3. What are the contributions of progressivism philosophy in education?

As we have seen, the pragmatist maxim is a distinctive rule or method for

becoming reflectively clear about the contents of concepts and hypotheses:
we clarify a hypothesis by identifying its practical consequences. This raises
some questions. First: what, exactly is the content of this maxim? What sort
of thing does it recognize as a practical consequence of some theory or
claim? Second, what use does such a maxim have? Why do we need it? And
third, what reason is there for thinking that the pragmatist maxim is correct?
In this section, I shall examine Peirce's answers to some of these questions
but, as we proceed, we shall also compare Peirce's answers to these
questions with those offered by James.

(See Hookway: 2012 passim)

We can begin with Peirce's canonical statement of his maxim in ‘How to
Make our Ideas Clear’.

Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we

conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of
those effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (EP1: 132)

William James cited this passage when introducing pragmatism in his 1906
lectures, and Peirce repeated it in his writings from after 1900.

For all his loyalty to it, Peirce acknowledged that this formulation was vague:
it does not explain how we should understand ‘practical consequences’. We
shall seek clarity by looking at one of Peirce's illustrative applications of his
maxim, by noting some of his later reformulations, and by identifying the
uses to which it was put in his writings.
Peirce's first illustrative example (‘the simplest one possible’ (EP1: 132) urges
that what we mean by calling something hard is that ‘it will not be scratched
by many other substances.’ I can use the concept hard in contexts when I
am wondering what to do. Unless there are cases where something's being
hard makes a difference to what we experience and what it is rational for us
to do, the concept is empty. The principle has a verificationist character: ‘our
idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects’ (EP1: 132) but the use of
the phrase ‘practical consequences’ suggests that these are to be
understood as having implications for what we will or should do. This is clear
from his later formulations, for example:

The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all
general modes of rational conduct which, conditionally upon all the possible
different circumstances and desires, would ensue upon the acceptance of
the symbol. (EP2: 346).

We become clearer about the concept hard, for example, by identifying how
there can be conceivable circumstances in which we have desires that would
call for different patterns of action if some object were hard from those it
would call for if the object were not hard. If I want to break a window by
throwing something through it, then I need an object which is hard, not one
which is soft. It is important that, as Peirce hints here, the consequences we
are concerned with are generalones: we are to look for the laws that govern
the behaviour of hard things and for laws that show how such modes of
behaviour on the part of things can make a difference to what it is rational
for us to do.
James never worked out his understanding of ‘practical consequences’ as
fully as Peirce did, and he does not share Peirce's restriction of these
consequences to those that affect ‘intellectual purport’ or to general
patterns of behaviour. Sometimes he writes as if the practical consequences
of a proposition can simply be effects upon the believer: if religious belief
makes me feel better, then that can contribute to the pragmatic clarification
of ‘God exists’. It is connected to these differences that James looks upon
Peirce's principle as a method for metaphysics: he hopes that the attempt to
clarify metaphysical hypotheses will reveal that some propositions are empty
or, more important, that, as in the squirrel example, some apparent
disagreements are unreal.

Peirce sees uses for his maxim which extend beyond those that James had in
mind. He insisted that it was a logical principle and it was defended as an
important component of the method of science, his favoured method for
carrying out inquiries. This is reflected in the applications of the maxim that
we find in his writings. First, he used it to clarify hard concepts that had a
role in scientific reasoning: concepts like probability, truth, and reality. We
shall discuss his view of truth below. It also had a role in scientific testing.
The pragmatist clarification of a scientific hypothesis, for example, provides
us with just the information we need for testing it empirically. Pragmatism,
described by Peirce as a ‘laboratory philosophy’, shows us how we test
theories by carrying out experiments (performing rational actions) in the
expectation that if the hypothesis is not true, then the experiment will fail to
have some predetermined sensible effect. In later work, Peirce insisted that
the maxim revealed all the information that was need for theory testing and
evaluation (EP2: 226ff). The pragmatist clarification revealed all the
information we would need for testing hypotheses and theories empirically.

Peirce's description of his maxim as a logical principle is reflected in

passages where he presents it as a development of a distinction that had
been a staple of traditional logic texts, the distinction, familiar to readers of
Descartes, between ideas that are clear and ideas that distinct (EP1: 126f). As
Peirce described contemporary versions of this distinction, the highest grade
of clarity, distinctness is obtained when we can analyze a concept (for
example) into its elements by providing a verbal definition. Peirce
complained that ‘nothing new is ever learned by analyzing definitions’, and
we can learn from a definition only if we already have a really clear
understanding of the defining terms. He announced that a higher grade of
‘perspicuity’ was possible, one that supplemented the verbal definition with
a detailed description of how the concept is employed in practice. This was
provided by applying the pragmatist maxim.

As well as treating the pragmatist maxim as part of a constructive account of

the norms that govern inquiry, Peirce, like James, gave it a negative role. The
maxim is used as a tool for criticism, demonstrating the emptiness of a priori
‘ontological metaphysics’. In section 3.1 we shall see how the pragmatic
clarification of reality could be used to undermine the flawed ‘nominalistic’
conception of reality that led to the ‘copy theory of truth’, to Cartesian
strategies in epistemology and the Kantian assumption that we can possess
the concept of a ‘thing in itself’. Such applications reflect Peirce's concern
with logic: he uses the maxim to criticize concepts whose use can be an
impediment to effective inquiry. A more vivid non-logical example of using
the concept to undermine spurious metaphysical ideas was in showing that
the Catholic understanding of transubstantiation was empty and incoherent
(EP1: 131f). All we can mean by wine is something that has certain distinctive
effects upon the senses, ‘and to talk of something as having all the sensible
characters of wine, yet being in reality blood, is senseless jargon.’

Why should the pragmatist maxim be accepted? Here another difference

between James and Peirce emerges. James made no concerted attempt to
show or prove that the principle of pragmatism was correct. In his lectures,
he put it into practice, solving problems about squirrels, telling us the
meaning of truth, explaining how we can understand propositions about
human freedom or about religious matters. But in the end, inspired by these
applications, we are encouraged to adopt the maxim and see how well
things work out when we do so.

Since Peirce presented the maxim as part of the method of science, as a

logical or, perhaps better, methodological principle, he thought that it was
important to argue for it. Indeed, after 1900, he devoted much of his energy
to showing that the maxim could receive a mathematical proof. He used
several strategies for this. In 1878, he relied upon the idea that beliefs are
habits of action: when we form a belief, we acquire a disposition to act in
some distinctive way. Applying the pragmatist maxim to the clarification of a
proposition, he argued, involved describing the habits of action we would
acquire if we believed it (EP1: 127f). In the lectures on pragmatism which he
delivered at Harvard in 1903, he adopted a different strategy. He offered a
detailed account of the cognitive activities we carried out when we used the
method of science: these consisted in the three kinds of inference, inductive,
deductive and abductive. His strategy then was to argue that the pragmatist
clarifications brought to the surface all the information that was required for
responsible abductive reasoning, and that our use of inductive and
deductive arguments made no use of conceptual resources that could show
that pragmatism was mistaken. (EP2: 225–241; Hookway 2005) None of
these arguments fully satisfied him, and the task of fine tuning these
arguments and seeking for alternatives was his major philosophical concern
of the last ten years of his life. Although he remained optimistic of success in
this, he was never satisfied with his results.

3. Pragmatist theories of truth

These differences in motivation become clearest when we consider how

both Peirce and James applied their pragmatist maxims to the clarification
of the concept of truth. Peirce's account of truth is presented as a means to
understanding a concept that was important for the method of
science: reality (3.1); while James was ready to use his account to defend the
pluralist view that there can be different kinds of truths (3.2).

3.1 Peirce on truth and reality

The final section of ‘How to Make our Ideas Clear’ promises to ‘approach
the subject of logic’ by considering a fundamental logical conception, reality.
It possesses a form of unreflective clarity: ‘every child uses it with perfect
confidence, never dreaming that he does not understand it.’ An abstract
definition is also readily forthcoming: ‘we may define the real as that whose
characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be.’ But, he
announces, we shall need to apply the pragmatic maxim if our idea of reality
is to be ‘perfectly clear’. It is at this stage that the concept of truth enters the
discussion: Peirce's strategy for clarifying the concept of reality is, first, to
give an account of truth, and, then, to observe that ‘the object represented
in [a true proposition] is the real’. So we have to turn to his remarks about
truth to see how the kind of mind-independence captured in the abstract
definition of reality is to be understood from a pragmatist perspective.

Peirce's motivations are evident when he says that ‘the ideas of truth and
falsehood, in their full development, appertain exclusively to the scientific (in
a later revision he altered this to ‘experiential’) method of settling opinion’.
This reflects a law which is evident from scientific experience: when different
people use different methods to identify, for example, the velocity of light,
we find that all tend to arrive at the same result:

So with all scientific research. Different minds may set out with the most
antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force
outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. This activity of
thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a foreordained
goal, is like the operation of destiny. No modification of the point of view
taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even,
can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. (EP1: 138)

In the 1878 paper, his pragmatic clarification is quite tersely expressed:

The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate,

is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is
the real. That is the way I would explain reality. (EP1: 139)

Peirce had presented this way of thinking about reality seven years earlier
when he described it as the ‘realist conception of reality’ (EP1:88–9). In doing
this, he contrasts it with another ‘nominalist’ conception of reality, which he
thinks is flawed, but which many earlier philosophers had accepted. In a
review of a new edition of the writings of Berkeley—a philosopher who,
according to Peirce, was in the grip of this misleading picture—Peirce asks
‘where the real is to be found’, observing that there must be such a ‘real’
because we find that our opinions (the only things of which we are
immediately aware) are constrained. While acknowledging that there is
‘nothing immediately present to us but thoughts’, he continues:

These thoughts, however, have been caused by sensations, and those

sensations are constrained by something out of the mind. This thing out of
the mind, which directly influences sensation, and through sensation
thought, because it is out of the mind, is independent of how we think it,
and is, in short, the real. (EP1: 88)

We can then think of the real only as the cause of the (singular) sensations
which, in turn, provide our sole evidence for beliefs about the external
world, and this naturally leads to both nominalism about universals and
skepticism about empirical knowledge. Peirce's pragmatist clarification of
truth offers an alternative conceptualization of ‘being constrained by reality’.
It is explained in terms of this fated agreement of convergence through the
process of inquiry rather than in terms of an independent cause of our
sensations. Although the nominalist theory is not clearly worked out here, it
is clearly related to the ‘intellectualist’ or ‘copy’ theory of truth attacked by
other pragmatists. It articulates a metaphysical picture that all pragmatists
tried to combat. See (Misak 2007, 69f) where Cheryl Misak emphasises that
Peirce does not offer a traditional analysis of truth. Rather, he provides an
account of some of the relations between the concepts of truth, belief, and
inquiry, She describes this as a naturalistic understanding of truth, and calls
it an anthropological account of how the concept is used.
3.2 James on truth

Claims about truth had a much more central role in James's work and he
was even prepared to claim that pragmatism was a theory of truth. And his
writings on this topic rapidly became notorious. They are characteristically
lively, offering contrasting formulations, engaging slogans, and intriguing
claims which often seem to fly in the face of common sense. We can best
summarize his view through his own words:

The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of
belief, and good, too, for definite assignable reasons. (1907: 42)
‘The true’, to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our
thinking, just as ‘the right’ is only the expedient in the way of our
behaving. Expedient in almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run
and on the whole, of course. (1907: 106)

Other formulations fill this out by giving a central role to experience:

Ideas … become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory
relations with other parts of our experience. (1907: 34)
Any idea upon which we can ride …; any idea that will carry us prosperously
from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things
satisfactorily, working securely, saving labor; is true for just so much, true in
so far forth, true instrumentally. (1907: 34)

This might be taken to suggest that beliefs are made true by the fact that
they enable us to make accurate predictions of the future run of experience,
but other passages suggest that the ‘goodness of belief’ can take other
forms. James assures us that it can contribute to the truth of a theological
proposition that it has ‘a value for concrete life’ (1907: 40); and this can
occur because the idea of God possesses a majesty which can ‘yield
religious comfort to a most respectable class of minds’ (1907: 40). This
suggests that a belief can be made true by the fact that holding it
contributes to our happiness and fulfilment.

The kind of passages just noted may lend support to Bertrand Russell's
famous objection that James is committed to the truth of ‘Santa Claus exists’
(Russell 1949: 772). This is unfair; at best, James is committed to the claim
that the happiness that belief in Santa Claus provides is truth-relevant.
James could say that the belief was ‘good for so much’ but it would only be
‘wholly true’ if it did not ‘clash with other vital benefits’. It is easy to see that,
unless it is somehow insulated from the broader effects of acting upon it,
belief in Santa Claus could lead to a host of experiential surprises and
disappointments.

4. The pragmatist tradition

So far, we have concentrated on the pragmatist maxim, the rule for

clarifying ideas that, for both Peirce and James, was the core of pragmatism.
When we think of pragmatism as a philosophicaltradition rather than as a
maxim or principle, we can identify a set of philosophical views and attitudes
which are characteristic of pragmatism, and which can lead us to identify as
pragmatists many philosophers who are somewhat sceptical about the
maxim and its applications. Some of these views may be closely related to
the maxim and its defence, but we shall now explore them rather as
distinctive characteristics of the pragmatist tradition. The first of the themes
that we shall consider is epistemological, and it picks up on Hilary Putnam's
claim that one mark of pragmatism is the combination of anti-skepticism
and fallibilism.

Like some other philosophers, the pragmatists saw themselves as providing

a return to common sense and the facts of experience and, thus, as rejecting
a flawed philosophical heritage which had distorted the work of earlier
thinkers. The errors to be overcome include Cartesianism, Nominalism, and
the ‘copy theory of truth’: these ‘errors’ are all related.

4.1 Skepticism and fallibilism

The roots of the anti-sceptical strain can be found in an early paper of

Peirce's, ‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’ (EP1: 28–30). He
identifies ‘Cartesianism’ as a philosophical pathology that lost sight of the
insights that were both fundamental to scholastic thought and also more
suited than Cartesianism to the philosophical needs of his own time. The
paper begins by identifying four characteristics of the sort of modern
philosophy that is exemplified by Descartes' writings. In each case, Descartes
self-consciously made a break with the scholastic tradition, and, in each
case, the outlook that he rejected turns out to be the outlook of the
successful sciences and to provide the perspective required for
contemporary philosophy. The first, and most important, of these
characteristics was the ‘method of doubt’: ‘[Cartesianism] teaches that
philosophy must begin with universal doubt’. We are to try to doubt
propositions and we should retain them only if they are absolutely certain
and we are unable to doubt them. The test of certainty, as Peirce next points
out, lies in the individual consciousness: trial through doubt is something
that everyone must do for him or her self. And the examination of our
beliefs is guided by reflection on hypothetical possibilities: we cannot trust
our perceptual beliefs, for example, because we cannot rule out the
possibility that they are produced by a dream or by wicked scientists
manipulating our brains. (See Hookway 2012, chapters 2,3.)

The initial pragmatist response to this strategy has several strands. It is a

strategy that we cannot carry out effectively, and there is no reason to
adopt it anyway. Peirce begins his response by claiming that any attempt to
adopt the method of doubt will be an exercise in self-deception because we
possess a variety of certainties which ‘it does not occur to us can be
questioned.’ What is produced will not be a ‘real doubt’ and these beliefs
will lurk in the background, influencing our reflection when we are supposed
to be suspending judgment in them. Peirce urges that we should not
‘pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts’. We
should doubt propositions only if we have a real reason to do so. It is
necessary to separate some different threads here.