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).