(2) the undermining and replacement of one life system by another.

This change generally occurs in adolescence but it takes about 1/5 the time in conversion. The symptoms of this experience are a sense of incompleteness followed by anxiety about the hereafter that leads to a sense of happy relief upon conversion. The sudden conversions are characterized by:

(1) a period of subconscious incubation from sublimation, followed by

(2) an uprush from the subconscious called automation.

(3) The larger the subconscious storehouse of sublimation, the more likely there will be a sudden conversion as opposed to a gradual one.

(4) But there are no psychologically discernible differences between a natural conversion and an alleged “supernatural one” as described by Jonathan Edwards in his famous Religious Affections.

James does not deny the working of God in conversion but leaves the door open through the subconscious as the route of divine activity.¹⁰

The common core of all religious experience, according to James, involves both the subjective and the objective. The subjective or emotional side involves:

(1) a feeling that the visible world draws its chief significance from the wider spiritual universe,

(2) a sense that union or harmonious relation with the higher universe is our true end, and

(3) a feeling that prayer or inner communion with the spirit of this higher universe produces effects within the phenomenal world. The effects of these three beliefs provide

(4) a new zest for life manifest in lyrical enchantment or an appeal to earnestness and heroism and

(5) an assurance of safety and a temper of peace in oneself and of love toward others.

On the objective or intellectual side of the religious experience are two factors:

(1) a sense that something has gone wrong about us the way we are naturally, and

(2) a belief that we are saved from this wrongness by making proper connection with higher powers.

This is the minimal cognitive content in all religious experience.¹¹

James held that there were two sides of the religious experience: the “hither” and the “thither.” The “hither” side may be identified with the subconscious continuation of our conscious self. That is, what one means by “God” is, on the psychologically describable side, said to be found in the area of one’s individual subconsciousness. What the “thither” or “higher” side may be is not subject to direct scientific investigation. It is a matter of “over-belief.” However, James believes that one can posit a hypothesis about this “more” or “God” that can be practically tested.¹²

The Will to Believe. Even before James put together his classical analysis of religious experience (1902), he had already written on how to justify a religious belief in his famous essay. The Will to Believe (1896). He argued that one’s will to believe can be based on very personal and practical bases. A hypothesis, wrote James, is “anything that may be proposed to our belief.” As such it may be either living or dead.

“A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed.” And “the maximum of liveness in a hypothesis means willingness to act irrevocably.” Further James writes, “Let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option.” Options may be “first, living or dead; secondly, forced or avoidable; thirdly, momentous or trivial. And for our purposes we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind.” A live option is one in which each alternative “makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.”

A forced option is one “based on a complete disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing.…” Finally, a momentous option is a unique opportunity as versus a trivial one where “the stakes are insignificant, or when the decision is reversible.” Science abounds with trivial options. Needless to say, religion for James is a genuine option, that is, one that is forced, living, and momentous.¹³

James believed that “our passional and volitional nature lay at the root of all our convictions.” Free will is not a “fifth wheel to the coach.” Even as scientists “we want to have truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it.” And “as a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use.”

Hence, James concludes that “our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot be decided on intellectual grounds.” For “to say, under such circumstances, ‘Do not decide, but leave the question open,’ is itself a passional decision—just like deciding yes or no—and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.”

James believed there was no way to settle the religious question on purely intellectual grounds. “Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with,” he continues, “but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?” Indeed, “no concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon.” “For what a contradictory array of opinions have objective evidence and absolute certitude been claimed”!¹⁴

Of course, “whenever the option between losing truth and gaining it is not momentous, we can throw the chance of gaining truth away, and at any rate save ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood, by not making up our minds at all till objective evidence has come.” In scientific matters it is almost always the case that such skepticism in the absence of evidence is called for.

However, religious and “moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for a sensible proof.” Of course, “the question of having moral beliefs at all or not having them is decided by our will.” For “if your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one.” Moral skepticism can be no more refuted or proved by logic than can intellectual skepticism.

And the religious skeptic says, “Better risk loss of truth than chance of error.” When in the presence of a religious option he always believes that “fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true.”¹⁵

James, however, responded to the skeptic by saying, “I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher upon my nature … to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the winning side.…” For religion is a genuine option that says “the best things are the more eternal things …” and “we are better off even now if we believe her first affirmation to be true.” This means that religion is both a living option (to all who are tempted to believe it) and it is a momentous option in view of the unique opportunity for betterment it offers.

Likewise, religion is a forced option because “we cannot escape the issue by remaining skeptical and waiting for more light, because although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve.” Hence, “we have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will.” And “any rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule.”

For “there are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the ‘lowest kind of immorality’ into which the thinking being can fall.” But “since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.

The whole defense of religious faith hinges upon action.”¹⁶ Thus James believed that faith in God did make a difference from one who believed only a naturalistic hypothesis. And some years later in his classic on religious experience, James offered the evidence for his belief that religion does make a difference.

The Value and Fruit of Religion in One’s Life. Religion is not to be judged by its source or root but by its result or fruit. Both the inner and outer characteristics of “saintliness” are superior. Internally, the religious man gains (1) a satisfying feeling of being in a wider (Ideal) life than this world’s selfish interests, (2) a sense of friendly continuity between oneself and this Ideal Power, (3) an immense sense of freedom and elation as our confining self-melts down, and (4) a shifting of our emotional center toward love and harmony with the other.

Externally, religion manifests itself in (1) asceticism where self-surrender becomes self-sacrifice, (2) strength of soul by enlargement to new reaches of patience and fortitude, (3) purity or a spiritual sensitizing that results from a shift of our emotional center, and (4) charity where the same shift brings increased tenderness to our fellow creatures.¹⁷

In summary, James wrote, “In a general way, then, and ‘on the whole,’ … our testing of religion by practical common sense and the empirical method, leave it in possession of its towering place in history.” For “economically, the saintly group of qualities is indispensable to the world’s welfare. The great saints are immediate successes; the smaller ones are at least heralds and harbingers, and they may be leavens also, of a better mundane order. Let us be saints, then, if we can.…”¹⁸

The Pragmatic Test for Truth. James’s pragmatism is implicit in Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) when he said that “over-beliefs” cannot be scientifically proved but that the pragmatic and experiential grounds of religious belief are so plausible that “scientific logic will find no plausible pretext for vetoing your impulse to welcome it as true.” This “thoroughly pragmatic view of religion,” says James, “has usually been taken as a matter of course by common men” but “I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way.”¹⁹

Several years later James explicated his pragmatic method very clearly in his work on Pragmatism (1907). “True ideas,” he wrote, “are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we can not.” Ideas are not intrinsically true or false. Rather, “truth happens to an idea.” Ideas are made true by events. On the common-sense level truth is “a leading that is worth while.”

To borrow a banking analogy, “truth lives on a credit system.” Ideas pass along until someone wants to “cash in” on them. Truth, then, is the “cash-value” of an idea. “We trade on each other’s truth. But beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the posts of the whole superstructure.” Verification then may be direct or indirect but eventually “all true processes must lead to the face of directly verifying sensible experiences somewhere, which somebody’s ideas have copied.”

The true, to put it very briefly, “is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the ‘right’ is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.”²⁰ Pragmatism’s “only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best.… If theological ideas should do this, if the notion of God, in particular, should prove to do it, how could pragmatism possibly deny God’s existence?”²¹

The pragmatic method yielded for James a pluralistic rather than a monistic universe, one which was melioristic rather than either optimistic of inevitable salvation or pessimistically resigned to ultimate doom. But traditional theism is ruled out for a “pragmatic or melioristic type of theism” which involves a superhuman but finite God. In the final analysis, however, “pragmatism has to postpone dogmatic answer, for we do not yet know certainly which type of religion is going to work best in the long run.”²²

Pragmatic Element in Evangelical Apologetics

Pragmatic elements have been present in orthodox apologetics from the very beginning. Jesus’ statement, “by their fruits you shall know them,” has long been taken to be a pragmatic test for the truth about a religious teaching. Even Thomas Aquinas spoke of believing “what another says because it seems fitting or useful to do so.

Thus, too, we are moved to believe what God says because we are promised eternal life as a reward if we believe.”²³ The emphasis among Christians that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” is found extensively on the popular level.

Few contemporary Christians, however, have given more thoughtful and philosophical backing to a kind of pragmatic test for truth than has Francis Schaeffer. In a chapter entitled “How Do We Know It Is True?” Schaeffer outlines his test for truth as follows: “The theory must be non-contradictory and must give an answer to the phenomenon in question” and, second, “we must be able to live consistently with our theory.”

Schaeffer admits that a non-Christian view such as materialism may fit the first criterion “but it will not fit the second, for man simply cannot live as though he were a machine.” The Christian view of the universe, however, “can be lived with, both in life and in scholarly pursuits.” And “it should be added in conclusion that the Christian, after he is a Christian, has years of experimental evidence to add to all the above reasons.…” Thus, crucial to the falsity of the non-Christian view is its unlivability while the truth of Christianity is confirmed by its livability and experiential verification.²⁴

Schaeffer illustrates his point by what may be thought of as a kind of broad experiential teleological argument.²⁵ He notes that no one can really live a chance philosophy of pure materialism. Jackson Pollock, who dipped paint on his canvas by chance, after exhausting his method, committed suicide. On the other hand, the American musician John Cage, who flipped coins to determine notes, took up hunting mushrooms as a hobby.

He confessed, “I became aware that if I approached mushrooms in the spirit of my chance operations, I would die shortly. So, I decided that I would not approach them in this way!” Pollock is dead because he tried in vain to live his chance philosophy. Cage lived on because he was inconsistent with his random view of the universe. Both proved that disteleology is unlivable.

Therefore, one must believe, if he is to live consistently, that this is a designed and personal universe (viz., a theistic one). Of course, Schaeffer gives much more elaboration and sophistication to his position, but the broad pragmatic emphasis is there nonetheless. Only the Christian view is consistent and livable, and all non-Christian views are in the final analysis unlivable. Experience confirms this to be true.²⁶

Some Common Characteristics of the Pragmatic Test for Truth

Pragmatists, like rationalists or empiricists, differ in the outcome or result of their test for truth. Some are theists while others are not. But whatever the difference in conclusion, there is a central agreement on the nature of the pragmatic test itself. These common tenets may be briefly summarized now.

First and foremost is the belief that the testing ground of a theory of truth is human experience. Is the position livable? Does it work in the lives of men for whom it is proposed? What is its cash value in human experience? There is a difference as to the source and nature of the theory of truth among pragmatists—some get it from sense experience and others from divine revelation—but the test is the same, namely, what are the fruits of this theory in the lives of persons? As a test for truth, then, pragmatism is decidedly experiential.

Pragmatism, as proposed by William James, is characterized by other things like futurity. That is, it is not present and individual experience that will decide the truth of a hypothesis but general, continual, and long-run experience. Over the long haul our experiences will determine the truth of a religious hypothesis. Truth may have tentative confirmation in the present, but it is subject to revision and disconfirmation by our experiences in the distant future. The next point follows directly from this.

Pragmatism disavows absolute results of its test. All conclusions about truth are less than absolute and final. Knowledge is always progressive if not processive. Some views may be more widely confirmed than others, but none are really universally and finally settled.

There are many other things that characterize philosophical pragmatism, such as its distaste for or denial of essential truth, its progressivism, and its instrumentalism; but the foregoing are at the heart of its test for truth. And this latter point is our only concern here.

An Evaluation of the Pragmatic Test for Truth

There is undoubtedly a pragmatic strain in all men. Both the need for and appeal of results in human operations add to the attractiveness of the pragmatic theory. Emerging from this are several commendable features of the pragmatic emphasis.

Positive Contributions of Pragmatism

The offers of pragmatism are a refreshing contrast to those of rationalism. It brings one back from the ivory tower of the abstract possibilities to the concrete realities of life. In this regard we may note several important contributions to the truth question.

Pragmatism provides a balance in the reaction against the purely formal and rationalistic approach. It stresses the practical vis-à-vis the purely theoretical. It is not content with seeking causes but also is concerned with producing effects in lives.

It does not judge an idea solely on its root but considers also its fruit. Pragmatism rightly stresses that contemplation is not always sufficient; action is sometimes necessary. It points out that truth does not abide merely in the abstract but that it has concrete dimensions and applications.

Truth, at least religious truth, is finally confirmed in personal experience. Any theory that offers itself as a world and life view must be applicable to life. Human experience is the proving ground where many beautiful theories have been ruined by brutal gangs of facts. If a view is actually unlivable, how can it be considered a true perspective on life? Certainly, religious truth, with its life-transforming claim, must be applicable to life or else it must be disqualified as a claimant of truth.

Pragmatists also provide a helpful reminder of the tentative or probable nature of much of our knowledge. Perhaps no truth about reality can be known with rational inescapability. And certainly, many truths about the world of our experiences are held on less than absolute grounds. Finite man must be content with the limits of his finitude. Even if there are absolute truths, he does not have an absolute grasp on them.

And even if there is an Infinite Being, limited humans have far less than an infinite understanding of him. Pragmatists serve a corrective role to dogmatists and a reminder to the Christian that “now we see through a glass darkly” (I Cor. 13:12).

Finally, pragmatists, like existentialists, remind us again of the role of the personal and volitional in truth. The process of understanding and applying truth to one’s life is more than purely rational. There must be a will to believe. The horse can be led to the water but cannot be made to drink—not at least by purely rational arguments.

Even if one could prove rationally that God exists, it does not follow that one must believe in God. A young man may know that there are many wonderful young ladies who would make excellent wives but at the same time he may not desire to place his marital trust in any of them. Faith is essential to religious experience. Without an ultimate commitment to the Ultimate, to borrow Tillich’s terms, there will be no ultimate or religious satisfaction.

Some Criticisms of the Pragmatic Theory of Truth

Despite the many obviously commendable features of pragmatism, as a test for the truth of a world view it is clearly insufficient. When it is tried in the methodological scales it is found wanting. Many men have undertaken to criticize pragmatism from many perspectives. We summarize here only those observations that apply to pragmatism as a test for truth.

First, the results or consequences of an action do not establish what is true but simply what happened to work. But success is not truth and failure is not necessarily falsity. Even when given or desired results are attained, one can still ask of the view or action, “Was it true?” The truth question is not settled but is still open after the results are reached. Pragmatism shows only what works (and one would expect truth to work) but it does not prove that what worked is true.

Second, truth may be unrelated to results. The results may have been accidental, in which case there would be no more relation to truth than accidentally discovering a million dollars proves one is the rightful owner of it. And even if the results are not accidental but follow regularly from a given belief or action, it does not prove that that belief is true.

Unlawful entry by picking a lock will work regularly, but that result does not demonstrate that this was either a right way to enter or that entry was the right result. But it worked. Further, sometimes truth may not bring the desired results (e.g., being honest on one’s income tax may be economically painful). And sometimes the desired result may not be true (e.g., desired economic gain by oppressing the poor). Neither the desired nor desirable is necessarily the truthful.

Third, truth is more than the expedient. As Josiah Royce once put it, one wonders whether James would be satisfied to put a witness on the stand in court and have him swear to tell “the expedient, the whole expedient, and nothing but the expedient, so help him future experience.”²⁷ At the heart of this criticism is the contention that we do mean more by truth than what works.

The meaning of truth cannot be limited to the functional and practical. And if it were, we would have to determine whether it means what is meaningful for the individual or for the race. If the former, solipsism would follow; that is, truth would be entirely relative to the individual, to what is expedient for him at that moment. And if truth is what is meaningful to most men in the long run, then other problems emerge to which we now turn.

Fourth, James admits that it is impossible for us to know the long-run consequences. Further, he admits that pantheism has seemingly worked well for vast masses of men for centuries of time. And were he alive today he would witness even more Westerners adopting pantheistic views. Does this confirm its truth or merely the fact that more people are trying it and finding that it works for them?

Maybe, as fads go, there will be a great reversal in the long run. What then? How is one to know now which view is true? Must one rely solely on the will to believe? On purely pragmatic grounds there appears to be no other alternative for a finite person who cannot divine the distant future.

Fifth, a passional and volitional basis alone for deciding truth is insufficient. It is subject to the same critiques leveled against fideism (see here). Faith is certainly necessary for belief in God; but one must have some evidence or reason to believe that there is a God before he can meaningfully believe in him.

But if the pragmatist is unable to decide the momentous religious issue of whether there is a God on intellectual grounds, then he must rely on purely passional bases. And in this case, there is really no objective or public test for truth at all. A purely personal and private test for truth cannot meet even the minimal standards for truth criteria, for it is neither available to others nor can it really exclude other views. In short, at this point, pragmatism reduces to fideism.

Sixth, on purely pragmatic grounds opposing world views, may work equally well. James admitted that pantheism has worked for millions of men for hundreds of years. If what some pantheist desires is the cessation of all craving, then attaining Nirvana (i.e., the extinguishing of all craving) will not only work well but it would work better than heaven as Christians conceive of it (i.e., as a continual fulfilling of all desires forever).

Heaven would be a perpetual frustration to one who does not want to experience desire and fulfillment any more. Likewise, Nirvana would not be a fulfillment of Christian desire but a cessation of even the ability to desire. So, on a purely pragmatic ground, one would have to say that Nirvana works best for pantheists and heaven for Christians. But they are opposing world views; both cannot be true at the same time and in the same sense.²⁸

Hence, the only alternative for adjudication of these conflicting truth claims is to contend that one view (or both) has the wrong goal. But on a purely pragmatic basis, there is no way to affirm this, since truth and rightness are known only from attaining desired consequences. And we have already seen that the consequences are best for each view in accord with its own goals but not in accord with those of the other. The pragmatic test for truth cannot rescue us from total relativism in this regard.

Summary and Conclusion

There is a difference between a pragmatic theory of truth and a pragmatic test for truth. Christian apologists disavow the former but often employ the latter as part, if not all, of their test for the truth of Christianity. There are indeed some important insights provided by pragmatists that are not foreign to Biblical Christianity. Truth must work in one’s life; faith in God is essential; by their fruits you shall know them; and so on.

All of these are good. Of course, all truth must work, but not everything that works is necessarily true. However, it is both an ill-advised and fatal apologetic move to employ pragmatism as a total test for truth or as the test of a total world view because it reduces to relativism, fideism, or experientialism—all of which are inadequate to establish the truth of Christianity vis-à-vis other world views. Many differing views work for many different people. But results are often unrelated to truth.

Further, who can know what the long-run consequences or results of belief will be? How can a person believe in God on a purely passional basis when he has no evidence to support a belief that God is there? The Christian apologist believes that truth will work in the short run and in the long run, but he cannot hold that what works is true. For many false and evil things have worked for many people for many years. And no finite can see the distant future. Hence, pragmatism fails as a sufficient test for truth in the present.

SELECT READINGS FOR Pragmatism

Exposition of Pragmatism

• Dewey, John. Reconstruction in Philosophy.
• James, William.
• ————. The Meaning of Truth.
• ————. The Will to Believe.
• Peirce, Charles Sanders. Charles Sanders Peirce: The Essential Writings.

Evaluation of Pragmatism

• Ayer, A. J. The Origins of Pragmatism.
• Blanchard, Brand. The Nature of Thought, II, chap. 10.
• Driscoll, John T. Pragmatism and the Problem of the Idea.
• Hackett, Stuart. The Resurrection of Theism, I, chap. 4.

^[1]

¹ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 824, B 852.

² C. S. Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief” V, collected in Charles Sanders Peirce: The Essential Writings, ed. Edward C. Moore, p. 133.

³ Peirce, V.

⁴ Peirce, “How to Make our Ideas Clear” II, col. and ed. Moore.

⁵ Peirce, “What Pragmatism Is,” col. and ed. Moore.

⁶ C. S. Peirce, “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” Hibbert Journal, 1908.

⁷ “Concept of God” in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, chap. 28, ed. Justus Buchler (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955).

⁸ Buchler.

⁹ William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 4–8.

¹⁰ James, Lectures 9–10.

¹¹ James, Lecture 20.

¹² James, Lecture 20.

¹³ See “The Will to Believe” in Essays in Pragmatism, ed. Alburey Castell (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 88–89.

¹⁴ Castell, pp. 90–98.

¹⁵ Castell, pp. 101–6.

¹⁶ Castell, pp. 105–8.

¹⁷ James, Lectures 11–15.

¹⁸ James, p. 280 (Mentor Paperback).

¹⁹ James, pp. 385, 390, 391.

²⁰ See William James, Pragmatism and Other Essays (New York: Washington Square Press, Inc., 1963), pp. 89, 90, 92, 95, 96.

²¹ James, Pragmatism, “What Pragmatism Means,” p. 38.

²² James, Pragmatism, “Pragmatism and Religion,” pp. 129, 125, 131, 132.

²³ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, XIV, i, reply.

²⁴ Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, pp. 109–11. Schaeffer, of course, has more than a mere pragmatic test for truth. He has in some places what appears to be a transcendental argument or one based on actual undeniability (see He Is There and He Is Not Silent, chap. 1).

²⁵ Thomas Morris, Francis Schaeffer’s Apologetics: A Critique (Chicago: Moody Press, 1976), chap. 1.

²⁶ Schaeffer, pp. 73–74.

²⁷ Quoted by Joseph L. Blau in “Introduction” to Pragmatism and Other Essays, p.XIV.

²⁸ Alan Watts’ more recent attempt to build a two-level parallel between pantheism and Christianity will not work. See Watts, The Supreme Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), pp. 12, 13, 45, 52, 53. As Watts later saw, both systems must lay claim to truth; but as contrary views, both cannot be true (Beyond Theology, pp. VI, VII).

^[1]Geisler, N. L. (1976). Christian apologetics. Includes index. (101). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

PRAGMATISM – All you want to know