Charles Sanders Peirce complained that James allowed pragmatism to become "infected" with "seeds of death" like the idea that truth is mutable. The Truth is What Works is an attempt to defend James's pragmatic theory of truth from a wide range of critics including Peirce, Betrand Russell, Hilary Putnam, and Cornel West. Cormier runs the gauntlet of historical and contemporary criticism in an attempt to show, not that Jamesian pragmatism does in fact contain a perfectly good theory of objective reality (...) after all, but rather that it doesn't, and is still a kind of realism anyway because it does not leave individuals and their subjective desires behind in an attempt to describe the real world. (shrink)

Brian Ribeiro argues that the pragmatic theory of truth massively misrepresents the actual use of the terms “true” and “truth.” Truths, he observes, can be distinguished from “illusions.” The latter misrepresent reality and the former do not. Psychologists, as they report on the way mentally healthy people commonly overestimate themselves, draw just this distinction. They tell us of many beliefs that are “adaptive” but illusory. Pragmatists cannot draw this distinction because their theory explains truth as adaptiveness. Therefore no sensible person (...) will be a pragmatist. In fact, however, Ribeiro paints a flawed picture of what both psychologists and pragmatists do. Psychologists provide us not with “reality-based accurate beliefs” but instead with beliefs that work, and pragmatists do not identify all beliefs that are adaptive or useful for individuals as true. Pragmatism turns out to be quite sensible, though often misunderstood. (shrink)

Brian Ribeiro argues that the pragmatic theory of truth massively misrepresents the actual use of the terms “true” and “truth.” Truths, he observes, can be distinguished from “illusions.” The latter misrepresent reality and the former do not. Psychologists, as they report on the way mentally healthy people commonly overestimate themselves, draw just this distinction. They tell us of many beliefs that are “adaptive” but illusory. Pragmatists cannot draw this distinction because their theory explains truth as adaptiveness. Therefore no sensible person (...) will be a pragmatist. In fact, however, Ribeiro paints a flawed picture of what both psychologists and pragmatists do. Psychologists provide us not with “reality-based accurate beliefs” but instead with beliefs that work, and pragmatists do not identify all beliefs that are adaptive or useful for individuals as true. Pragmatism turns out to be quite sensible, though often misunderstood. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What Is in the Head What Ain't in the Head A Change of Mind The Ideal and the Real Facts and Values Is Putnam Postmodern Despite Himself?

Rorty should be read as a reformer, rather than a revolutionary transformer. While the reformer aims to improve what is already good, the revolutionary transformer seeks to dispense with the merely good in a quest for the absolutely best. For Rorty this choice was a bad choice. In order to make the ..