'The true,' to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. Expedient in almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run and on the whole of course; for what meets expediently all the experience in sight won't necessarily meet all farther experiences equally satisfactorily. Experience, as we know, has ways of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas. – William James, Pragmatism pg 100.

There are five main “theories of truth”: the correspondence theory, the coherence theory, and the pragmatic, redundancy and semantic theories. They all deal with truth and falsity as properties of what people say or think. At the same time they are confusing and difficult to follow as they do not distinctly address the questions – “How should the content of what we say or think be specified? What are the bearers of truth?” Pragmatic theory, one of the main representatives of which is William James, holds that the truth of a belief is a matter of whether it “works,” i.e. whether acting upon it pays off just lik

As mentioned earlier James also gives the conception of truth from a rationalist’s point of view and shows the fallacy in their argument. Rationalism resides on the validity of propositions. “Truth is a system of propositions which have an unconditional claim to be recognized as valid.” (102). Judgments made by humans because of their vital duty is considered as truth by rationalists. Firstly, according to James, the word “proposition” seemed too explicit. It encouraged the confusion between truth as a property of opinions and truth as a property of the facts which the opinions assert. He thought that trying to understand our thoughts or belief or ideas in terms of propositions only leads to confusion. As he puts it, propositions were “mongrel curs that have no real place between realities on the one hand and the beliefs on the other.” Secondly, according to a rationalist truth is a property of ideas that obtain in virtue of their connection to reality. But rationalism doesn’t clear the doubts about what is this connection with reality. It cannot be simple copying, since many elements of reality have no image copies. A rationalist is against the argument of a pragmatist that truth is made and believes that truths are discovered. Then truth must obtain regardless of human notion and should exist whether discoverable or not. James presents a fallacy in rationalist’s theory. The rationalist takes certain features of truths, like their independence from human will and elevates them to the condition of truth. In general, the rationalist loses the ability to effectively support the claim that we should pursue truth over falsity. Truths are to be searched for to the extent, and only to the extent that they are to be required for our purposes as “an idea is true if it works.” If we weren’t doing any purpose, why would we need truthful ideas? So according to rationalism, to make the definition of truth entirely independent for our purposes, it either means to seek those truths that connect to our purposes, or to seek something beyond our purposes. According to James, “if theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. For how much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged.” James has said that truth arises from truths. As we can only seek truth through other truths, and as we need to know which truths to seek, we always again return to the situation pragmatism emphasizes: the acceptance of an idea as true is precisely dependent on its ability to lead us forward in the future. This is the drawback in the rationalistic approach that it doesn’t clear what it emphasizes.

Similarly, in the case of relations among ideas, our theories are true if they continue to “mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences” (98) and those truths include other theories. Truths, rather than Truth, are the emphasis in the pragmatic theory. “Absolute Truth”, defined as “what no farther experience will ever alter” (100), is an ideal point never reached. As an ideal point never reached, truth is not that which makes particular truths true. Particular beliefs come to be true in practice and continue to be true as they are maintained through practice. An idea being true is then like an individual being healthy. It allows for new successes

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