The "true", to put it briefly, is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the "right" is only the expedient in our way of behaving. Convenient in almost every way; and cost effective in the long term and overall of course; for that which conveniently satisfies all experience in view will not necessarily satisfy all further experiences equally satisfactorily. Experience, as we know, has the ability to boil over and make us correct our current formulas." - William James, Pragmatism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned" Get an original essay Many philosophers consider William James the wisest and most impressive of American philosophers He is known as the second of the three great pragmatists alongside Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey the human belief towards conscious action acquired questions that required him to. turn to philosophy. From that moment he developed his pragmatic epistemology, which focuses on the meaning of ideas and the truth of beliefs not theoretically, but in terms of the practical dissimilarity they can create in people's lives that knowing that our truths must pragmatically “agree” with such realities means that they must lead us to useful consequences. The point of pragmatism is that we cannot identify something called “ultimate truth”. , and further that this idea is meaningless and misleading. The purpose of “knowledge” is to help us get by in the world. There are five main "theories of truth": the correspondence theory, the coherence theory, and the pragmatic, redundant, and semantic theories. They all face truth and falsehood as properties of what people say or think. At the same time they are confusing and difficult to follow because they do not clearly address the questions: "How should the content of what we say or think be specified? Who are the bearers of truth?" Pragmatic theory, of which William James is one of the main representatives, maintains that the truth of a belief is a question of whether it "works", that is, whether acting on it pays off, just as the experiences we have are a question of coherence with the future. experiences. The one mentioned above is one of the many similar theories of William James and his concept of truth. This essay is about the concept of truth and justification from the perspective of a pragmatist and what elements of truth and justification contribute to constructing an individual's belief or ideas by taking help from "Pragmatism" by William James edited by Bruce Kuklick. In Pragmatism, James establishes the legitimacy of a pragmatist conception of truth already expressed by Schiller and Dewey. James also shows the error in the rationalist conception of truth. James provided numerous, although interconnected, definitions of truth. Belief is the statement or belief regarding the truth of a proposition, especially when one does not have sufficient evidence to justify the claim that the proposition is known with certainty. The belief that a proposition is true when acted upon produces satisfactory practical results. According to him, "the truth of our ideas means their ability to function" (30). Truth and faith are like hands and pockets. An idea is true as long as we believe it is worthwhile or beneficial to our life. Also «the truth is a species of the good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from the good and coordinated with it. True is the name of everything that proves to be good in terms of belief and goodness, even for precise and attributable reasons" (37). Here he means to say that for defined and flexible reasons the term truth comesused for whatever proposition turns out to be good in terms of belief. The greatest enemy of our truths is our remaining beliefs that we hold to be true, as James quotes "we are better off believing it to be true unless the belief accidentally clashes with some other vital benefit." (37) According to James everyone agrees with the theory that "truth is agreement with reality". Differences and confusion arise when you get into the details of this theory. Questions about what is meant by agreement and what is meant by reality are the main sources of such differences and confusion. Reality, according to James, can be classified into matters of fact and matters of mind include the objects that can be seen or perceived but no further verification is required Matters of mind include the ideas and beliefs that a person has, thinks or perceives virtually. James describes the term done. The concept of 1 + 1 equaling 2 and 2 + 2 equaling 4, falls into that category of truth "where the relations between purely mental ideas form another sphere" (95) where beliefs are absolutely and unconditionally true . These kinds of beliefs are called "definitions" or "principles" and are called "facts" in general. No further sense testing is required for these truths and they are eternally evident at first glance. But it further describes the circularity in the relationship between truth and facts. For example, he talks about the Newtonian philosophy in which acceleration varies with distance, and inversely, distance also varies with acceleration. According to him, truth emerges from facts but the facts themselves are made clearer and stronger by adding more truth to them. And these newly created facts give rise to truths again. This process is circular and goes on indefinitely thus creating confusion. Using the above example and James' concept, the definition of fact (facts relating to the term "fact") can be modified to include experience as an actor. If not always, but often statements of fact are true if they are verified by experience or if we would expect their verification by experience. So James ties true facts and beliefs to those that lead us to continue to believe them as the evidence continues to accumulate. Likewise, in the case of relations between ideas, our theories are true if they continue to "mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences" (98) and those truths include other theories. Truths, rather than Truth, are the emphasis in pragmatic theory. The “Absolute Truth,” defined as “that which no further experience can ever alter” (100), is an ideal point never reached. As an ideal point never reached, truth is not what makes particular truths true. Particular beliefs become true in practice and continue to be true as they are held through practice. The being true of an idea is therefore like the healthy being of an individual. It allows for new successes and must be maintained to continue to be so. Since experience is a process in which no one point of view can be the ultimate, pragmatism asks the question, “Granting that an idea or belief is true… what concrete difference will it make that it is true in life someone's reality? Will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those that would be obtained if the belief were false? What, in short, is the monetary value of the truth in experiential terms? must obey the rules of reality to be true. From the pragmatic point of view, the truth should be in accordance with every aspect of life and combine experiences and needs without any exception reality is concrete or abstract, it canbe considered truth and vice versa, since truth always happens to an idea. We can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify ideas that are true but not false and contrary to reality. You can say "it is useful because it is true" or "it is true because it is useful". (93) According to James both sentences mean the same thing, that is, an idea that is realized and can be verified. His theory poses the question of whether the usefulness of an idea is defined by its truth, or whether the truth of an idea is defined by its usefulness. Both are correct, according to James' theory. Truth is seen as equivalent to utility. Truth is a form of verification process; if an idea or belief can be verified by experience then it is true. If beliefs are loosely connected to reality and experiences, then that particular belief will always lead to falsehood. Another aspect of truth is that it is verbally constructed, stored and disseminated among everyone through the process of social communication. Our ideas are exchanged between other people every day. Humans lend and borrow verifications. True ideas make us speak and think coherently, stabilizing the flow of human relationships. They keep us busy while keeping boredom and loneliness away. By expressing true ideas we prevent ourselves from the frustration of sterile and fruitless thinking. In addition to being a collective noun for verification processes, truth has also been compared to human health, wealth, and strength. It is connected to life just as these other processes are. As James quotes, “Truth is created, just as health, wealth, and strength are created, in the course of experience.” (98) As mentioned above, James also provides the conception of truth from the rationalist point of view and shows the error in their argument. Rationalism lies in the validity of propositions. "Truth is a system of propositions which have an unconditional claim to be recognized as valid." (102). Judgments made by human beings because of their vital duty are considered truths by rationalists. First, according to James, the word "proposition" seemed too explicit. It has encouraged confusion between truth as a property of opinions and truth as a property of the facts asserted by opinions. He thought that trying to understand our thoughts, beliefs, or ideas in terms of propositions only leads to confusion. As he puts it, propositions were "damned bastards that have no real place between reality on the one hand and beliefs on the other." Secondly, according to rationalism, truth is a property of ideas that exists by virtue of their connection with reality. But rationalism does not dispel doubts about what this connection with reality is. It cannot be a simple copy, since many elements of reality do not have image copies. A rationalist is opposed to a pragmatist's argument that truth is created and believes that truths are discovered. Then truth must prevail independently of human notion and should exist regardless of whether it is detectable or not. James presents a flaw in rationalist theory. The rationalist takes some characteristics of truths, such as their independence from human will, and elevates them to the condition of truth. Overall, the rationalist loses the ability to effectively support the claim that we should pursue truth over falsehood. Truths must be sought to the extent, and only to the extent, they are required for our purposes since “an idea is true if it works.” If we weren't pursuing any purpose, why would we need truthful ideas? Therefore, according to rationalism, make the definition of truth completely independent of ours.