Pragmatism and Other Writings by William James

Author:William James [James, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Non-Fiction, Psychology, Religion, Classics
ISBN: 9780140437355
Amazon: 0140437355
Goodreads: 55972
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 1907-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

In point of fact it actually seems to grow by our mental determinations, be these never so ‘true.’ Take the ‘great bear’ or ‘dipper’ constellation in the heavens. We call it by that name, we count the stars and call them seven, we say they were seven before they were counted, and we say that whether any one had ever noted the fact or not, the dim resemblance to a long-tailed (or long-necked?) animal was always truly there. But what do we mean by this projection into past eternity of recent human ways of thinking? Did an ‘absolute’ thinker actually do the counting, tell off the stars upon his standing number-tally, and make the bear-comparison, silly as the latter is? Were they explicitly seven, explicitly bear-like, before the human witness came? Surely nothing in the truth of the attributions drives us to think this. They were only implicitly or virtually what we call them, and we human witnesses first explicated them and made them ’real.’ A fact virtually pre-exists when every condition of its realization save one is already there. In this case the condition lacking is the act of the counting and comparing mind. But the stars (once the mind considers them) themselves dictate the result. The counting in no wise modifies their previous nature, and, they being what and where they are, the count cannot fall out differently. It could then always be made. Never could the number seven be questioned, if the question once were raised.

We have here a quasi-paradox. Undeniably something comes by the counting that was not there before. And yet that something was always true. In one sense you create it, and in another sense you find it. You have to treat your count as being true beforehand, the moment you come to treat the matter at all.

Our stellar attributes must always be called true, then; yet none the less are they genuine additions made by our intellect to the world of fact. Not additions of consciousness only, but additions of ‘content.’ They copy nothing that pre-existed, yet they agree with what pre-existed, fit it, amplify it, relate and connect it with a ‘wain,’29 a number-tally, or what not, and build it out. It seems to me that humanism is the only theory that builds this case out in the good direction, and this case stands for innumerable other kinds of case. In all such cases, odd as it may sound, our judgment may actually be said to retroact and to enrich the past.

Our judgments at any rate change the character of future reality by the acts to which they lead. Where these acts are acts expressive of trust, — trust, e.g., that a man is honest, that our health is good enough, or that we can make a successful effort, — which acts may be a needed antecedent of the trusted things becoming true, Professor Taylor says7 that our trust is at any rate untrue when it is made, i. e., before the

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