Religious beliefs Essay

In What pragmatism Means, mob writes that the central point of his own doctrine of rightfulness is, in brief, that truth is single species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and coordinate with it. fair play is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, moveable reasons. Richard Rorty claims that James did not mean to give a conjecture of truth with this statement, and that we should not regard it as such though other reality scholars such as Susan Haak and Howard Mounce do not sh be an instrumentalist reading material of James.Bruce Kuklick, (Kuklick, tells us that, James went on to apply the pragmatic method to the epistemic problem of truth. He would seek the meaning of true by examining how the persuasion functioned in our lives. A belief was true, he said, if in the long feed it worked for all of us, and guided us expeditiously finished our semi-hospitable world. James was intent to uncover what true beliefs amounted to in human life, what their Cash Value was, what consequences they guide to.A belief was not a mental entity which somehow cryptically corresponded to an external reality if the belief were true. Beliefs were ways of acting with reference to a precarious environment, and to say they were true was to say they guided us satisfactorily in this environment. In this sense the pragmatic theory of truth use Darwinian ideas in philosophy it made survival the test of intelligent as well as biological fitness. If what was true was what worked, we can scientifically investigate religions claim to truth in the kindred manner.The enduring quality of religious beliefs throughout recorded history and in all cultures gave indirect support for the view that such beliefs worked. James also argued directly that such beliefs were satisfyingthey enabled us to lead fuller, richer lives and were more workable than their alternatives. Religious beliefs wer e expedient in human existence, just as scientific beliefs were. William James gave a further direction to pragmatism, developing it as a theory of truth.True ideas, according to James, are useful leaderships they lead through experience in ways that provide consistency, orderliness, and predictability. John Dewey was another leading pragmatist whose influence on educational and social theory is still preponderant in American society. We learn from (American Pragmatism I), that James elaborated his theory of pragmatism in works such as Pragmatism A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907) and The message of Truth A Sequel to Pragmatism (1909).He considered pragmatism to be both a method for analyzing philosophic problems and a theory of truth. He also saw it as an extension of the empiricist attitude in that it dark away from abstract theory and fixed or absolute principles and toward concrete facts, actions, and relative principles. James considered philosophies to be exp ressions of personal temperament and developed a correlation between tough-minded and tender-minded temperaments and empiricist and rationalist positions in philosophy.Theories, he felt, are instruments that humans use to solve problems and should be judged in terms of their cash value or practical consequences for human conduct.ReferenceAmerican Pragmatism I. Pragmatism. Adventures in Philosophy. James, William. (1902-1920). What is Pragmatism. The Library of America. Lecture II Kuklick, Bruce. William James. The Introduction to William Jamess Pragmatism. Wikipedia, The Free Dictionary.