The Pragmatic Theory of Truth

Where the law looks pragmatist

Not in its account of facts. No court decides what happened by asking which version would be more useful to believe, and any court that did would be corrupt.

But in its account of legal doctrine, courts talk like pragmatists constantly. A rule is said to be unworkable. A test is said to have produced uncertainty and to require reformulation. A construction is preferred because the alternative would lead to absurd consequences. A precedent is departed from because it has proved impossible to apply consistently.

None of those is an argument that the rule corresponds to anything. They are arguments about what works, and they are perfectly respectable arguments in their place. The place is the making and reform of legal doctrine, and not the finding of facts.

The criticisms

Useful to whom? A proposition may be useful for one person to believe and useless or damaging for another. The theory then makes the same proposition true for the one and false for the other, which collides with the law of contradiction exactly as the coherence theory did.

Useful beliefs are often false. People are sustained by beliefs about themselves and their circumstances which are demonstrably untrue, and being sustained is a real benefit. The theory overstates the link between truth and utility.

True beliefs are often useless. The number of grains of sand on a particular beach is a definite figure, and the proposition stating it is true, and believing it would do nobody any good at all.

It confuses truth with its value. That true beliefs are generally useful is agreed by everybody. It does not follow that being useful is what being true consists in, any more than the fact that healthy food is generally nourishing makes nourishing the definition of healthy. This is the objection to state last, because it is the one that survives the pragmatist's replies.

Peirce's version postpones the problem. Truth as the ideal end of inquiry avoids the crude objections, but nobody knows what inquiry would settle on, so the theory tells us nothing about any proposition now. It is a promise rather than a definition.

A worked example

A court is asked to decide whether the manager of a company branch had authority to sign a particular guarantee. There is no rule directly in point.

A correspondence question would be: did the board in fact confer that authority? That is a question of historical fact, decided on the minutes and the evidence, and the pragmatic theory has nothing to contribute to it.

A pragmatic question would be: which rule about the apparent authority of branch managers should the law adopt? Here the court reasons about consequences. A rule that no branch manager can bind the company would make commercial dealing impossible, since no counterparty could ever be safe. A rule that any employee can bind the company would make companies uninsurable. The rule chosen is the one that works: the company is bound where the counterparty dealt in good faith with someone the company held out as having that authority.

What the example shows. The two questions live in the same judgment and are answered by different standards. Mixing them is a serious error in either direction: deciding what happened by what would be convenient is corrupt, and choosing a rule by asking what "corresponds to the facts" is meaningless, because a rule is not the sort of thing that corresponds to facts at all.

The three theories compared

How to write the assessment. The three are not simply rivals; they answer three different questions that the one word "truth" runs together. Correspondence answers what truth is. Coherence answers how we test for it. Pragmatism answers why it is worth having. The dominant view is that correspondence gives the right definition, that coherence gives the best available test, and that the pragmatic account describes the value of truth rather than its nature. An answer that says this, and defends it in a paragraph, has done what the topic asks.

What this does not mean

Pragmatism is not "believe whatever suits you". The test is survival under sustained experience and by many people, not immediate convenience, and beliefs that flatter are exactly the ones that fail it.

It is not the same as the coherence theory. Both deny that truth is a relation to the world, but coherence looks inward at the system of beliefs and pragmatism looks outward at consequences in action.

Judicial talk of workability is not a theory of truth. It is an argument about which rule to adopt, and rules are made rather than discovered. Nothing follows from it about how facts are found.

Quick revision

Statement: a proposition is true if believing it works, that is, if acting on it succeeds and it withstands the test of experience.

Advocates: Peirce, James, Dewey. Peirce's version: truth is what inquiry would settle on in the long run.

"Works" means reliable over the long run under testing, not convenient.

Criticisms: useful to whom; useful falsehoods; useless truths; it confuses truth with the value of truth; Peirce's version tells us nothing about any proposition now.

Legal use: the making and reform of doctrine, where courts argue from workability and consequences. Never the finding of facts.

The comparison to write: correspondence says what truth is, coherence says how we test it, pragmatism says why it matters.

Test yourself

1. State the pragmatic theory of truth and name its advocates.

A proposition is true if it is useful to believe, in the sense that acting on it succeeds, it predicts correctly and it survives sustained testing by experience. Its principal advocates are Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, with John Dewey developing it later. Peirce's refinement, which is the more defensible version, is that truth is the opinion which inquiry, pursued far enough, would eventually settle upon.

2. In what sense does a pragmatist mean "useful"?

Not convenient, comforting or agreeable. The sense is reliability in practice over the long run: the belief guides action successfully, produces the consequences it led one to expect, continues to do so when others act on it, and survives everything experience puts against it. Beliefs held because they are comforting are precisely the ones that fail this test.

3. Give three criticisms of the theory.

First, a belief may be useful to one person and damaging to another, so the same proposition comes out both true and false, which violates the law of contradiction. Second, many demonstrably false beliefs are useful and many true ones are useless, so the connection between truth and utility is weaker than the theory needs. Third, and most fundamentally, the theory confuses truth with the value of truth: that true beliefs are generally useful is agreed, but it does not follow that usefulness is what truth consists in.

4. Where do courts reason pragmatically, and where do they refuse to?

They reason pragmatically about legal doctrine: a rule is rejected as unworkable, a test is reformulated because it has produced uncertainty, a construction is preferred because the alternative leads to absurdity, a precedent is departed from because it cannot be applied consistently. They refuse to reason this way about facts. No court asks which version of events would be more useful to believe, and one that did would not be administering justice.

5. Compare the three theories in one paragraph.

The correspondence theory holds that truth is a relation between a proposition and the world, which is what the word ordinarily means but is hard to make precise. The coherence theory holds that truth is a relation between a proposition and a system of other propositions, which describes how we actually check but wrongly makes a consistent fiction true. The pragmatic theory holds that truth is a property a belief earns by working, which explains why truth is worth having but is defeated by useful falsehoods and useless truths.

6. Why is it said that the three theories answer different questions?

Because the single word "truth" runs three questions together: what truth is, how we find out what is true, and why truth matters. Correspondence answers the first, coherence answers the second and pragmatism answers the third. Read that way they are less in competition than they appear, and the dominant position is to take correspondence as the definition, coherence as the working test, and the pragmatic account as a description of the value of truth rather than of its nature.