You're in possession; you
KNOW; you have fulfilled your thinking destiny. You are where you
ought to be mentally; you have obeyed your categorical imperative;
and nothing more need follow on that climax of your rational
destiny. Epistemologically you are in stable equilibrium.
Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. "Grant an
idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will
its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be
realized? What experiences will be different from those which would
obtain if the belief were false? 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.
This thesis is what I have to defend. 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
veri-FICATION.
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