„We live in a world of realities that can be infinitely useful or infinitely harmful. Ideas that tell us which of them to expect count as the true ideas in all this primary sphere of verification, and the pursuit of such ideas is a primary human duty. The possession of truth, so far from being here an end in itself, is only a preliminary means towards other vital satisfactions.“ (p. 170) #James #truth
„Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs ‚pass,‘ so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them. But this all points to direct face-to-face verifications somewhere, without which the fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash- basis whatever.“ (p. 174) #James #truth
„Our experience meanwhile is all shot through with regularities. One bit of it can warn us to get ready for another bit, can ‚intend‘ or be ’significant of‘ that remoter object. The object’s advent is the significance’s verification. Truth, in these cases, meaning nothing but eventual verification, is manifestly incompatible with waywardness on our part.“ (p. 172) #James #experience
„Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their ‚agreement,‘ as falsity means their disagreement, with ‚reality.‘ Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept this definition as a matter of course. They begin to quarrel only after the question is raised as to what may precisely be meant by the term ‚agreement,‘ and what by the term ‚reality,‘ when reality is taken as something for our ideas to agree with.“ (p. 166) #James #truth #idea
„The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth HAPPENS to an idea. It BECOMES true, is MADE true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-FICATION. Its validity is the process of its valid-ATION.“ (p. 169) #James #truth #veri-FICATION #valid-ATION