PRAGMATISM AND THE PROBLEM OF - BELIEF.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, I am truly grateful to Mr. Alan Porter for reviewing my little Problems of Belief so fully and so nicely and with so keen an eye to the titbits. But really his first paragraph is too flattering ! For neither in devilry, nor in the other excellent qualities he mentions, could I claim equality with Mr. Bertrand Russell or Mr. Bernard Shaw. As for " univer- salizing " myself, I do not even know what it means : I hope it is not an accusation that I think that everyone must think as I do, and that I can therefore evolve all truth out of my inner consciousness
Mr. Porter's account of pragmatism in his second paragraph, on the other hand, contains, I grieve to say, some errors. (1) He cannot abide comparative truth : but he should have read progressive. Pragmatic truth is, in fact, scientific truth ; and that, surely, is not " dry and fruitless." Pragmatism is just the (belated) discovery by philosophy of what scientific truth actually is. (2) " If it (pragmatism) were true, it would be useful to believe it false." But according to Mr. Porter the useful for a pragmatist =the true : ergo the above =" If it were true, it would be true to believe it false." A " con- tradiction," eh ? However (8) pragmatists have always repudiated " the true is the useful " as an elementary blunder in logic. It does not follow from " the true is useful," which means " relative to some problem and purpose, and valuable and verifiable." Moreover the true is only one out of nine or ten sorts of " truth-claim," all of which may be useful ; but they include, as pragmatists are well aware, the joke, the " fiction " and the lie. (4) Historically, man's progress in knowledge has rested, not on the (false) belief (refuted by this very progress) that truths are absolute, but on the steady growth in the value and power of the " relative " truths that were believed.
In the third paragraph, I would ask (1) if " the universe is thought," whose ? (2) If " error is thoughtlessness," can we, by just thinking, extract truth from false premisses ? (3) If " evil is ignorance," what becomes of " devilish clever- ness " ? (4) Where is the single .consciousness of mankind to be observed ? In Parliament ? At Congresses of Philosophy ? At the Zoo ?
Lastly, I must demur to Mr. Porter's verdict on the creed of the Prophet " Jeremiah." Surely the multiplication table is as rational and indisputable as anything we have. I did not say the truth in it came to much, religiously ; but I quoted the case to show that rationality and indisputability were hardly so essential to the value of a religion as was currently supposed.—I am, Sir, &e., F. C. S. SCHILLER.
[Mr. Alan Porter writes :—" Why should I call it progressive truth ? Progressive to what ? I was amazed to see that Dr. Schiller had not set me the one question worthy of dis- cussion, especially as he would have scored in a controversy where there is so little room for explanation. I make him a present of the question—If the universe is thought, what is thoughtlessness ? "—ED. Spectator.]
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