BY DENTON LORING GEYER B.A. University of Wisconsin, 1910 M.A. University of Wisconsin, 1911 THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PHILOSOPHY IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 1914 THE PRAGMATIC THEORY OF TRUTH AS DEVELOPED BY PEIRCE, JAMES, AND DEWEY. This thesis attempts to trace the growth of the pragmatic doctrine of truth through the works of its three most famous advocates in America. An examination of Peirc

Pragmatism has been described as an attitude of mind, as a method of investigation, and as a theory of truth. The attitude is that of looking forward to outcomes rather than back to origins. The method is the use of actual or possible outcomes of our ideas to determine these ideas’ real meaning. The theory of truth defines the truth of our beliefs in terms of the outcome of these beliefs. Pragmatism as a principle of method, like the Mendelian laws of heredity, lay for decades in oblivion. It wa

“It appears, then, that the rule for attaining … clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object”. (Italics mine). An application of this method to a conception which particularly concerns logic occupies the last section of the article,—a use of the method to make clear our conception of “reality”. Co

In concluding, James relates Peirce to the English Empiricists, asserting that it was they “who first introduced the custom of interpreting the meaning of conceptions by asking what differences they make for life…. The great English way of investigating a conception is to ask yourself right off, ‘What is it known as? In what facts does it result? What is its cash-value in terms of particular experience? And what special difference would come into the world according as it were true or false? ’ T

The first article which James wrote on truth, as he later states, 3 was entitled “The Function of Cognition”, and was published in Mind in 1885. Commenting on this article in 1909 he asserts that many of the essential theses of the book “Pragmatism”, published twenty-two years later, were already to be found here, and that the difference is mainly one of emphasis. 4 This article attempts to give a description of knowing as it actually occurs,—not how it originated nor how it is antecedently poss

In 1907 when he published his book “Pragmatism”, James, as we all know, was willing to accept the new theory of truth unreservedly. The hesitating on the margin, the mere interpreting of other’s views, are things of the past. From 1907 James’ position toward pragmatism as a truth-theory is unequivocal. Throughout the book, as I should like to point out, James is using ‘pragmatism’ in two senses, and ‘truth’ in two senses. The two meanings of pragmatism he recognizes himself, and points out clear

If, now, we wish to bring out the difference between the account of truth which we have just examined and the account that is given by James, we will find the distinction quite evident. Truth, for Dewey, is that relation which arises when, at an experience of fulfilment, one looks back to the former experience and thinks of its leading as now confirmed. An idea is true, therefore, when we can refer back to it in this way and say, “That pointing led me to this experience, as it said it would”. Th

We seem, then, it may be said in conclusion, to be confronted with something like the following alternatives: If we believe that Dewey could not have made a correct deduction from the pragmatic method when he developed it into a theory of truth making truth dependent upon fulfilled expectations alone, then very obviously the next step in this investigation is to find the point at which his inference went wrong. This means a re-examination of each step in his reasoning. If we believe that Dewey d

(See also the list under ‘ Truth ’). The writer was born in 1884 at Pomeroy, Ohio, and received his earlier education in the country schools near that city. His college preparatory work was done in the high school of Roswell, New Mexico, from which he was graduated in 1906. He then entered immediately the University of Wisconsin, and from this institution received the Bachelor’s degree in 1910 and the Master’s degree in 1911. From 1911 to 1914, while acting as fellow or as assistant, he studied