The Meaning of Truth
by William James
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William James was an important American psychologist and philosopher. He was one of the early academics of psychology and his philosophy touched mainly on pragmatism and the religious or mystic experience. In this sequel to his philosophical work Pragmatism, James discusses the nature of truth. He talks about relative truth, being "true for him who experiences the workings," as opposed to absolute or religious truth..
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I bought it. It is a set of reprints where he attempts to counter his critics by simple repeat of his previously published arguments. Did he not believe that his critics had read his publications?
Quoting himself he prefaces with "Truth' I there say, 'is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality. Pragmatists as well as intellectualists both accept this definition as a matter of course.
Quoting himself he prefaces with "Truth' I there say, 'is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality. Pragmatists as well as intellectualists both accept this definition as a matter of course.
"the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving."[2] By this, James meant that truth is a quality the value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when applying concepts to actual practice (thus, "pragmatic").
1st ed.; Spine label brown & worn, title still visible, grey boards worn at corners, H/T of spine worn, spine sunned to a darker green, there is a 11/2 tear of the linen on the rear board from the top. Contents clean. Near very good.
Original grey-green cloth, green cloth spine, and paper label on spine. First Edition. Previous owner?s name in ink dated 1915. From the library of notable book collector Sydney Ross (without any indication to that effect). One leaf with corner fold, Near Fine.
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William James, oldest of five children (including Henry James and Alice James) in the extraordinary James family, was born in New York City on January 11, 1842. He has had a far-reaching influence on writers and thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Broadly educated by private tutors and through European travel, James initially show more studied painting. During the Civil War, however, he turned to medicine and physiology, attended Harvard medical school, and became interested in the workings of the mind. His text, The Principles of Psychology (1890), presents psychology as a science rather than a philosophy and emphasizes the connection between the mind and the body. James believed in free will and the power of the mind to affect events and determine the future. In The Will to Believe (1897) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), he explores metaphysical concepts and mystical experiences. He saw truth not as absolute but as relative, depending on the given situation and the forces at work in it. He believed that the universe was not static and orderly but ever-changing and chaotic. His most important work, Pragmatism (1907), examines the practical consequences of behavior and rejects the idealist philosophy of the transcendentalists. This philosophy seems to reinforce the tenets of social Darwinism and the idea of financial success as the justification of the means in a materialistic society; nevertheless, James strove to demonstrate the practical value of ethical behavior. Overall, James's lifelong concern with what he called the "stream of thought" or "stream of consciousness" changed the way writers conceptualize characters and present the relationship between humans, society, and the natural world. He died due to heart failure on August 26, 1910. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Is a (non-series) sequel to
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Meaning of Truth
- Original title
- The Meaning of Truth; a sequel to "Pragmatism"
- Original publication date
- 1909
- First words
- Preface:
The pivotal part of my book named Pragmatism is its account of the relation called ‘truth’ which may obtain between an idea (opinion, belief, statement, or what not) and its object. ‘Truth,’ I there say, â... (show all)€˜is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality. Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept this definition as a matter of course.’
The following inquiry is (to use a distinction familiar to readers of Mr. Shadworth Hodgson) not an inquiry into the ‘how it comes,’ but into the ‘what it is’ of cognition. What we call acts of cognition are evidently... (show all) realized through what we call brains and their events, whether there be ‘souls’ dynamically connected with the brains or not. But with neither brains nor souls has this essay any business to transact. In it we shall simply assume that cognition is produced, somehow, and limit ourselves to asking what elements it contains, what factors it implies. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Prag.:—Well, my dear antagonist, I hardly hoped to convert an eminent intellectualist and logician like you; so enjoy, as long as you live, your own ineffable conception. Perhaps the rising generation will grow up more accustomed than you are to that concrete and empirical interpretation of terms in which the pragmatic method consists. Perhaps they may then wonder how so harmless and natural an account of truth as mine could have found such difficulty in entering the minds of men far more intelligent than I can ever hope to become, but wedded by education and tradition to the abstractionist manner of thought.
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- Genres
- Philosophy, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 144.3 — Philosophy & psychology Philosophical schools of thought Humanism and related systems and doctrines Pragmatism
- LCC
- B832 .J4 — Philosophy, Psychology and Religion Philosophy (General) By period Modern Special topics and schools of philosophy
- BISAC
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- ISBNs
- 50
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- 11
