"Truth is what works"
About this Quote
William James compresses a whole philosophy into five words: truth is what works. He was not celebrating quick fixes or convenient fictions. As the leading voice of American pragmatism, he proposed that the worth of an idea lies in its consequences for experience. An idea becomes true when it helps us navigate the world, make reliable predictions, settle doubt, and coordinate with the rest of what we take to be so. He called this the cash-value of a belief, and he insisted that truth is something that happens to an idea when it is verified in the stream of life.
The target was the abstraction of purely correspondence-based or a priori theories of truth. Rather than demanding that a belief mirror reality in some inaccessible way, James asked what difference it makes if we adopt it. A scientific hypothesis, for example, earns its truth by surviving tests, generating fruitful research, and fitting with other well-supported claims. That success is never final: truths are provisional, held so long as they continue to work in the long run and on the whole.
Critics charged that this collapses truth into mere expediency. James countered that what works is not whatever pleases us today; it is what withstands the stubborn facts of experience and the scrutiny of a community of inquirers. Reality pushes back. A belief that comforts but fails in practice will be found out.
He applied this stance even to moral and religious matters, arguing in The Will to Believe that when evidence is undecidable, it can be rational to embrace a live, momentous option whose acceptance transforms experience for the better. The test remains pragmatic, not dogmatic.
The result is a dynamic picture of truth as a living process rather than a static possession. It invites intellectual humility and experimental courage: try, check, revise. Truth guides action because it earns that role, not because it is decreed once and for all.
The target was the abstraction of purely correspondence-based or a priori theories of truth. Rather than demanding that a belief mirror reality in some inaccessible way, James asked what difference it makes if we adopt it. A scientific hypothesis, for example, earns its truth by surviving tests, generating fruitful research, and fitting with other well-supported claims. That success is never final: truths are provisional, held so long as they continue to work in the long run and on the whole.
Critics charged that this collapses truth into mere expediency. James countered that what works is not whatever pleases us today; it is what withstands the stubborn facts of experience and the scrutiny of a community of inquirers. Reality pushes back. A belief that comforts but fails in practice will be found out.
He applied this stance even to moral and religious matters, arguing in The Will to Believe that when evidence is undecidable, it can be rational to embrace a live, momentous option whose acceptance transforms experience for the better. The test remains pragmatic, not dogmatic.
The result is a dynamic picture of truth as a living process rather than a static possession. It invites intellectual humility and experimental courage: try, check, revise. Truth guides action because it earns that role, not because it is decreed once and for all.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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