I find myself in the absurd situation of having to apply footnotes to the footnote.
Use of the Control f function will help.
FTE1. In a broadside leveled against the pragmatists, the idealist F.H. Bradley in 1903 sharply undercut the wishful thinking of the logical positivists and their benchmark of verifiability long before the Vienna Circle published its manifesto in 1929 and long before doubts arose about the "verifiability" criterion of "scientific" philosophy in the late 1930s.
The necessity for, and again the ambiguity of, verification, were topics for discussion long before any Pragmatist began to utter his boasts. What is to verify? Is it to find the object of an idea as a sensible event? Is it to envisage an ideal content clearly and convincingly, or to experience coercion from ideas and their relations? Is it to show that an idea, taken for true, makes the body of our knowledge at once wider and more consistent? To maintain that insistence on verification in any of the above senses is a new thing, would be surely to show oneself grossly misinformed. The only real novelty left to Pragmatism is the claim to verify truth by its practical results. But here we have once more on our hands the question as to what 'practice' is to mean. And any serious attempt to define 'practice', would, or should, rend asunder the Pragmatist church. Such leaders, at least, as the late Prof. James and Dr. Dewey appear on this vital point to teach doctrines which are in radical conflict.[1]In a note attached to the reprinted essay, Bradley concedes that Dewey's 1903 book, Studies in Logical Theory, which Bradley had only recently encountered, brought up much that was "suggestive and valuable." Evidently, Bradley realized that Dewey's argumentation was more sophisticated than Bradley had given him credit for, though he continued to regard pragmatism as flawed.
In the 1911 essay "Faith," Bradley again indignantly rejects pragmatism, while at the same time speaking with what may seem a rather pragmatic tone.
Faith, he says, exists insofar as an "idea is a principle of action, whether theoretical or practical." But, warns Bradley, "The reader is not to identify this view with what is called Pragmatism. Pragmatism, as I understand it, is merely a one-sided perversion of the more complete view."
Yet when Bradley asks whether and, if so, in what sense faith is implied in philosophy, his answer would delight the pragmatist.
... philosophy, I should say, in a sense must depend upon faith. For we do not rest simply on a datum, on a given fact or a given axiom. On the contrary, we may be said to depend on a principle of action. We seek, that is, a certain kind of satisfaction, and we proceed accordingly. In and for philosophy (I do not ask if this holds also in the separate sciences) truth in the end is true because I have a certain want and because I act in a certain manner. The criterion may be said in the last resort to involve my act and choice. And thus in the end truth is not true because it is simply seen or follows logically from what is seen. Further, philosophy in my judgement cannot verify its principle in detail and throughout. If it could do this, faith would be removed, and, so far as it does this, faith ceases. But, so far as philosophy is condemned to act on an unverified principle, it continues still to rest upon faith.[2]Pragmatism is prefigured by the Sophism of ancient Greece.
Protagoras of Abdera (ca. –490 to –420) is known for his aphorism, "Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not" (DK 80B1) [3]. Protagoras claimed that what was true to each of his listeners was, in fact, true. We even hear pragmatism in Protagoras's assertion that truth is relative because there is no objective way to determine the will of the gods. In Greece, this relativism sold well, because it justified political rhetoric that was intended to persuade rather than speak truthfully. And even today in America we hear politicians explain that they are pragmatists, which may imply a willingness to shade the truth.
When Pontius Pilate asked, "What is truth?", he was picking up an old Sophist refrain.
On the other hand, we cannot say that such men as Peirce, James and Dewey were consciously focused on a philosophy of amorality.
1. "On Truth and Practice" appeared in Mind (July 1904). A revised version appeared in Essays on Truth and Reality (Oxford 1914). Bradley says the article was written in early summer 1903.
2. "Faith" appeared in Philosophical Review (March 1911) and was republished in Essays on Truth and Reality (Oxford 1914).
3. Sextus, Against the Mathematicians VII.60 (=DK 80B1).
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