Pragmatism and Truth

Magical Realist

Valued Senior Member
Pragmatism's notion of truth is generally that truth is whatever works and can be applied to real world situations. More specifically:

"Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that views language and thought as tools for prediction, problem solving, and action, rather than describing, representing, or mirroring reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes.

Pragmatism began in the United States in the 1870s. Its origins are often attributed to philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. In 1878, Peirce described it in his pragmatic maxim: "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism

Truth then, not as what can accurately represent reality, but as what is useful and that solves problems and that makes our lives better. Do you agree with this? Is it possible sometimes for the truth to NOT make our a lives better and NOT make reality more predictable?

William James explains it like this:

"Pragmatism asks its usual question. " Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in any one's actual life? What experiences [may] be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? How will the truth be realized? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?" The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: True ideas are those that we (x) can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot.- That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.

'The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event,, a process, the process namely of its verifying itself, its verification. Its validity is the process of its validation."---- https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/James/James_1911/James_1911_pref.html
 
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[...] Truth then, not as what can accurately represent reality, but as what is useful and that solves problems and that makes our lives better. Do you agree with this? Is it possible sometimes for the truth to NOT make our a lives better and NOT make reality more predictable? [...]

Humans survived for tens of thousands of years without even having today's scientific knowledge about the empirical world (much less that concerning an ultimate or noumenal reality). So some sense of "pragmatism" (whatever works) is arguably what we've always settled for and practiced, regardless of that being verbally expressed or understood.

Since we're always trapped in the brain's representations and limitations/filters, an asymptotic relationship with an inferred "idealized Truth" is the best one might hope for (getting endlessly closer without ever making perfect contact).
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