This essay supports the thesis that pragmatic theories of truth are not convincing. For the purpose of this analysis, the pragmatic approaches of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), and John Dewey (1859-1952) are examined and analyzed.
The pragmatist theory of truth consists of the idea that candidates for truth are basically not descriptions but predictions. What they predict is the culmination of a possible action. However, empiricism is fundamentally retrospective in its viewpoint: the credentials which it requires of a concept before allowing it into the region of truth are those which certify its beginnings. Unless a proposition is generated either from sensation or else from reflection on the relations of ideas among themselves, it must be considered to be lacking in verisimilitude. But pragmatism, regardless of its dependence on the genetic method, turns here, not to the start of the idea, but to its destination. What is important is not its antecedents, but what we can do with the idea. Knowledge is not only a record of the past. It is a restructuring of the present pointed toward fulfillments in the forthcoming future. Pragmatism of the idea that descriptions but conceives of a true proposition as being something like 'correspondent' in a divorce case. The truth of a proposition is a matter of its interaction with things and does not consist in some abstract resemblance to facts. A true proposition corresponds to the facts in the sense that it guides a person to the facts. To assert a proposition is to come forth with a proposal to some reality. The proposition is true when the offer is received and has a satisfactory result.
Peirce's standard of truth and of the proper way to analyze meanings is known as the pragmatic maxim. This concept has been provided with many different shapes and forms--first by Peirce, then by William James, and later on by John Dewey. Briefly stated,...