Lecture V: Pragmatism and Common Sense explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Pragmatic Method

  James applies the pragmatic method to evaluate the hypothesis of absolute oneness and to examine the growth of knowledge through experience.

• Instrumentalism

  James argues that all theories, including common sense and science, are instrumental mental modes of adaptation to reality rather than absolute revelations.

• Pluralism and Meliorism

  The lecture defends a pluralistic view of the world as additive and incomplete, contrasting with monistic eternal completeness.

Characters to notice

• The Narrator

  Delivers the lecture, guiding the audience through the growth of knowledge and the stages of thought.

• John Locke

  Mentioned as part of the philosophic stage of criticism, which has been sterile in shedding light on nature's details.

• David Hume

  Listed among philosophers whose thought has yielded no inventions or discoveries directly traceable to their work.

• George Berkeley

  Included in the list of philosophers whose tenets have not led to practical inventions, despite his tar-water.

• Immanuel Kant

  Mentioned as part of the philosophic stage, with his nebular hypothesis unrelated to his philosophy.

• Galileo Galilei

  Cited for giving accurate clocks and artillery-practice, and for contributing to the overthrow of scholastic common sense.

Key passages

• “Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew.”

  Knowledge expands gradually in localized areas, and we tend to preserve existing beliefs, making minimal adjustments rather than wholesale changes.

  James illustrates the conservative nature of intellectual growth, where new ideas are integrated slowly into the existing framework.

• “Ought not the existence of the various types of thinking which we have reviewed, each so splendid for certain purposes, yet all conflicting still, and neither one of them able to support a claim of absolute veracity, to awaken a presumption favorable to the pragmatistic view that all our theories are instrumental, are mental modes of adaptation to reality, rather than revelations or gnostic answers to some divinely instituted world-enigma?”

  The coexistence of different, conflicting ways of thinking, none of which can claim absolute truth, supports the pragmatist idea that theories are tools for adapting to reality, not divine revelations.

  James uses the plurality of thought systems to argue for the instrumental nature of theories.

• “The hypothetical things that such men have invented, defined as they have defined them, are showing an extraordinary fertility in consequences verifiable by sense. Our logic can deduce from them a consequence due under certain conditions, we can then bring about the conditions, and presto, the consequence is there before our eyes.”

  Scientific concepts, though hypothetical, produce verifiable results when we manipulate conditions according to logical deductions, demonstrating their practical utility.

  James highlights the practical success of scientific thinking in controlling nature.