The Pragmatist Theory of Truth | William James Pragmatism Lecture 6

Sorry about the audio, I'm out of town and using a temporary mic.
A misconception about pragmatism is that it endorses any useful belief as true. Some even say that pragmatism is essentially "what's true is what works." The reality is a bit more complicated.
Pragmatism posits that true beliefs are useful because they've been verified in the world. They help you navigate life because they reflect life through the verification process. For example, understanding what plants are poisonous might be useful for going on a hike.
This, however, doesn't mean that useful ideas are necessarily true. Believing that you have billions of dollars in your bank account might give you a bit of confidence, however, it won't survive a verification process when you go to buy something.
Ultimately, pragmatism views truth as something that happens to an idea through a verification process. It's prone to evolution and progression through further verification, debate, and learning. #philosophy #pragmatism #williamjames
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[@ericb9804]

That's all fine, but it leaves out an important part of pragmatism, namely that it eschews metaphysics, and specifically a notion of "objectivity," in the sense of "corresponding to reality," which is the traditional definition of "Truth." The pragmatist says we can identify "utility" by way of justification, but we can't actually identify "objectivity" by way of justification - we can only insist upon it as a metaphysical claim. So asking "What is Truth," to the pragmatist is same as asking "How are we to use the notion of 'truth' without making metaphysical claims?" To which they answer by not bothering with "Truth" in some "objective" sense and focusing on "utility" instead. i.e. If an idea is justifiably "useful" then it is as good as "True," for our purposes, and that's all that matters.

[@oliviawengerd9282]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS VIDEO!! Currently a college student taking philosophy and watching videos like this helps me so much more than just reading it. KEEP MAKIN EM

[@StrangeCornersOfThought]

Truth gone wild. The philosopher's version of Girls gone wild.

[@kensey007]

Great videos.

[@nikhilmishra4148]

Amazing content with an extraordinary way of describing 💥💥💥💥😍😍

[@sparklenights5421]

currently procrastinating on my exams, not regretting, this is way more interesting

[@manuelpspgo]

Great video. Thanks for taking the time to explain in such detail. Cheers regards from Colombia.

[@king_julien3511]

This is so much easier to understand then how my professor explained it thank you

[@realjamiegardiner]

Hopefully your enjoying the end of the year thanks for all the videos

[@PhilosophyToons]

Thank ya!

[@amel-rh8rq]

Could u start including the references that you use for your videos? It would be a great help for validity!

[@DFullerLisa]

I don't understand my college text book on William James. Thank you!

[@jessicamcheath2334]

why am I even in university when videos like this exist

[@rednarok]

Yes. Because the truth is he cares for himself more when he role plays. In pragmatism you have near truths and those are never complete facts. a pramatic truth is only based on facts and is not near.

[@suqiuliang]

good video love from china

[@GeneralPedrowsky]

PhilosophyToons, I have to thank you for expanding my interest in pragmatism. I already found some of these ideas interesting before, specially the ones by James, but it was your videos that made that interest grow to the point where I felt compelled to read his books. Here's a question to ponder: though in a surface level it seems correct to say that not all useful beliefs are true isn't a false belief also necessarely useless? At least to the extent that one understands "usefulness" as a long term objective? Even if a false belief be "useful" for a while, by the very fact of it being false that means it's built upon a faulty foundation based on a view of reality which is incorrect and that therefore cannot stand the test of time. Evenually reality will manifest itself and when that happens everything that was useful at some point previously will then be seen as most use-less.

[@PhilosophyToons]

Interesting thought. I'm trying to think of a situation where believing in a false believe would be useful for the rest of your life if you never encounter a time where it would be falsified. But I agree that false ideas usually will hit a wall and can't continue being useful eventually.

[@GeneralPedrowsky]

@@PhilosophyToons Appreciate the response :) sorry for the long comment... As a fellow philosophy graduate I'm sure you understand 😆

[@sulosmolo1708]

Might we say that false belief might be useful but with more potential downsides in the future (as compared to true and useful belief)?

[@ericb9804]

If an idea is "false" and yet also "useful," then its unclear why it being "false" should bother me, let alone why I would think it "false" in the first place. The pragmatist point is precisely that "false" and "useful" are not incompatible in some ontological sense, but only incompatible in a practical sense. If said idea stops being useful in the future, then so be it, and if you want to call that idea "false" because of that, then fine. What matters is always utility, never veracity, because only utility can be demonstrably justified by way of experience.

[@axuriosd.6924]

Nice work !

[@PhilosophyToons]

Thank you!

[@ciroalberto397]

4 the algorithm

[@michael.forkert]

_Prefer what makes you think, or what trains your mind to break the barrier of your ego. Avoid book authors, intellectuals, etc., especially people that surround you, who are eager to tell you the "truth". The "truth" others tell us is always their "truth". None of us have the truth. The truth is , what is within the heart of each one of us, even if we do not admit or hide it perverting it with our opinions and preconceptions that have been inculcated into our minds since our birth._ _The truth they tell us, enslaves. The truth that is inside our hearts frees us from our shackles. The Truth is unique, and resides in the heart of each one of us! It is up to each one of us to express truth that is in our own hearts. The truth can only play its true role if it is freely and openly expressed._

[@michael.forkert]

_When I tell you that I am Michael, you don’t know if that is true or not._ _You can believe it or not._ _Whether a statement is true or not, has nothing to do with _*_The Truth_* .

[@SeanNolan5]

but the bug was harmful before it bit you and before you believed it, so truth does not happen to your ideas, the truth remained the same, your ideas are the ones bending, changing and happening. forgive me it i misunderstood.

[@urlocalnerd1561]

I get ur point.

[@SeanNolan5]

@@urlocalnerd1561 but…?

[@vladyslavstepulenko8155]

idea is an experiment, not a solution. However it might be, if we didn't have a better alternative. Truth is what created by verification. The bug could be harmful, but we didn't know that, so the truth was unknown

[@ericb9804]

Before the bug bit you, what sense is there in saying "the bug is harmful?" How would you know that? What would be justification for saying that? It is only AFTER the bug bites you that the statement "the bug is harmful" can be deemed justified by way of your experience. So yes, it sure seems like "the bug was harmful before it bit you," but even that is a statement only justified by the experience of being bit. The point is that when we call any given statement "true," what we are doing is commenting on what we find justified given our experience, but NOT on the "state of the world independent of our experience," which is the traditional, metaphysical notion of "Truth" that you are alluding to.

[@iche9373]

Who is Sasha Grey?

[@gabrielgarciabautista]

Millennials crush

[@jodyharlow233]

One of them skinny pronto star gals that can unhinge her jaw like a ball python. And yeah millennials def crush on her.

[@gabrielgarciabautista]

😂 Sasha Grey used to be my crush

[@2Realdemon]

bro wtf i think im sub consciously a pragmatist

[@benquinneyiii7941]

Floss

[@michael.forkert]

_First of all, an _*_IDEA_*_ can never be true. An _*_IDEA_*_ can turn out to be profitable, or worthless. An _*_IDEA_*_ , can be profitable for few, and detrimental to many. You see, your HEADLINE is: _*_WHAT IS THE TRUTH?_*_ , but you give your audience a number of examples of what is considered to be _*_TRUE_*_ , by you and some philosophers! That’s called intellectual dishonesty, and any kind of dishonesty has not the faintest tangent to the _*_TRUTH_* .

[@patriotasylum]

Bro. Delicious is an opinion. The earth has greater mass than you, is truth. Stop claiming opinions to be truth. Or call them something different, like uhhh opinions. Ridiculous.

[@jodyharlow233]

I believe our filmmaker was stating that “pizza is delicious” is a truth because that’s what the individual in question had proven to himself by having experienced said deliciousness firsthand. Thusly, all truths are also opinions, but not all opinions are also truths. Like the whole square/rectangle conundrum that our beloved filmmaker alluded to near the end of the piece.