moore skewers james

i'll give an example of a g.e. moore takedown, this one of william james's version of the pragmatist theory of truth, as expressed by james in "pragmatism's conception of truth."

It is almost certainly false that all our true ideas are useful, and almost certainly false that all our useful ideas are true. But I have only urged what seem to me to be the most obvious objections to these two statements: I have not tried to sustain these objections by elaborate argument, partly for a reason I now wish to state. The fact is, I am not at all sure that Professor James would not himself admit that both these statements are false. I think it is quite possible he would admit that they are, and would say that he never meant either to assert or imply the contrary. He complains that some of the critics of Pragmatism are unwilling to read any but the silliest of possible meanings into Pragmatism; and, perhaps he would say that this is the case here. I certainly hope that he would. I certainly hope he would say that these statements, to which I have objected, are silly. For it does seem to me intensely silly to say that we can verify all our true ideas; intensely silly to say that every one of our true beliefs is at some time useful; intensely silly to say that every idea which is ever useful is true. I hope Professor James would admit all these things to be silly, for if he and other Pragmatists would admit even as as much as this, I think a good deal would be gained. But it by no means follows that because a philosopher would admit a view to be silly, when it is definitely put before him, he has not himself been constantly holding and implying that very view. He may quite sincerely protest that he never has either held or implied it, and yet he may all the time have been not only implying it but holding it - vaguely, perhaps, but really. A man may assure us, quite sincerely, that he is not angry; he may really think that he is not, and yet we may be able to judge quite certainly from what he says that he really is angry. He may assure is quite sincerely that he never meant anything to our discredit by what he said - that he was not thinking of anything in the least discreditable to us, and yet it may be plain from his words that he was actually condemning us very severely. And so with a philosopher. He may protest, quite angrily, when a view is put before him in other words than his own, that he never either meant or implied any such thing, and yet it may be possible to judge, from what he says, that this very view, wrapped up in other words, was not only held by him but what was precisely what made his thoughts seem to him quite interesting and important.

this skewers not only james, but many a pragmatist of my acquaintance. the view is initially formulated in a sharp, seemingly pretty clear, way. press on it just a little, though, and it slips away into an endless chase through what 'working' or 'working in the long run,' really means. he adjusts his account to deal with every new counter-example, until he ends up counting more or less just what a correspondence theorist would count as true.

[passage is from moore's essay "william james' 'pragmatism,'" collected in philosophical studies.]

Comments

[Kerry]

Very nice indeed! Have you shared this with Jessica W.? :)

[Jason Hills]

If this has worked with all the classical/neoclassical pragmatists you've met, then you haven't met a pragmatist who knew what he or she was talking about. Or there was a misunderstanding between the two.

[crispy]

no believe me i've tried, live. with rorty, john mcdermott, john stuhr, etc. i know that even at a first stab there is much more to be said. but i also feel the ever-receding horizon, the idea that this is going to somehow turn out to be a good theory no matter how wrong it seems.

[crispy]

what i'd actually try is stuff like this: sometimes truth makes you feel good. sometimes truth is something you *face.* sometimes truth drives you suicide. let's say the atomic theory of matter or twentieth century physics leads to the annihilation of the world. would that show it was false? etc. moore goes for more modest but just as decisive counter-examples: say i'm idly counting dots on a page, and form a true belief about how many there are. it just never helps me with anything, nor do i expect it to. still i might get it right or wrong.

[Jason Hills]

Did Rorty's sociology-of-knowledge sort of take convince you that there was something to it? That is part of the angle I would give. E.g., pragmatism--not Peirce's pragmaticism--speaks little to formal logical conceptions of truth and much more to practical conceptions, i.e., the ones people actually live through. I take the statement from Moore to deal with the former more than the later. For James this point can come across as crass, but for Dewey it becomes part of a theory of inquiry modeled on experimental science. Abduction is good enough for science, so why not philosophy? But Rorty does take it more than a bit far.

If neither Rorty, McDermott, or Stuhr could convince you, then I doubt that I can do much better.

[crispy]

right and i suppose my objection is metaphysical; i think the pragmatists were still trying to work their way out of idealism, but they still thought that - as rorty put it to me - all we really had was beliefs al the way down, linguistic or sensory elements that had to authorize each other, whereas the exit from these into the real world could do no work, etc. the progress of science was essentially a discourse, in which theories were were regarded as in practice confirmed. now i think that we're in the middle of reality all the time, adapting our discourse to it. but at any rate, i also think that science is not an adequate model for human knowledge, which comes in all sorts of forms from sudden unaccountable flashes of insight to things believed on faith to constant everyday moorish beliefs like: 'there's a window in that wall.' you don't need or want science as a model to explain that.

peirce and dewey, and even james, were at their worst subject to a rank scientism: dewey's reckoning on it as a political model, for instance, has unfortunate implications. to see this at its worst, check dewey's *reconstruction in philosophy.*

[Jason Hills]

Rorty had that part wrong, both in general and in his attribution, and Peirce and Dewey would agree with you that we "adapt our discourse to reality," although as a hand adapts itself to a hammer. Per the epistemic problem of adapting discursive "reality" to actual 'reality,' they thought the best way was experimental method, which is not "science" as it is often conceived. Rorty had most of the historic points wrong, and should be admired for his own contributions.

Attributing "scientism" to pragmatism is analogous to attributing "anti-historicism" to all of analytic philosophy. There's something to be said about the analogy, but overall it's misleading and not helpful.

[crispy]

whether believing something works in any dimension, over any time frame, among the members of any group or for everyone, is irrelevant to the truth of what is believed. is that compatible with the pragmatist theory of truth? then i really don't see what the position is at all and i'm puzzled by the actual sentences they wrote.

[Jason Hills]

They are what we would now call deflationists about (metaphysical) truth. Out there in the working world, invoking "truth" is never an invocation of the Platonic form of truth (which a logicized notion of truth leads to), but of the practices and habits that people have. I did not say "beliefs," because that's the first misreading of pragmatism. The second is thinking that they mean truth as lingusitic "discourse" (Rorty's invention). The taken truth is what people do, just as I step onto a plane because plane travel has been so reliable--nobody but academicians invoke a capital-T truth there. Hence, their notion of truth, per Peirce, is to ask the question of what enacting that truth does or will do--what difference does it make on the world--where "making a difference" is investigated with both human and physical-science rigor. The science of aerodynamics demonstrates itself as true every time a lane flies. Then, aside from when they're doing logic, they are quiet about logical or metaphysical Truth, because talking about it is akin to discussing the noumenal realm for Kant. There is, of course, a rejection of any form of a priori knowledge in this while maintaining realism (that Rorty jettisoned and possibly Stuhr as well).

Your imputation that pragmatists think that believing a thing makes it (metaphysically) true somehow misrepresents their views. Hence, going back to Moore, he is entirely missing the point and committing a fallacy. I strongly suspect that there is a real disagreement, but genuine disagreement requires mutual understanding.

[crispy]

i agree that we should de-cosmicize truth (and i definitely agree that the obsession with language was rorty's contribution). but i don't think, even as a matter of everyday practice, that things are known by their effects, or that the judgment of truth is a social practice (it's also an anti-social practice, e.g.). and i will just say: truth does not necessarily have positive effects, however we might think of such effects. we, ultimately, are its, not it ours.

[Jason Hills]

Well, feel free to stop by my blog for more conversation on the topic; I do not want to ask too much of your time or continue on for too long. Of course, I have much more to say, but I am that way on any topic.

[Stephen]

Forgive me for jumping so late into a robust conversation, but I have read James, and I don't think Moore is quite adressing the gist of what James means. James states pretty explicitly that his philosophy is one to be used when distinct answers are not expected to be forthcoming.

He uses the analogy of humans, like cats and dogs below us the scale of being, trying to understand a human world that is bound to totally evade them. So human beings are in the face of our limitlessly complex surround. In this context, truth possibly does exist, but for a human being to try to understand that truth is not only an excercise in futility, it is also a denial of our human faculties, factulties that are defined by their limits. In this sense, pragmatism wants us to engage our faculties fully, and part of this is to aknowledge their limits and not try to "fake it". And in doing so, we might embody the truth, if not grasp it. Such is my reading of James.

So with dogs, they may be wrong to assume that we humans are "in their pack" or that we might be as dedicated to them as they are to us. Indeed, we are not. But it is simply beyond the purview of being a dog to act any differenty. They do what works for them. And this is what makes them dogs, and by and large, it does them fairly well.

[Stephen]

Whoa... I'm way too tired after call... I didnt express that well at all.

[crispy]

hey jason, where's your blog? no , kerry, i keep my anti-prag rantings secret from wahman! stephen: our faculties are definitely limited. but we are part of this world, are interacting and merging with and re-emerging from this world all the time. we know all kinds of stuff. truth isn't obscure: it's all around us all the time; that's how i read moore.

[Jason Hills]

Crispy,

Your statement of truth is very pragmatic. I think we would need to nail down what truth is, and what you think pragmatism is saying, since given what you say, I don't see where the strong disagreement is. What Moore says of it is flat out wrong, an utter misrepresentation. I leave you with Peirce:

"Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth. (Collected Papers (CP) 5.565).

If you click on my name in this or the above posts, you will be brought to my "Immanent Transcendence."

[crispy]

i'm going to melt down the representation/reality distinction. rorty does too. but i definitely disagree with peirce on this! and what's frustrating to me, and what i was using moore to attack, was the slipperiness of this view; every time you try to associate it with some definite idea and hence to be able to assess it, it slips away. so: i don't think that inquiry will necessarily converge. and i don't think that, if it did, this would show that the results are true. truth is not consensus and it's not idealized consensus. actually, i think people normally converge (scientists, even) because of social pressures and social needs. and my view is that such a procedure is very likely to lead you wrong. now, what i expect is that this doesn't engage peirce under some hyper-elaborate, subtle, ambiguous interpretation. that's what moore was already worried about in 1910. then i begin to wonder whether there is actually any view at all, or just a commitment to figures or forms of words.

[Jason Hills]

The convergence point of Peirce comes from the premise that the world (cosmos) is one way and not another and that the cosmos is convergent. Else, we could not explain why the cosmos emerges from chaos into logos, i.e., into determinate order and natural laws. It is not a matter of idealized social convergence per se, but of the ideal that we could come to know reality.

There is a view, but it's so different from the outstanding views at the time (and now) as to appear unintelligible. For the latter, see what becomes of Peirce in Whitehead. Brilliant, but very difficult to follow. However, as an americanist, I have no difficulty talking to Buddhists, Doaists, or Confucians, since we all share an emphasis on praxis and process metaphysics. The philosophy next door is the stranger, not the fellow from the Orient.