Wiliam James What Pragmatism Means

“What Pragmatism Means” by William James

In “What Pragmatism Means, ” Williams seeks out to explain the foundation and reasons behind claims of truth and matter in every day life. He starts out the article with an anecdote describing the arguments about a man chasing a squirrel around the trunk of a tree. In this anecdote he explains the disagreement of opinions among the men as merely a perception of one’s experience that shapes one’s belief and not one that can be labeled as right or wrong, correct or incorrect. As the men proceeded to bicker among themselves, he explained how both views are practically the same thing because no practical difference can be traced. His main idea is that there is no real absolute truth and that the truths that we perceive are relative to our own experience, perceptions, and perspectives. Every person looks upon life in the lens of his own eye biased by his or her own experience. This viewpoint or bias of the world is one we cannot escape.

I found William’s outlook to be fascinating because I had never looked upon facts and truths of life with such a grain of salt. I believe this must have been controversial during his time when he demonstrates that there is no foundationally defined truth but only one defined first by culture and then shaped by one’s personal experience. Truth is something that is purely evolutionary based off a preconceived notion of some satisfactory fact. “Day follows day, and its contents are simply added. The new contents themselves are not true, they simply come and are” (Page 198). This quote explains that truth that we once found satisfactory from experience evolves into a better form not by breakthroughs or science but by experience without even realizing it. Every day our outlook of life is shaped by some sort of experience that unconsciously shapes our outlook on facts, matters, or life. As a kid I had always wanted a dog because commercials, television, and books had always described dogs to...