R.C. Sproul on Pragamtism

[Leela]

Dr. R. C. Sproul is Christian theologian and pastor who produces a daily Podcast called Renewing Your Mind. Someone recommended listening to some one his series on secularism which he breaks down and talks about separately with short lectures on humanism, existentialism, pragmatism, positivism, and hedonism. The idea is that evangelicals should know about the worldview of the place where they will be doing their evangelizing, which is their own country. He gives explanations of these five philosophies for the purpose of confronting their inadequacies with Christian doctrine. What follows is my rebuttal to his claims about the shortcomings of pragmatism.

His lecture on pragmatism can be heard here:
ligonier.org/rym.php

Sproul does a good job hammering on the dictinction between being pragmatic and pragmatism as the philosophical perspective of considering beliefs in terms of their consequences in practice. I think he mischaracterized pragmatism’s view of truth, but there is internal debate among pragmatists on the issue, so it is is understandable. In an article called Principle vs. Pragmatism Sproul describes pragmatism like this:

“What is pragmatism? Pragmatism is the only philosophy native to America. Pragmatism eschews any hope of discovering ultimate truth. It is skeptical with respect to objective principles of righteousness and defines truth as “that which works.” In this philosophy, the end always justifies the means. The driving force behind decisions within the scope of pragmatism is the force of expediency.”
crosswalk.com/spirituallife/11597752/

He says that pragmatism has an ironic history in that it was born out of a club at Harvard that was called “The Metaphysical Club.” Sproul always uses the term metaphysics to mean the study of that which is above and beyond nature, of what is supernatural, rather than in the philosphical usage of studying the nature of being and the world. He paints a picture of the young luminaries, William James, C. S. Pierce, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, among others who “were committed to the precepts of metaphysics.” Based on the name of their club, these men must have been especially concerned with questions of a supernatural nature, but they became overcome with skepticism about ever coming to an understanding of transcendent norms. He sees this development as a tragedy of intellectual history, but I had understood that the club was deliberately named with irony based on the members’ pre-existing agnosticism concerning the hopes of philosophy to establish any metaphysical truths. Either way, there is the throwing up of hands concerning metaphysical questions, the success of technological advancement in improving the conditions of human life making people less likely to seek escape into another realm, as well as the influence of Darwinism that led to the birth of pragmatism.

Philosophical pragmatism comes from looking at the history of philosophy since Plato defined knowledge as “justified true belief” and noticing that we have come no closer since then of finding a foundation for our claims to knowledge. When can we say that our beliefs are justified in being true? We can’t overcome the extreme skepticism of the one who asks, “what if I am a brain in a vat? How can we say that we know anything at all?” Descartes was able to deduce his own existence from that degree of skepticism (“I think, therefore I am.”), but philosophers since then haven’t been able to agree on much beyond being pretty sure that they exist. Pragmatists have lost hope in the philosophical project of finding a foundation for our truth claims. They have chosen to focus instead on how we come to update our existing beliefs. They note that Cartesian skepticism is not really the position we are in. Descarte could do the thought experiment of supposing that he had no beliefs at all to see what he could deduce through reason alone, but our actual human situation is one where we already have beliefs. The question we are faced with is whether any of our beliefs need to be revised because they have been shown to be false, or whether other beliefs should be adopted because they have proven to be true.

cont.

 

[Leela]

To drive his point home that a “what works” concept of truth is not practical, Sproul ends his lecture by asking us to imagine a court room where people are asked to pledge to “tell the expedient, the whole expedient, and nothing but the expedient,” but pragmatists haven’t given up on truth at all. Truth is truth. We just doubt that philosophers will ever be able to say anything very interesting about truth in and of itself. Some pragmatists argue that truth is a concept that is a prerequisite for having a language at all, which explains why all definitions of truth sound so tautological. We all know what it means to say that something is true, and I don’t think pragmatists mean anything different by the word. Sproul described the pragmatists as saying that something could be true for one person and false for another since a belief may work for one person but not the other. While a belief may be justified in the eyes of one person but not in the others’ eyes, the belief would not be simultaneously true and false. It is either one or the other.

Where Sproul would find that he really parts company with the pragmatists is in his conception of “ultimate truth,” which he treats as an essence. People who are not pragmatists talk about capital-t Truth, but pragmatists can’t make any sense of truth as an essence. Truth is just the property that all true sentences have in common. There is nothing to be said about big-t Truth. We only try to know small-t truths. I think Sproul is wrong to say pragmatism defines truth as “that which works,” though I can see how some pragmatists can be construed as saying that. Sproul describes this statement as pragmatism’s “theory of truth,” and points out that as a theory of truth, “what works” doesn’t work. True enough, it doesn’t work as a theory of truth, but the failed project of finding a theory of truth is exactly the issue that pragmatism was invented to address. Recall that pragmatists doubt that we will be able to say anythnig philosophically interesting about truth. No theory of truth has ever been able to help us say more true things. Pragmatists are saying, let’s give up on this project. In fact, wee don’t need a theory of truth. We can go ahead and talk about the process of justification, anyway, which is what is always our concern in practice.

That’s where “that which works” comes in–not as a theory of truth but as an explanation of the verification process by which we justify our beliefs to ourselves and to others. I don’t read pragmatism as prescribing a definition of truth as “that which works.” I see it as describing how justification works. If a belief leads us to what we want, i.e., if it works, we hold it to be true, at least provisionally. If not, we judge it to be false. Pragmatists don’t say that’s how it ought to be. They note that that’s just how justification functions. Where pragmatism becomes prescriptive is in recommending that we take a certain perspective on beliefs. Pragmatists suggest that if we want to understand what it means to believe something, much clarity of thought is gained if we consider the belief to be equal to the sum of all consequences of holding that belief in lived experience. That’s the only prescription pragmatists are making. They aren’t saying that you ought to hold something as true because it works, they are saying that if you believe something that works for your purposes, you will naturally continue to hold it as true whether or not it actually is, and if it fails to work for your purposes, you will recognize it as false. Some classical pragmatists would say that if to whatever extent it actually does help you achieve your purposes, then to that extent it literally is true, but in making such statements, they were too smug in promoting a theory of truth as “what works” that Sproul is right to say doesn’t wok.

 

[Leela]

Sproul has another objection: what do you mean by “works”? That requires a standard, which is actually a value judgment. The pragmatist is happy to agree here. In fact, one of the criticism that pragmatism makes on the philosphical tadition in addition to its critique of the pursuit of theories of truth is its attempts to make a hard distinction between facts and values. Facts always, at minimum, presuppose values. Why are you choosing to talk about these facts, instead of some other facts if not based on your values? But Sproul thinks that since values are of issue in deciding if a claim “works”, then the pragmatist who does not believe in transcendent values just makes his choice based on personal preference, and what is good and what is true can’t just be a matter of personal preference. Personal preference comes in to some degree, but one only has to be realist enough to believe that reality actually exists to be convinced that what works and what is good and true is not just whatever you want it to be, since “what works” is constrained by reality in every day lived experience. But perhaps Sproul is right that a pragmatist who was in possession of transcendent values would have some advantage. What is meant by transcendent values, and how to we get them? I assume by “transcendent values” he means knowing what God wants and that he thinks we find this knowledge in the Bible.

Sproul is concerned that pragmatists try to solve problems without possessing these transcendent values. He talks about the American can-do attitude toward problem-solving as if it were a bad thing. His issue is that solving a problem results in creating two problems, “or four, or eight, or sixteen…[audience chuckles]” He makes what seems to me to be a very strange choice of using social security as his example of a pragmatic solution that had short-term success but ultimately created more problems than it solved. It’s a whole other issue to debate whether social security is a good thing, but I certainly can’t see how possessing the revealed truth of the gospels or any other religion could have helped anyone create a better social security system or avoid creating such a system all together.

Pragmatism does not tell people what they ought to want. No one has ever found a philosophical foundation for doing that. Religion tells people what they should want, but of course individuals still have to choose to subscribe to whatever religion they choose, so Sproul hasn’t completely gotten around his own objection concerning personal preference by identidying himself as Christian. There is still his personal choice to do so. Some people may believe that they’ve had these transcendent values revealed to them personally. If they are right, then they would certainly be at an advantage in deciding what projects to pursue, but even if you believe that there is a single standard of human behavior that all humans need to conform to, how could we ever evaluate one person’s claim of knowledge of this standard with another’s claim of knowledge of this standard when the two people claim to know different things? I think we all know that this in not a mere hypothetical.

Pragmatists note that competing claims are either born out in human experience or not. These claims need to be justified to others in the same ways that we try to justify all our beliefs when we want our private values to become public projects–by pointing to lived human experience. We need to get other people on board with our projects if we hope to accomplish them. How do we do that? In other words, the interesting question in practice is not about whether we think our knowledge has an absolute foundation, since as soon as we find the need to get others on board, whether or not we personally believe that our values are transcendent or natural immediately becomes irrelevent. The question returns to this: how can we hope to justify our beliefs to others? Even if Sproul thinks that he has a rock solid foundation for his beliefs in the Bible or the Christian tradition, it simply isn’t the sort of foundation that is philosophically interesting because it can’t supply him with knock-down arguments in support of his positions that will be convincing to anyone else who does not already accept his premises. It requires faith. So the pragmatist’s question for theists is, how could it possibly be helpful in any way to make the claim in the public sphere that your beliefs about morality come from God rather than from human experience? Aren’t you still going to need to justify your beliefs in terms of human experience when you want others who may disagree with you (which will include other believers with different beliefs) to join in with your project of creating the sort of world that you would like (or, if you prefer, that you believe that God would like)? How is it different in practice to say, “this is the sort of world that I think would be better for us for these reasons…” compared to “this is what God wants”? I think the answer is that the first statement is useful and the second is completely useless. It is merely a conversation stopper. Someone can either agree or disagree with all the premises behind that claim, but the conversation can go no further because no one is universally thought to have authority about what God wants. So God is really only relevant to private beliefs about morality and is completely irrelevant in a pluralistic society to getting others behind our public projects for creating the sort of world that we think is morally good. From the pragmatist perspective, it is not so much that God-talk is wrong so much as it is just unhelpful idle talk for our public moral purposes.

 

[TheAtheist]

100% agreed.

The only problem you’ve neglected to take into account is that a person’s desire to act on something cannot be merely reduced to obeying a set of logical propositions.

Aren’t you still going to need to justify your beliefs in terms of human experience when you want others who may disagree with you (which will include other believers with different beliefs) to join in with your project of creating the sort of world that you would like (or, if you prefer, that you believe that God would like)?

But isn’t it just easier to villify those who have opposing viewpoints, seize political power, and do as you will by exonerating your choices as being “right.”

Why bother with justification? It may in fact be more eminently practical not to do as such.

BTW - i don’t agree with the viewpoint i’ve just stated. But i know a lot of people who do.

How is it different in practice to say, “this is the sort of world that I think would be better for us for these reasons…” compared to “this is what God wants”?

Yeah, but then we fall into Wittgenstein’s idea of a language game.

“This is what God wants.” = “This is the sort of world that i think would be better for us for these reasons.” in certain mindsets.

Furthermore, an attempt to “translate” the phrase into language agreeable to the other person can sometimes be construed as a sign of weakness.

 

[Leela]

100% agreed.

The only problem you’ve neglected to take into account is that a person’s desire to act on something cannot be merely reduced to obeying a set of logical propositions.

Can you say more about this. Are you saying that this is an important aspect of pragmatism that I neglected? If so, I may need to learn about it.

Do you think of your self as a philosophical pragmatist?

Yeah, but then we fall into Wittgenstein’s idea of a language game.

“This is what God wants.” = “This is the sort of world that i think would be better for us for these reasons.” in certain mindsets.

Furthermore, an attempt to “translate” the phrase into language agreeable to the other person can sometimes be construed as a sign of weakness.

That’s one way of describing the situation between atheists and theists. Both are begging all the important questions. The most each of us can do is tell our stories and plead, “try to think of it this way…”

Best,
Leela

 

[dcastlen50]

The question returns to this: how can we hope to justify our beliefs to others? .

I can clearly see I am out your league. I find in my experience either those out of my league are much more intelligent and rational than I or better at rhetoric than I can ever expect to be.

Please tell me if I am off regarding “how we hope to justify our belief…?” Isn’t the basic moral beliefs we have all encompassing. Aren’t they Universal and not Particular? Can we agree there ARE some (Particular) moral beliefs that are Universal; e.g., do not murder, do not still (from me at least), do not lie (to me at least), And wouldn’t an anthroplogist answer “yes” to this?

And if the above is true and if it is true that history finds all societies have had these beliefs, than can we, or must we, conclude they have been intuited? This is assuming one society is and was too far away in time and travel to affect another. By whom or what I offer no answer; but by something, it appears “yes.”

I have been wrong so often and by so much, I will try to stay open to your answer.

 

[Leela]

I can clearly see I am out your league. I find in my experience either those out of my league are much more intelligent and rational than I or better at rhetoric than I can ever expect to be.

Please tell me if I am off regarding “how we hope to justify our belief…?” Isn’t the basic moral beliefs we have all encompassing. Aren’t they Universal and not Particular? Can we agree there ARE some (Particular) moral beliefs that are Universal; e.g., do not murder, do not still (from me at least), do not lie (to me at least), And wouldn’t an anthroplogist answer “yes” to this?

And if the above is true and if it is true that history finds all societies have had these beliefs, than can we, or must we, conclude they have been intuited? This is assuming one society is and was too far away in time and travel to affect another. By whom or what I offer no answer; but by something, it appears “yes.”

I have been wrong so often and by so much, I will try to stay open to your answer.

Societies do tend to come up with the same basic morals. Your question seems to be, what do we make of that fact? For people persuaded that morality rests on eternal principles, this fact may be viewed as evidence that such principles exist and clues that aid in our inquiry into what these principles may be.

Pragmatists, on the other hand, start with a very different perspective on inquiry. As Richard Rorty puts it, “pragmatists hope to make it impossible for the sceptic to ask the quetsion, ‘Is our knowledge of things adequate to the way things really are?’ They substitute for this traditional question the practical question, ‘Are our ways of describing things, of relating things to other things so as to make them meet our needs more adequately, as good as possible? Or can we do better. Can our future be made better than our present?’”’ They don’t want to think of inquiry as having the goal of unearthing eternal truths. They see this as a bad goal since we could never know when we’ve achieved it even if we had. So the question of whether such eternal moral principles exist is one that the pragmatists would prefer to be unasked since we think it is not a useful goal of inquiry. We can’t aim at truth, but we can aim at better justification for our beliefs. If inquiry is a search for truth as traditionally understood, there is no way to talk about progress without already knowing what the truth is. But if inquiry is concerned with justification, then we can measure progress in terms of assuaging particular doubts.

This still leaves the question of what we can mean by moral progress which I’ll return to later. Before I can get there, I need to point out that the pragmatists doesn’t see a difference in kind between facts and values, between truths about physics and truths about ethics. So what I said about the pragmatist’s perspective about inquiry applies to inquiry into ethics. Just as we can’t aim at truth as a goal, we also can’t aim at “doing what is right” because as with truth, we can never know when we’ve hit the mark. (An asside, I once learned that “sin” was an ancient Hebrew archery term for “miss the mark,” to not be as good as you could be, while the modern Christian interpretation seems to concern evil.) You can’t aim at being morally perfect, but you can aim at being more sensitive to the pain of others, at seeing others as part of yourself. Rorty descibes moral progress as “a matter of wider and wider sympathy.” We can aim at “taking more people’s needs into account than you did previously.”

Now I’ve been on this forum long enough to anticipate the coming objection: “If there were no God, then why would we need to be concerned for others, why wouldn’t we be running around cheating on our souses and stealing our neighbor’s pronography?” The simple answer for most people is, “because we are not psycopaths.” People like this exist, but psychology has given us an idea of how this pathology comes about. A psychopath’s self-conception contains no relations to others. She is a self not merely acting as a self but always for herself. The psychopath does not occur because they gave up on certain ideas about ultimate reality but because she never developed trust for loving parents in early childhood. So this psychopath is a lot like the Cartesian skeptic that is a false philosphical boogieman that we are supposedly supposed to be able to answer. If we really were psychopaths, there would be no answer to the question of “why aren’t we all trying to steal our neighbor’s pornography,” but thank goodness we are not psychopaths. Our self-conceptions do include relations to others. And the more we can expand this web of relations that we identify as part of our selves, the more morally developed we are. We don’t need to think of ourselves as psychopaths that need to be restrained, but rather humans who need to be nurtured especially when we are young in order to develop the trust in other humans that makes this web of relations possible.

 

[Thales]

I don’t know much about Pragmatism, but this sounds interesting. Would I be correct in summarizing the essence of philosophical Pragmatism as a belief system which professes there to be no absolute truth and therefore no source of absolute truth (i.e. a creator)? Or is it that there is no way of knowing absolute truth based on our limitations of sense, intellectual capacity, perspective, and other such things that give us knowledge?

 

[Leela]

I don’t know much about Pragmatism, but this sounds interesting. Would I be correct in summarizing the essence of philosophical Pragmatism as a belief system which professes there to be no absolute truth and therefore no source of absolute truth (i.e. a creator)? Or is it that there is no way of knowing absolute truth based on our limitations of sense, intellectual capacity, perspective, and other such things that give us knowledge?

What I’m giving you here is my take on pragmatism based on Richard Rorty’s departure from classical pragmatism on certain points. There is internal debate on some of what follows among philosphers on the meaning of pragmatism. When I say “pragmatists say…” you can substitute, “this particular pragmatists thinks that…” if you like.

Plato defined knowledge as justified true belief. Lets look at these three terms separately to get at what pragmatism is about. Pragmatism may be best understood as a suggestion to take a certain perspective rather than as a set of beliefs. The main recommendation for pragmatists is that we consider beliefs in terms of there consequences in lived experience. So pragmatism is pragmatic in the sense that we ground our talk “in practice” rather than the colloquial use of pragmatism as being practical. Beliefs are understood as habits of action. To believe something is to be prepared to act in certain ways under certain circumstances. Pragmatists hope to make our ideas more clear with this perspective.

Pragmatism retains truth, but I don’t know what is added when you talk of “absolute” truth. Such a concept is often used to refer to an essence of truth, some capital-t Truth. Pragmatists don’t think of truth as having an essence. We think of truth as something we say about sentences. Truth isn’t a meaningful concept outside of the specific sentences that are said to be true.

Your secong question is about whether or not we can ever know when we’ve reached the truth. Pragmatists would like to drop such ideas as correspondence with reality, justification under some idea of ideal circumstances, what science will end up maintaining, and generally all “theories of truth.” They note that whether or not any of these theories work as theories of truth, they don’t help us know whether or not we’ve reached the truth or help us say more true things which was the whole point of trying to find a theory of truth to begin with. So pragmatists would like to change the subject. We don’t think that the goal of inquiry ought to be truth but rather better justification for our beliefs. They don’t think we can aim at truth in inquiry since we wouldn’t know if we’ve found it even if we have, but we can aim at assuaging various doubts and better justifying our beliefs. What philosophy has promised in the past but has not been able to deliver on is a method for justification that gets us closer and closer to truth. Pragmatists don’t think philosophy can give us such a foundation and it never should have promised to do so.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

“The Pragmatist sets out to be practical, but his practicality turns out to be entirely theoretical.” G.K. Chesterton

 

[dcastlen50]

“The Pragmatist sets out to be practical, but his practicality turns out to be entirely theoretical.” G.K. Chesterton

How enlighting. Thank you.

 

[Leela]

How enlighting. Thank you.

I hope you are kidding. People around here tend to use the winking thumbs up guy without any irony. I don’t use the smilies so I don’t know if there is a non-winking thumbs up guy.

Chesterton is confusing pragmatism with practicality and pragmatism’s criticism of the philosphical tradition’s theories of truth with pragmatism having a failed theory of truth itself. Pragmatists think that truth is, as Donald davidson put it, transparently clear, primitive, and undefinable in any way that could be helpful in distinguishing the true from the justified or any way that is helpful in saying more true things.

 

[dcastlen50]

I hope you are kidding. People around here tend to use the winking thumbs up guy without any irony. I don’t use the smilies so I don’t know if there is a non-winking thumbs up guy.

Chesterton is confusing pragmatism with practicality and pragmatism’s criticism of the philosphical tradition’s theories of truth with pragmatism having a failed theory of truth itself. Pragmatists think that truth is, as Donald davidson put it, transparently clear, primitive, and undefinable in any way that could be helpful in distinguishing the true from the justified or any way that is helpful in saying more true things.

I absolutely ment to compliment the person who quoted et al.

I am having problems following your long sentences. Humes had the same talent as you. I have to say, in my opinion, that Aristotle had it right. To paraphase him, what is true is true what is not is not. Truth is a very simple concept; albeit, a difficult pursuit. My early understandng of pragmatist has come from Charles Peirce and William James. I understand as do a number of compedent philosphers that “pragmatism” ment that the truth is what is useful to believe; the source of a successful endeavor.

I believe that this view (my definition of pragmatism) is harmful. It tells one that he should believe whatever helps him in his efforts. I believe it is (also) an ellicid conversion of an “A” proposition: " (All) Truth is (that which is) helpful, therefore (All) that is helpful is truth". One can not rationally distribute an undistributed term in the conclusion.

 

[Leela]

I absolutely ment to compliment the person who quoted et al.

I am having problems following your long sentences. Humes had the same talent as you.

Sorry. I’ll try to be more clear.

I have to say, in my opinion, that Aristotle had it right. To paraphase him, what is true is true what is not is not. Truth is a very simple concept; albeit, a difficult pursuit.

That’s what pragmatists say as well. We don’t think there is anything philosophically interesting to say about truth. Truth is truth.

As you say, it is the pursuit of truth where things gets interesting. Pragmatists say that truth can’t function as the aim of inquiry. We can’t pursue truth as a goal. The only way to pursue truth in practice is to already know what the truth is, otherwise how would you know if you have gotten any closer to it? How would you even know when you have reached it? What we can aim for is assuaging our doubts and justifying our beliefs to wider audiences. So the aim of inquiry is justification rather than truth.

My early understandng of pragmatist has come from Charles Peirce and William James. I understand as do a number of compedent philosphers that “pragmatism” ment that the truth is what is useful to believe; the source of a successful endeavor.

James spent his life arguing that pragmatism does not say that truth is merely what is helpful, but he also kept saying things that sounded a lot like that. He seems to describe truth as what is justifiably assertible, but then it is not clear what difference there is between truth and justification. I think the way to make sense of the contradiction is to read James as not having a theory of truth. This is what the neo-pragmatists like Richard Rorty would like to do. True is true, as you say. The interesting question is how we justify our beliefs.

You are right that many philosophers don’t want to read James that way. Richard Rorty wanted to think of Donald Davidson as a pragmatist, but while Davidson was saying pretty much the same thing as Rorty, Davidson denied being a pragmatist on the grounds that pragmatism’s theory of truth is warranted assertibility which he did not subscribe to.

I believe that this view (my definition of pragmatism) is harmful. It tells one that he should believe whatever helps him in his efforts. I believe it is (also) an ellicid conversion of an “A” proposition: " (All) Truth is (that which is) helpful, therefore (All) that is helpful is truth". One can not rationally distribute an undistributed term in the conclusion.

I agree that this interpretation of classical pragmatism is problematic. If we read the classical pragmatists to have been wielding a theory of truth as “what works,” then as you point out, that theory itself does not work.

 

[Thales]

This whole business of Pragmatism sounds like aimless wandering about in the woods. I don’t see how any of it is helpful at all. It doesn’t seem to advance anything.

Maybe the antiquated (as you say) goal of inquiry to reach Truth, being the basis of philosophy was never truly thought of as something attainable. The goal is simply in place to get one moving in a general direction. A Christian doesn’t expect in this life, maybe not even in the next, to ever comprehend the mind of God, the source of truth, Truth itself. There are even many stories in the Bible warning against this type of prideful effort. Instead I should think we are looking for a relationship with God, not His knowledge, but we would like to get to know Him better. He leads us down a path to Himself through revelation (i.e. the Bible, Christ, His Church). Wherever the path leads is not important, but once we are on it God accompanies us and walks with us. This is the goal.

I don’t mean to insult the thing of Pragmatism, so please forgive me, I need to do some more reading on it and maybe I’ll get a better handle on what it is. It’s not your explanations that befuddle me, they’re very thorough and well written, it’s my lack of knowledge.

 

[Leela]

This whole business of Pragmatism sounds like aimless wandering about in the woods. I don’t see how any of it is helpful at all. It doesn’t seem to advance anything.

What should philosophy advance? It doesn’t get you a ticket to heaven or anything. Aren’t we just trying to see if we can get our ideas to hang together?

Wilfred Sellars: “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to see how things in the broadest sense of the term hang together in the broadest sense of the term.”

 

[dcastlen50]

Sorry. I’ll try to be more clear.

That’s what pragmatists say as well. We don’t think there is anything philosophically interesting to say about truth. Truth is truth.

As you say, it is the pursuit of truth where things gets interesting. Pragmatists say that truth can’t function as the aim of inquiry. We can’t pursue truth as a goal. The only way to pursue truth in practice is to already know what the truth is, otherwise how would you know if you have gotten any closer to it? How would you even know when you have reached it? What we can aim for is assuaging our doubts and justifying our beliefs to wider audiences. So the aim of inquiry is justification rather than truth.

It appears then what we have in this converstion is a number of us addressing ambiguities and attempting to clarify. That is a good pursuit. But in this and all similiar struggles one can become even more mired in equivications and ambiguities.

James spent his life arguing that pragmatism does not say that truth is merely what is helpful, but he also kept saying things that sounded a lot like that. He seems to describe truth as what is justifiably assertible, but then it is not clear what difference there is between truth and justification. I think the way to make sense of the contradiction is to read James as not having a theory of truth. This is what the neo-pragmatists like Richard Rorty would like to do. True is true, as you say. The interesting question is how we justify our beliefs.

You are right that many philosophers don’t want to read James that way. Richard Rorty wanted to think of Donald Davidson as a pragmatist, but while Davidson was saying pretty much the same thing as Rorty, Davidson denied being a pragmatist on the grounds that pragmatism’s theory of truth is warranted assertibility which he did not subscribe to.

I agree that this interpretation of classical pragmatism is problematic. If we read the classical pragmatists to have been wielding a theory of truth as “what works,” then as you point out, that theory itself does not work.