Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

Summarizing Lecture 4 about the one and the many, James reiterates that noetic, or intellectually derived, monism holds that “[a]bsolute oneness remains, but only as an hypothesis” (63)—namely, a hypothesis of an absolute, omniscient Knower who is God. However, the pragmatic view, which James calls noetic pluralism, must leave room for the possibility that this Knower may not be totally omniscient and that “the widest field of knowledge […] still contains some ignorance” (63).

This means the universe may not be finished, but may still be a work in progress—“eternally incomplete, and at all times subject to addition or liable to loss” (63). Likewise, we know for certain that our knowledge of the world and its workings is incomplete, so at least “in respect of the knowledge it contains the world does genuinely change and grow” (64).

James discusses some ways in which “our knowledge completes itself” (64). First, our knowledge “grows in spots” (64), progressing in some areas and lagging behind in others at an inconsistent pace. When new information comes along, we are forced to modify our knowledge. However, our minds are “strained, sometimes painfully” (64) when new facts challenge old beliefs. Thus, we accommodate the new information to the old, rather than throwing out the old, synthesizing old and new.

This leads James to state a major thesis: “our fundamental ways of thinking about things are discoveries of exceedingly remote ancestors, which have been able to preserve themselves throughout the experience of all subsequent time” (65). James calls this ancient stage of knowledge “common sense.” Essentially, common sense is the primitive, pre-philosophical, and pre-scientific stage of human perception. It includes basic understandings about the elements, about cause and effect, about how to classify things. Scientists and philosophers challenge these basic commonsense notions to bring greater clarity to our understanding of the world. When we encounter this new knowledge added by scientists and philosophers, we make it fit to our older stock of beliefs, thus creating a synthesis that allows us to adapt to our surroundings.

The innovations of science and philosophy are not confined to abstract thought, but open up “an entirely unexpected range of practical utilities” (72), including inventions like clocks, telegrams, and medicine. Here James is writing against the background of the technological leap forward of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw some of the most rapid and dramatic scientific development in Western history.

James argues that are three stages “levels, stages or types of thought” (72): common sense, science, and critical philosophy. However, we must not assume that, simply because science arose last, its findings are “absolutely more true than any other” (73). This is proven by the fact that scientists often disagree among themselves and criticize each other’s conclusions. Many scientists now insist that some new scientific theories should be understood as helpful concepts, but not as literally real. Their theories are pragmatically useful models for understanding how the world works, but they are not true in a literal sense.

Therefore, each level of thought is appropriate for a particular “sphere of life,” but perhaps none is “absolutely true” (74). James raises the possibility that all theories are “modes of adaptation to reality, rather than revelations of gnostic answers to some divinely instituted world-enigma” (74). This leads directly to James’s discussion of the pragmatic view of truth in the next lecture.

Dwelling on the instrumentality of theories is a direct consequence of James’s rejection of the idea of absolute, unconditioned truth. (See Themes for more discussion). This perspective supports James’s broader pragmatic emphasis on action and the human ability to shape and interpret the world. With its emphasis on knowledge and ways of conceiving the world around us, this lecture prepares and leads up to what is in some ways the linchpin of the whole book, Lecture 6.