William James on Truth and Goodness

One crucial aspect of William James' conception of truth is his characterization of the true as being "the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief [...]" (109). These truths are good to believe because they are useful. They make practical differences in our lives.

It must be noted that James does not hold that truth is some species alongside good, as have other philosophers in the past, but he holds that truth is just one species of good. To be more accurate, truth for James is actually plural rather than something like an abstract form, and so we might even have as many truths as there are goods or so it seems that his view would almost imply this.

Furthermore, James holds that true ideas would never have been singled out unless they have been useful in the first place, and because of this James is able to say that an idea is true because it is useful: "You can say of it then either that 'it is useful because it is true' or that 'it is true because it is useful.'(115).

This is essentially an instrumental view of truth as James writes: "Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor [...]" (100).

Thus, it is because James links the true with the useful, and the useful is good, that he is able to claim that just as false beliefs can have pernicious effects in the long run, so can true beliefs have beneficial effects.
There are several problems with this aspect of James' conception of truth.

First, I believe it is possible for true beliefs to be useless or even devastating to some people, and I believe it is also possible for false beliefs to have some positive effects on people's lives and allow us to get around in the world. These falsehoods can have practical consequences and are thus goods.

Many religious beliefs, in particular, are of this nature. The realization of the truth of the falsity of these beliefs can leave some people in devastation. For those who continue to believe in these types of beliefs, they are a positive benefit to these people.

Second, it is possible to have competing views in an area of life work equally well for achieving what we want. Both are considered as good and true because of this, but it is a little out there for these two contradictory beliefs having useful and good practical consequences to be both logically true.

This situation results from James' evolutionary aspect of his conception of truth, which seems to really just detail that people have held different ideas as being true over time. I don't think there is any reason why we should not admit that most of what was considered to be true was false and realize that truth is some unattainable ideal in many circumstances and that the most we can hope to settle for is warranted assertibility, in the sense of holding beliefs justified given present information, but not as being truths.

Instead of redefining truth as being what is useful and thus good, we should allow for a divergence between warranted assertibility and truth. Admitting this divergence we can see how what is not necessarily true, or is even false, can be good.

Third, to conceptualize the truth as being what proves itself good to believe seems to be against the scientific mentality and the method of science. It is a slippage from toughness. One of a scientific mentality should accept the harsh realities being revealed, no matter how degraded that person becomes because of it.

Work Cited

Menand, Louis. Pragmatism: A Reader. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.