Gerald Bivens

Now I want to become a bit more technical, and to offer an interpretation of the most famous pragmatist doctrine — the pragmatist theory of truth. I want to show how this doctrine fits into a more general programme: that of replacing Greek and Kantian dualisms between permanent structure and transitory content with the distinction between the past and the future. I shall try to show how the things which James and Dewey said about truth were a way of replacing the task of justifying past custom and tradition by reference to unchanging structure with the task of replacing an unsatisfactory present with a more satisfactory future, thus replacing certainty with hope.¹

Truth is what is supposed to distinguish knowledge from well-grounded opinion — from justified belief. But if the true is, as James said, 'the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable, reasons, then it is not clear in what respects a true belief is supposed to differ from one which is merely justified. So pragmatists are often said to confuse truth, which is absolute and eternal, with justification, which is transitory because relative to an audience.²