I couldn't help but see irony in James telling us we should not elevate universal truths above personal truths. He's the founder of an immensely influential school of thought and he writes essays with titles like: "What makes a life significant." He may be able to describe one million "universal truths" that he doesn't want to elevate, but there is another sense in which he is just promoting his own universal truths.
Mike B. makes a very astute observation here, not confused at all.
On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 1:48 AM, Jesse Raber jesse.raber@gmail.com wrote:
In philosophy, nitpicking is everything :) Also I don't think there's any philosophy where it all makes sense ... much to my chagrin sometimes ...
I think I see where you are coming from with your pragmatist case for the correspondence theory. However, I also think that what you describe as features of the correspondence theory are also features of James's pragmatism -- his disagreement with the correspondence theory might be narrower than you'd think.
You say that our bets with reality are safer if we look for the implications of our beliefs and deliberately subject them to empirical and logical tests. The only difference that I can see between this method and the parts of James's theory that we've been talking about is that here we *deliberately* subject the beliefs to tests, rather than passively waiting for tests to come up in the course of doing other things. For James the evaluation of ideas is very fundamentally about reducing "discrepancies" -- he might say "friction" -- both empirical and logical. Your proposal is actually pretty close to Dewey's definition of science, and perhaps to James's too, though I haven't read as much of James's philosophy of science. For Dewey, at least, science is a method of "formatting" beliefs in such a way that they (a) form one big logically consistent corpus and (b) facilitate further experimental discoveries.
One question that I think is implicit in what you say is whether we can expect all this testing to converge on, or at least around, some one true description (what Richard Rorty calls a mental "mirror of nature"http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/#2). The correspondence theory implies such a convergence. For James and Dewey, on the other hand, the very methods of science already close it off from parts of the whole "moving situation" of reality (as Dewey likes to say). Science jams ideas into its current paradigms, which are bound up with social contexts and liable to shift; it pares off whatever doesn't show up in a reliably repeatable way, and whatever appears to some kinds of observers but not others. These selective emphases will apply to any body of scientific truth, however advanced. This doesn't mean that science never advances, but it does mean that there are certain *directions* in which it can't be expected to advance.
Consider water. Scientists know a huge amount about it. But they don't seem any closer to understanding what Melville is talking about in the first few paragraphs of *Moby-Dick*:
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a
damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs- commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster- tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling And there they stand- miles of them- leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets avenues- north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?
Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies- what is the one charm wanting?- Water- there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
I think Melville is onto something about water that has noticeable, even measurable consequences. Why is beachfront property worth more, seemingly all around the world? Because water has this property that people like to stare at it! But what explains this property? What other behaviors might watergazing lead to, or substitute for? For James, an "unscientific" explanation formatted to account for our sense of personality, like seeing water as an avatar or symbol of the "ungraspable phantom of life," can be just as useful as a scientific, impersonal account; and in this case, the impersonal account sheds less light, if you ask me. In any case, nothing in the "personal" model of water should contradict the impersonal model. We can respect both models, and, in different ways, both can be refined and tested in future experience.
On this point:
I couldn't help but see irony in James telling us we should not elevate
universal truths above personal truths. He's the founder of an immensely influential school of thought and he writes essays with titles like: "What makes a life significant." He may be able to describe one million "universal truths" that he doesn't want to elevate, but there is another sense in which he is just promoting his own universal truths.
True! This is a tricky problem for people (like Rorty) who identify pragmatism with "anti-foundationalism," a blanket hostility to rigorously universal explanations. There's an ongoing scholarly debate about whether pragmatism really has no universal truths; assumes universal truths in ways that make it self-contradictory; assumes universal truths in a justifiable way; or somehow derives a kind of second-order universal truth from the very fact that there are no really universal truths (kind of like how a toleration leads to a policy of not tolerating some kinds of intolerance). As I see it, both James and Dewey use something like "common sense" as their explanation of last resort. Notice how often James says things like "surely we have all had the experience of X." Rather than looking for a rock-solid proof of some foundational concept, he settles for a bedrock of Very Safe Bets that have withstood the test of experience for a long time.
On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 1:36 PM, Michael Bishop michaelbish@gmail.comwrote:
Thanks Jesse, you offer interesting material even if it doesn't fully resolve my issues. I'll offer a few more comments...
I think I often think pragmatically. One of my favorite quotes is George Box's "All models are false, but some are useful."
I think a pragmatist might advise us, "question beliefs which seem to be associated with bad outcomes," and I think that's wise. I like the metaphor that beliefs are "bets with reality," which I think just means that the beliefs we hold cause changes in things we care about.
But even though my thoughts can't match reality perfectly, I think holding it out as an ideal is often useful. I can notice mismatches between my beliefs and reality by seeking novel implications of my beliefs and then looking for (or actively performing) empirical tests. Then I can alter my beliefs to reduce these discrepancies. Beliefs revised to reduce discrepancies should be "safer bets." Notice that I'm giving pragmatic justification for respecting a correspondence model of truth.
Side note regarding:
Thoughts are made of language, while reality is made of, well, reality.
...though "thoughts" might be said to be made of language, there is a lot of cognition which precedes or works independently of language.
Regarding universal and personal truths: I couldn't help but see irony in James telling us we should not elevate universal truths above personal truths. He's the founder of an immensely influential school of thought and he writes essays with titles like: "What makes a life significant." He may be able to describe one million "universal truths" that he doesn't want to elevate, but there is another sense in which he is just promoting his own universal truths. And they are all the more important because, he tells us, and I agree, that its risky to promote universal truths over personal ones. Do I blame him? I don't know. He inspires Jesse who, in turn, inspires me. Am I nitpicking? Am I trying to find fault so that I can see myself as an independent intellectual?
Clearly I'm confused, and I want to keep making efforts to become unconfused, but not too much pressure on myself to make it all make sense. I may retain confusion on some of these issues no matter how hard I try, so I don't want to kill myself trying. I just hope I'll make some progress on them, and perhaps that the mere attempt has some ancillary benefits.
There are various semantic processes by which language grasps at reality, but it never actually becomes a perfect mirror. Rather, thoughts *model* reality, and our thought-models are deployed in various concrete situations for various concrete purposes. Deciding what to think means deciding which models to adopt. Some models are clearly better than others, but at the same time, James insists, there can be multiple, equally valid ways to model the same reality.
This recognition of the inevitable persistence of equally valid truths separates James's pragmatism from the correspondence theory, under which there is ultimately one truth (a mental copy of the whole of reality) that we can do a better or worse job of approximating. However, all that being said, the Jamesian theory of truth is not a license to wander off into la-la land, and it does contain (in restated form) most of what is valuable in the correspondence theory. For James, our beliefs are best described as "bets" with reality. We adopt a mental model and stake ourselves on its working well enough to address some particular problem. The means by which these bets are judged, of course, is the behavior of reality. If we bet sloppily or haphazardly, reality will give us our comeuppance, just as surely as if we were following the correspondence theory. James develops these arguments more fully in "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth" http://www.authorama.com/pragmatism-7.html. In "The Will to Believe"http://educ.jmu.edu//~omearawm/ph101willtobelieve.html he explores tricky cases such as what it means to bet on the existence or non-existence of God, or on one's own ability to accomplish something.
The second issue is the relationship between universal and personal truths. It is certainly possible, for James, to distinguish between these two, or, more precisely, to acknowledge a spectrum between those two poles. Where James would object, though, is at the point where the universal is elevated above the personal. David Foster Wallace once wrotehttp://www.thefreelibrary.com/E+unibus+pluram%3A+television+and+U.S.+fiction.-a013952319 that mass media -- i.e., media looking for a universal audience -- tends to be full of junk, not because the audience particularly craves junk, but because "people tend to be really similar in their vulgar and prurient and stupid interests and wildly different in their refined and moral and intelligent interests. What's the difference, after all, between the "universal" and the "lowest common denominator"? For James, "what makes a life significant"http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jsignificant.html is the pursuit of an ideal that animates the whole self. Since our whole selves are so very different, these ideals, which will pose various problems and hence generate various beliefs, will likewise be far from universal. But that doesn't justify giving them less attention, even "on the margin"; quite the contrary.
On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Michael Bishop michaelbish@gmail.comwrote:
I guess those are both important aspects of the universality of a truth.
Perhaps this isn't the best example, but... I won't argue with someone who claims that the story of the virgin birth is as important and fulfilling to them as the golden rule, but I do think that the golden rule has more universal appeal and value and I think that suggests that on the margin, we should give a bit more time and emphasis to the golden rule.
I also think that physical laws are more universal than the principles that even the best social science might discover. And within social science, generalizations that are true of more people/groups/organizations/cultures, (i.e. more universal) are typically more useful and deserve the privileged recognition most people are inclined to give them.
On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 12:13 PM, Jesse Raber jesse.raber@gmail.comwrote:
Mike, when you say that a truth is more universal, do you mean that it applies to a wider variety of phenomena, or that it is held by a wider variety of people? Or something else?
On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 8:25 AM, Michael Bishop michaelbish@gmail.comwrote:
I think it is self-evident that some truths are more universal than others, and I feel we need words to describe this. I worry that using the word "truth" both for pragmatic truth and for correspondence truth can really confuse us. What happens is, for example, that we sometimes test the "truth" of a statement we using pragmatism, and then derive implications using correspondence theory.
I'd be curious what we know about people's intuitive definition of truth. Readings people can speak for themselves, and also offer their opinion about the definition other people work with. Personally, when I hear the word "true" I normally think more along the lines of the correspondence theory of truth than the pragmatic theory (though there are certainly times when I do think about pragmatic truthiness).
So while I'm temporarily willing to try out the pragmatists definition of truth, I think that my (and probably most people's?) usual practice of reserving the word truth for statements whose truth has a lot of universality, leads to less confusion.
On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 12:30 AM, Jesse Raber jesse.raber@gmail.comwrote:
> Just to clarify, James is arguing that science *can't* altogether > invalidate religion. Either way, though, I think it would be interesting to > hear people's thoughts on the relationship between science and religion and > to discuss what James (or pragmatism in general) has to say about it. > > One popular resolution to the science/religion question that James > rejects is the idea of separate spheres corresponding to separate kinds of > truth. That is, he doesn't think that we use one kind of knowledge when > dealing with the physical world described by science and a different kind > of knowledge when dealing with emotional, ethical, or religious matters. > Instead, he sees both science and religion growing as branches of one > underlying kind of knowledge, which is the kind generated by subjecting > beliefs to the test of future experience, i.e., judging things by their > fruits. This common standard of knowledge, which science must accept, can > be used, James argues in this passage from "The Religion of > Healthy-Mindedness," to question not science itself, but some of the > metaphysical assumptions that scientists tend to make, such as the idea > that nature contains only impersonal forces: > > There are plenty of persons to-day--"scientists" or "positivists," >> they are fond of calling themselves--who will tell you that religious >> thought is a mere survival, an atavistic reversion to a type of >> consciousness which humanity in its more enlightened examples has long >> since left behind and out-grown. If you ask them to explain themselves more >> fully, they will probably say that for primitive thought everything is >> conceived of under the form of personality. The savage thinks that things >> operate by personal forces, and for the sake of individual ends. For him, >> even external nature obeys individual needs and claims, just as if these >> were so many elementary powers. Now science, on the other hand, these >> positivists say, has proved that personality, so far from being an >> elementary force in nature, is but a passive resultant of the really >> elementary forces, physical, chemical, physiological, and psycho-physical, >> which are all impersonal and general in character. Nothing individual >> accomplishes anything in the universe save in so far as it obeys and >> exemplifies some universal law. Should you then inquire of them by what >> means science has thus supplanted primitive thought, and discredited its >> personal way of looking at things, they would undoubtedly say it has been >> by the strict use of the method of experimental verification. Follow out >> science's conceptions practically, they will say, the conceptions that >> ignore personality altogether, and you will always be corroborated. The >> world is so made that all your expectations will be experientially verified >> so long, and only so long, as you keep the terms from which you infer them >> impersonal and universal. >> > > >> But here we have mind-cure, with her diametrically opposite >> philosophy, setting up an exactly identical claim. Live as if I were true, >> she says, and every day will practically prove you right. That the >> controlling energies of nature are personal, that your own personal >> thoughts are forces, that the powers of the universe will directly respond >> to your individual appeals and needs, are propositions which your whole >> bodily and mental experience will verify. And that experience does largely >> verify these primeval religious ideas is proved by the fact that the >> mind-cure movement spreads as it does, not by proclamation and assertion >> simply, but by palpable experiential results. Here, in the very heyday of >> science's authority, it carries on an aggressive warfare against the >> scientific philosophy, and succeeds by using science's own peculiar methods >> and weapons. Believing that a higher power will take care of us in certain >> ways better than we can take care of ourselves, if we only genuinely throw >> ourselves upon it and consent to use it, it finds the belief, not only not >> impugned, but corroborated by its observation. > > > This argument really cuts Richard Dawkins type arguments for atheism > off at the knees, if you ask me. But James is nothing if not evenhanded, > and what he gives with one hand he often takes away with the other. > Religion, too, must accept the common standard of judging beliefs by their > fruits. According to that standard one can never be bound by eternally > fixed commandments or creeds. Likewise one must subject any part of one's > beliefs that can be evaluated scientifically to such evaluation, even if > the results might contradict sacred teachings. You might say, then, that > for James science and religion humble each other (or "unstiffen" each > other, to use a Jamesian word.) > > > > On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 6:40 PM, Ruth Raubertas < > ruthraubertas@gmail.com> wrote: > >> ...Just wondering what folks think about whether James successfully >> shows that religion is "wholly debunked by science." >> >> RR >> >> >> On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 4:58 PM, Jesse Raber jesse.raber@gmail.comwrote: >> >>> Hi all! Sorry for the delay -- I fell behind with all the holiday >>> traveling and visiting. Probably should have built a week off into the >>> syllabus ... but let's pick up where we left off. >>> >>> "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness" is a turning point in the >>> *Varieties*. In the previous lectures, James is concerned with >>> clearing the field for religious experience, establishing its general >>> nature, distinguishing it from neighboring categories such as morality, and >>> showing that it cannot be wholly debunked by science. Now he starts to >>> weight the different elements within religious experience, and moves closer >>> to the vital question of what we ought to look for in it. >>> >>> In Lecture II, James distinguishes religion from morality by >>> noting that morality always demands an "effort of volition." "The moralist >>> must hold his breath and keep his muscles tense," he writes; but this >>> "athletic attitude tends ever to break down" -- there are limits to human >>> willpower, "even in the most stalwart." Religion, then, starts with the >>> recognition that "when all is said and done, we are in the end absolutely >>> dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort, >>> deliberately looked to and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our >>> only permanent positions of repose." In religious experience, that is, the " >>> *will* to assert ourselves," even to assert the morally good, >>> gives way to the "*willingness* to close our mouths and be as >>> nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God" (my emphasis). >>> >>> In this lecture, we begin to see, however, that there are >>> different ways to imagine and enact the religious surrender of the will. >>> For the deep-dyed religious optimists he discusses here, what is >>> surrendered is the belief in the final reality of evil -- if we think we >>> see pain and suffering, we must surrender the organ of that seeing, and >>> open our inner eyes to the higher truth that "God is well, and so are you," >>> if only you "awaken to the knowledge of your real being." ("All shall be >>> well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well," as Julian >>> of Norwichhttps://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/incontext/article/julian/ said >>> and T.S. Eliothttp://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/winter/w3206/edit/tseliotlittlegidding.html echoed.) >>> Evil, in this view, is real only to the extent that we believe in it -- an >>> idea that is at least superficially congruent with James's argument in "The >>> Will to Believe" that some beliefs (especially of the "I think I can, I >>> think I can" variety) have the power to make themselves true. >>> >>> James gives the religion of healthy-mindedness a fair hearing and >>> defends it against his audience's presumed scorn -- though as we'll see in >>> the next lecture he's holding his own nuanced criticisms in reserve. He >>> argues, both here and in this week's supplementary essay, "The Gospel of >>> Relaxation," that the religion of healthy-mindedness offers a needed >>> correction to the moralizing pessimism of New England Calvinism. He also >>> argues that, regardless of the cultural context, there will always be >>> certain types of people who will find in the religion of healthy-mindedness >>> the truest expression of their optimistic temperament, and that no good can >>> come from trying to change such people's relationship to the universe. >>> >>> James presents the religion of healthy-mindedness as being >>> ambivalent about whether faith negates evil in a blatant or a subtle way; >>> whether, for instance, faith physically heals disease or raises the >>> believer to a spiritual plane where the disease is no longer important. >>> Both the blatant and the subtle versions of the religion of >>> healthy-mindedness are still with us today, the blatant version in >>> Christian Science, the prosperity gospelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology, >>> and various New Age movements, and the subtle version in faiths, such as >>> Unitarianism, that preach universal salvation and deny the existence of >>> hell. Do you welcome these movements, for the sake of others or yourself? >>> If not, where do you think they do wrong or fall short? >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> WilliamJames mailing list >>> WilliamJames@moomers.org >>> http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames >>> >>> >> > > _______________________________________________ > WilliamJames mailing list > WilliamJames@moomers.org > http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames > >