Pragmatism and Its Critics

Excerpt: At once someone will ask: "Can it be possible that the only or the fundamental issue at stake in Professor James's book is merely that of a new name for an old way of thinking?" It may be that much philosophic discussion, possibly more than other sorts, turns out to be about names. Still, a philosopher could hardly be expected to confess that his subject has come to a pass where the question whose discussion has filled most of the space in philosophical periodicals for the past ten years is merely that of a name. And we do not read far before we discover that Professor James means that while pragmatism is "an old way of thinking" in science and practical life it has not been the conscious and avowed method in philosophy, and that the present pragmatic movement is precisely an attempt to bring this "old way of thinking" in science and practical social life into philosophy, and to this extent, therefore, is a new way of thinking - in philosophy.