The Meaning of Truth

The Meaning of Truth, by
William James

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Title: The Meaning of Truth
Author: William James

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THE MEANING OF TRUTH
A SEQUEL TO 'PRAGMATISM'
BY
WILLIAM JAMES

PREFACE
THE pivotal part of my book named Pragmatism is its account of the
relation called 'truth' which may obtain between an idea (opinion, belief,
statement, or what not) and its object. 'Truth,' I there say, 'is a property
of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their
disagreement, with reality. Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept
this definition as a matter of course.
'Where our ideas [do] not copy definitely their object, what does
agreement with that object mean? ... Pragmatism asks its usual question.

"Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference
will its being true make in any one's actual life? What experiences [may]
be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false?
How will the truth be realized? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value
in experiential terms?" The moment pragmatism asks this question, it
sees the answer: TRUE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CAN
ASSIMILATE, VALIDATE, CORROBORATE, AND VERIFY.
FALSE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CANNOT. That is the
practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that therefore is
the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.
'The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth
HAPPENS to an idea. It BECOMES true, is MADE true by events. Its
verity IS in fact an event, a process, the process namely of its verifying
itself, its veriFICATION. Its validity is the process of its validATION.
[Footnote: But 'VERIFIABILITY,' I add, 'is as good as verification. For
one truth-process completed, there are a million in our lives that
function in [the] state of nascency. They lead us towards direct
verification; lead us into the surroundings of the object they envisage;
and then, if everything, runs on harmoniously, we are so sure that
verification is possible that we omit it, and are usually justified by all
that happens.']
'To agree in the widest sense with a reality can only mean to be guided
either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such
working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected
with it better than if we disagreed. Better either intellectually or
practically .... Any idea that helps us to deal, whether practically or
intellectually, with either the reality or its belongings, that doesn't
entangle our progress in frustrations, that FITS, in fact, and adapts our
life to the reality's whole setting, will agree sufficiently to meet the
requirement. It will be true of that reality.
'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; for what meets expediently all the experience in sight won't
necessarily meet all farther experiences equally satisfactorily.
Experience, as we know, has ways of BOILING OVER, and making us
correct our present formulas.'
This account of truth, following upon the similar ones given by Messrs.
Dewey and Schiller, has occasioned the liveliest discussion. Few critics
have defended it, most of them have scouted it. It seems evident that
the subject is a hard one to