The Meaning of Truth

In this sequel to Pragmatism, one of America's outstanding philosophers, William James (1842-1910), responds to absolutist critics believers in immutable truth and innate or inherited knowledge who misrepresent the philosophy of pragmatism as just another form of positivism or regard it as mere egoistic solipsism.

Objective truth exists, James argues, but it can only be known in terms of experience; truth isn't "out there" waiting to be discovered. And knowledge derives from a process of inquiring in which a chain of mental and physical intermediaries connect thought and things.

Titles of the essays in this volume, originally published between 1884 and 1908, include: "The Function of Cognition," "Humanism and Truth," "The Pragmatic Account of Truth and Its Misunderstanders," "The Existence of Julius Caesar," and "Abstractionism and 'Relativismus.'"