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Overview
Charles Sanders Peirce complained that James allowed pragmatism to become 'infected' with 'seeds of death' like the idea that truth is mutable. The Truth is What Works is an attempt to defend James's pragmatic theory of truth from a wide range of critics including Peirce, Betrand Russell, Hilary Putnam, and Cornel West. Cormier runs the gauntlet of historical and contemporary criticism in an attempt to show, not that Jamesian pragmatism does in fact contain a perfectly good theory of objective reality after all, but rather that it doesn't, and is still a kind of realism anyway because it does not leave individuals and their subjective desires behind in an attempt to describe the real world.
Synopsis
Charles Sanders Peirce complained that James allowed pragmatism to become _infected_ with _seeds of death_ like the idea that truth is mutable. The Truth is What Works is an attempt to defend James's pragmatic theory of truth from a wide range of critics including Peirce, Betrand Russell, Hilary Putnam, and Cornel West. Cormier runs the gauntlet of historical and contemporary criticism in an attempt to show, not that Jamesian pragmatism does in fact contain a perfectly good theory of objective reality after all, but rather that it doesn't, and is still a kind of realism anyway because it does not leave individuals and their subjective desires behind in an attempt to describe the real world.
Booknews
Is there any real truth? How can we know? Can we know? Philosopher William James offered a famous answer: truth is what works, what comes to be good, useful or satisfactory for human beings as they live and try to understand their lives. His "pragmatic theory of truth" has come under attack from critics both fierce and well regarded (such as Cornel West and Bertrand Russell), who wanted to pay less attention to subjective feelings and beliefs and more to physical, moral or political power. This book is Cormier's (philosophy, SUNY, Stony Brook) rebuttal to these and other critics of James, arguing that Jamesian pragmatism represents the best kind of realism because it does not leave individuals and their subjective states behind in an attempt to describe the real world. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)