Section 64.  I write this note (in 1908) to give the reader some idea of later developments of the doctrine called pragmatism.  There has been a vast amount printed upon the subject in the last two or three years, but I am not able to say even yet that we have to do with “a clear-cut doctrine, the limits and consequences of which have been worked out in detail.”  Hence, I prefer to leave section 64 as I first wrote it, merely supplementing it here.

We may fairly consider the three leaders of the pragmatic movement to be Professor William James, Dr. F. C. S. Schiller, and Professor John Dewey.  The first has developed his doctrine at length in his volume entitled “Pragmatism” (London, 1907); the second, who calls his doctrine “Humanism,” but declares himself a pragmatist, and in essential agreement with Professor James, has published two volumes of philosophical essays entitled “Humanism” (London, 1903) and “Studies in Humanism” (London, 1907); the third has developed his position in the first four chapters of the “Studies in Logical Theory” (Chicago, 1903).

Professor James, in his “Pragmatism” (Lecture II), says that pragmatism, at the outset, at least, stands for no particular results.  It has no dogmas, and no doctrines save its method.  This method means: 

“The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.”  He remarks further, however, that pragmatism has come to be used also in a wider sense, as signifying a certain theory of truth (pp. 54-55).  This theory is brought forward in Lecture VI.

The theory maintains that:  “True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify.  False ideas are those that we can not” (p. 201).  This sounds as though Professor James abandoned his doctrine touching the Turk and the Christian mentioned in section 64.

But what do the words “verification” and “validation” pragmatically mean?  We are told that they signify certain practical consequences of the verified and validated idea.  Our ideas may be said to “agree” with reality when they lead us, through acts and other ideas which they instigate, up to or towards other parts of experience with which we feel that the original ideas remain in agreement.  “The connections and transitions come to us from point to point as being progressive, harmonious, satisfactory.  This function of agreeable leading is what we mean by an idea’s verification” (p. 202).

Thus, we do not seem to be concerned with verification in the sense in which the word has usually been employed heretofore.  The tendency to take as true what is useful or serviceable has not been abandoned.  That Professor James does not really leave his Turk in the lurch becomes clear to any one who will read his book attentively and note his reasons for taking the various pragmatic attitudes which he does take.  See, for example, his pragmatic argument for “free-will.”  The doctrine is simply assumed as a doctrine of “relief” (pp. 110-121).