The Truth is what Works: William James, Pragmatism, and the Seed of DeathCharles Sanders Peirce complained that James allowed pragmatism to become 'infected' with 'seeds of death' like the idea that truth is mutable. The Truth is What Works is an attempt to defend James's pragmatic theory of truth from a wide range of critics including Peirce, Betrand Russell, Hilary Putnam, and Cornel West. Cormier runs the gauntlet of historical and contemporary criticism in an attempt to show, not that Jamesian pragmatism does in fact contain a perfectly good theory of objective reality after all, but rather that it doesn't, and is still a kind of realism anyway because it does not leave individuals and their subjective desires behind in an attempt to describe the real world. |
Contents
Introduction Pragmatism and the Real | 1 |
A Genealogy of Truth or Twilight of the Idle | 25 |
James Peirce and the Seed of Death | 51 |
Pragmatism and Skepticism or the Pragmatist Keeps on Searching | 89 |
The Ideal Becomes the Real Pragmatism and Empirical Realism | 107 |
Other editions - View all
The Truth Is What Works: William James, Pragmatism, and the Seed of Death Harvey Cormier Limited preview - 2000 |
The Truth is what Works: William James, Pragmatism, and the Seed of Death Harvey Cormier No preview available - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
abstract according action actually appears argues aspirin better Burnyeat called true Cambridge categorical imperatives chap claims concepts Cornel West correspondence criticism Critique empiricist Essays exist experience fact faith feelings Gramsci Gramsci and West happen Hegelian Hilary Putnam human ical idea ideal idealists individual inquiry intellectual interests James says James's pragmatism James's theory James's view Jamesian judgments Kant Kant's Kantian kind knowledge language least live Lizzie Borden logical matter means metaphysical mind moral Nietzsche Nietzsche's offers particular Peirce Peirce's person philosophic realism philosophical picture political postulate prag pragmatist priori propositions pure Pyrrhonism Pyrrhonist question radical empiricism rational rationalist real objects real things reality reason recognize Richard Rorty rience role Rorty rules scientific seed of death sense Sextus Empiricus Skeptic social story subjective tell theory of truth thinkers tion traditional true beliefs truth-process understand University Press verified William James Wittgenstein