Accordingly, in every genuine metaphysical debate some practical issue, however conjectural and remote, is involved.
By definition, metaphysical debate deals with those issue existing in the abstract rather than the concrete. James argues that though this is the case, any conception which can be applied to the abstract must somehow related to concrete practice in even the most barely tenuous relationship possible in order to truly qualify as a metaphysical issue. This interpretation brings the metaphysical into the realm of pragmatic philosophy.
I offer the oddly-named thing pragmatism as a philosophy that can satisfy both kinds of demand. It can remain religious like the rationalisms, but at the same time, like the empiricisms, it can preserve the richest intimacy with facts.
The essential, underlying purpose behind this text and they stimulation behind Pragmatism becoming the first truly American contribution to philosophy is James’ dissatisfaction with what he characterizes as a temperament opposition of thought between rationalism and empiricism. Pragmatism is his attempt at a viable integration in which neither existing outlook is irreparably harmed.
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs 'pass,' so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
One can only wonder with what earth-shattering boggling of the mind would William James respond to the post-truth universe of late January, 2017. More than a century earlier, James was raising a warning flag about “alternative facts” to which absolute truth could be attributed by those refusing to face up to challenges. At the same time that he was raising this warning, however, he was being quite pragmatic in the solution which involved nothing more sinister or difficult than making the effort to seek out”
“direct face-to-face verifications somewhere, without which the fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash-basis whatever.”
James is arguing that truth is based on facts with the caveat that as facts change, evolve or are revealed to be false, so must the truth change with them.
The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalizes. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience.
What is a pragmatist, ultimately? Well, one could read the entire book because essentially that is what the book is about. By the end, however, perhaps no definition is put more clearly and in sharper focus than this explanation of what makes a pragmatist differ from a rationalist or empiricist.
