A PRAGMATIC TURN

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

So, as the last posting claims, Americans, as the 1800s came to an end, entertained the notion by Charles Darwin that life was merely the daily struggle for survival.  Of course, those who held traditional views, many of them defined by religious beliefs, were not going to take that lying down.  Many in that field would launch major counterattacks that would first belittle the implications of Darwin’s findings, but eventually organized more formal responses.

          Among them – of probably most note – were active efforts to prevent this survivalist messaging from becoming part of America’s subject matter in its schools, culminating with the famous Scopes trials of the 1920s.  But all of this did not prevent what many considered a more common diffusion of this impulsive and shallow mode of thinking.  This thinking was particularly acute among segments of the population usually in larger cities such as New York and Chicago. 

But more needs to be clarified regarding William James’ analysis and how it culminated in a new philosophic approach known as pragmatism.  Again, relying on Allen C. Guelzo’s work, the central notion of James’ reasoning was that if one could not attribute any design or master plan to nature other than one of randomness entailed with the battle for survival among organic life – called natural selection – there was no reason to deny one from imposing one’s personal patterns on that reality.  That is, one person’s views were as good as anyone else’s views.

Guelzo describes this newer approach:

 

James knew that … people choose to believe, not what is strictly true, but what turns out to be most convenient to their inclinations, or in evolutionary terms, what is more convenient to their survival or prosperity.  So long as there is no absolute proof to the contrary and as long as someone is not just blowing bubbles, the believer is perfectly justified in indulging a belief in God, and equally so with the unbeliever, who in the absence of the same proofs, may indulge a will not to believe in God.[1]

 

Here, one needs to stop and consider.  An event happens, say an election.  The official loser claims that the election was rigged.  His/her supporters wish, a la James, to believe in the loser’s claim.  While one cannot prove that the claim is not true, one cannot prove it is. 

Since the system needs to accept one or the other possibility – was it rigged or not – the system sets up a process that aims to avoid such cheating, but then assigns the courts to determine whether any claim to such cheating took place.  The courts, then, establish the burden of proof on those parties claiming the cheating took place (in most instances, it is difficult or impossible to prove something did not take place).

To prove that it did – this seems to be the only way to accommodate such claims – calls for observable evidence that people engaged in some sort of activity such as producing false ballots, tampering with the machinery of voting booths and counting facilities, or some such action.  Yet when the claims are not proved, but the accuser persists in those claims, what happens? 

Legally nothing, but the political cost can be high and undermine the entire legitimacy of the process and of the system itself – isn’t that what is happening in the American polity today?  Regardless, what sounds innocuous in James’s argument, as illustrated by this election example, can be quite harmful. 

In this case, that harm is to the legitimacy of a political system, but with some imagination, one can think about how such thinking can affect a society in various ways.  For example, one can think of the irresponsible trends the nation experienced in the years leading up to the Great Depression.  The Roaring ’20s were well named.

James continues.  Since people have to adopt beliefs in all sorts of things, there is no a priori reason to rely exclusively on scientific findings.  For various reasons, one can cite less confidence about what science provides at any given time.  For one thing, reality changes and findings can become no longer valid, or results are limited by some factor or other – one sees this currently with what one hears should be done concerning the COVID pandemic. 

Picking up on the thoughts of Chauncey Wright, Oliver Wendall Holmes, and Charles Sanders Peirce, James, with the above notions, spells out the basic ideas and ideals of pragmaticism.  Whether this newer approach builds upon or diminishes the effects of the Enlightenment and scientific thinking, one can interpret the effects in various ways.  On the one hand, it furthered a secular mode of thinking but as just illustrated, it undermined the basic legitimacy of scientific findings.

How?  Well, it offered a philosophic basis by which to ignore science – at least to some degree.  In that sense, it questions the epistemology of science.  It gives permission to upgrade one’s “beliefs” (as opposed to knowledge) and, therefore, provides a platform to legitimate doubt.  The function of thinking, according to Peirce, in Darwinian terms, is to develop habits so that one acts in such ways to secure survival.  Nothing is more practical.

This flew in the face of both theology and science since both sought/seek truth in theoretic terms – those abstract explanations for why the real is real.  But, in terms of pragmaticism, truth lies in the results one experiences in reality – what works or doesn’t work.  And this seemed highly congruent with how people normally think.  Here, a common standard of truth is what results in profit – that is, a betterment in one’s condition.

In this pursuit, to be honest, one’s “temperament” plays a central role that science and theology ignore.  This lays the foundation for relativity, not in natural science, but in popular culture.  What works – no, what works best – becomes the standard for truth.  Therefore, beliefs, say a belief in the existence of God, solves many concerns and fears.  If it works for someone, then why not?  Go ahead and believe. 

To broaden this view, pragmatists argue that this sense of truth prevails in the universe.  This is exemplified by society.  There, policies by the various entities, including government, are the product of calculations.  If an entity acts one-way, certain consequences will likely occur.  Those outcomes can be measured as to their viability and consequences. 

Law, especially criminal law, in a very practical way, weighs in on those calculations.  Therefore, to be law-abiding is not a moral concern, but a transactional concern.  One obeys laws not to be good or even right.  One does so to avoid paying the costs of being caught.  If it works for a person to avoid the costs of being caught by thinking in moral terms, that’s fine too – “whatever works.”

Why was James attracted to such thinking?  One can speculate as to his family stories – which Guelzo reviews – and his and everyone else’s experience with the Civil War with all of its costs, emotionally and otherwise.  There, justifications – from both sides – often cited religious rationales. 

It seems God was on both sides of that conflict, according to the respective apologist one cites.  One can detect, in James’ work, his personal stake in these ideas, mostly from a therapeutic perspective. In other words, his pragmaticism functioned to allow him to process all the unimaginable pain the nation experienced.

Yet, as Guelzo points out, James never addresses why people initially seek the truth.  The search for truth often leads to sad outcomes as in the Civil War and its casualties.  Some hint, for example, that Abraham Lincoln, given the moral stakes involved, was resigned to see the war take place.[2]  But that reflects what this blogger finds most damaging with the pragmatist argument. 

History seems to indicate that one can generalize certain modes of behavior among citizenries that promote societal health and longevity.  The fact that the world’s religions seem to copy each other in terms of moral principles bolsters that claim, albeit their interpretations of those principles can vary – example, some justifying slavery. 

If pragmatism, with all its experimentation – the type in which people seek what works – ends up discovering the same conclusions, perhaps that will accrue to people as a plus, i.e., a sense of ownership as to what is moral.  But that route can prove to be highly costly. 

What one can take away from James and the pragmatists is their formula by which traditional moral standards and thinking could be put aside without much guidance as to what – to any degree of specificity – is good or bad, right or wrong.  And that could and did sacrifice a federalist/republican mindset that undergirded the nation’s constitutional framework.  What could go wrong?

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[1] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part II – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 130.

[2] For example, Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1999).

THE “BIRTH” OF PSYCHOLOGY

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

The last posting gave the reader a thumbnail summary of the Progressive and New Deal eras and attempted to make the point that between the two, Americans expressed an adoption of a consumerist view toward governance.  And as one takes this shift into account, one can readily see a move away from federal relationships between and among Americans and their government to a natural rights view in defining those relationships. 

They – many of them – ceased seeing themselves as mutual partners of the polity to that of consumers of governmental services.  This shift has proven to be fundamental and highly consequential.  To understand its significance or implication, one needs to have some understanding as to why it was motivated to happen.  And for that, while not offering a complete account, one needs to revisit the 1800s.

Of all things, a biological discovery seems to have had an inordinate influence on changing America’s view of all social relationships including political ones.  With Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species, the basic religious, theological assumptions of Americans came to be seriously questioned. 

While among typical Americans, the book became a subject of humor (common images of monkey relatives); among intellectuals, it became immersed in serious questioning of various topics and issues.  Is there a god?  Is there free will?  Is life just a material reality deprived of any spiritual importance or existence?  If current life is the product of a long, evolving process, what does that mean in terms of how old the earth is?  All of these questions brought biblical accounts into question.

Allen C. Guelzo[1] brings his readers a short, but insightful summary of how intellectuals reacted to this 1859 book.  He identifies those who initially took on these concerns.  The interested reader can look up those intellectuals – mostly theologians – who led in this questioning.  They include Crawford Howell Toy, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Augustus Briggs, and Walter Rauschenbusch.  Here is a snippet of Guelzo’s description:

 

[With the backdrop of the rise of corporate power], [f]or the 22 million people who inhabited American cities, crowding into festering tenements, there was precious little in the way of public community or organic society.

          But to Social Darwinists [i.e., the social application of Darwin’s ideas], … that was not a problem because there were no mystic, spiritual ties to bind families and communities together; and to the great captains of Gilded Age industry, this was just what nature had ordained.  When William H. Vanderbilt was asked by an incredulous reporter about what the public would say about his most recent corporate shenanigans, he replied, “The public be damned.”[2]

 

          But Guelzo places the bulk of his account on the work and life of William James.  Beyond providing a review of James’ family background – an interesting and telling story – Guelzo highlights this intellectual’s contribution to this ongoing reaction to Darwin.  And in this, one needs to mention the influence of Charles Sanders Peirce.  Here is a rundown of his, James’, main points. 

          To begin, there might be free will or not, but if one believes there is, that is enough to give one a positive sense of oneself.  With that, one can function with confidence as one meets his/her challenges or opportunities.  As a result, one enjoys a sense of freedom and a – at least – perceived moral life.  And these ideas encouraged James to pick up the study of the mind – what would become known as psychology – which at the time had not even been named.

          This interest seemed to grow from his studies in theology and philosophy.  And, in turn, both of those fields were based on introspection or the study, in fancy language, of one’s consciousness, an outgrowth of self-absorption.  And at the same time, from abroad, an interest in psychology was taking root in Germany but not from a spiritual angle.  There, the study zeroed in on how stimulation affected mental and physical capacities.

          Another source from abroad was what this blog has referred to before, the “common-sense” philosophy from Scotland.  There, such writers as Alexander Bain and John Stuart Mill reconceptualized thinking as merely ideas about things as opposed to perceived moral qualities of moral objects.  This was more in line with Darwin’s description of survival as a battle within a physical environment sans any outer-world forces or qualities.

          All of this suggested that psychology could and should be a legitimate physical science and subjected to scientific methods of measuring variables or factors and attempting to make predictable conclusions about a world in which survival of the fittest is studied.

          Finally, in 1890, James had his hefty work, Principles of Psychology, published.  And in that work, one finds the influence of another thinker – one featured earlier in this blog – Jonathan Edwards.  Guelzo describes this as follows,

 

… the Principles were actually at some moment reminiscent of a great many of Edwards’s approaches and ideas.  James argued that minds were not assemblies of independent faculties that met like a committee for thinking, but more like a stream of consciousness.  “Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits,” James wrote.  “No state of consciousness is permanent or independent like a ‘faculty’.  Instead, consciousness is always generating novelties and appropriating and fusing all kinds of experience.”  The ultimate purpose served by this stream of consciousness was evolutionary.  The mind, James argued, was an organ, evolved for a use, which was to ensure survival.[3]

 

And that consciousness can be analogized as a stage upon which a variety of options is reviewed and evaluated as one considers what to do.  Under such a view, one can entertain the idea of a complex – not an all-or-nothing – sphere of choice.

The possibility of entertaining novelties undermined the notion of a simple, calculating mind that merely figured out rewards or benefits and punishments or costs.  And, in that, life is a succession of encountering things, not as stagnant realities, but in things becoming or “in the making.”

With that, this blog will give the reader a bit of time to consider the worth of James’ contribution.  There is still more to report from his work, but one, at this point, might project where this is going and how federalist values and beliefs might be challenged in some ways and enhanced in others.  Either way, what remains, to this blogger, is a bit surprising.  The next posting will conclude this William James presentation. 

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[1] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part II – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005).  For a more detailed account of James and other pragmatists, see Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001). 

[2] Guelzo, The American Mind, Part II, 118-119.

[3] Ibid., 129.