English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth.

  • James Seth
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    380/392 page 364
    is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clear¬ ness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve—what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive signifi¬ cance at all. This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism. It lay entirely unnoticed by any one for twenty years, until I, in an address before Professor Howi- son’s philosophical union at the university of California, brought it forward again and made a special application of it to religion.’1 James’s own statement of the method of pragmatism is on the same lines as that of Peirce, making the criterion of truth purely practical, and interpreting knowledge as the re¬ action of the intellect, in the service of the will, to the needs of the practical life as these change with its changing circum¬ stances. 4 The pragmatic method,’ he tells us, 4 is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical con¬ sequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true ? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle.’2 In other words, the theoretical must be re¬ duced to the practical difference. The pragmatic attitude is 4 the attitude of looking away from first things, principles, 44 categories,” supposed necessities ; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.’3 In an essay on 4 Reflex Action and Theism,’ first published in 1881, James offers the same interpretation of the function of thought in the life of man. It is only 4 the middle segment of the mental curve, and not its termination ’ : the mediator between sensation and action, or, better, reaction. 4 As the last theoretic pulse dies away, it does not leave the 1 Pragmatism, pp. 46, 47. 2 Ibid., p. 45. 3 Ibid., p. 54.
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