Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR PRAGMATISM Martin Gardner's recollection ("Dear Editor," November 18) is correct. I did object to the technique of "conversion by definition" in a discussion with Reinhold Niebuhr....
...New York City Sidney Hook AUTHOR'S QUERY With a view to editing the correspondence of the late philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen, I am collecting letters by or concerning him, and other memorabilia...
...Pragmatism, most briefly put, is .. theory which asserts that the cognitive moaning or rational purport of u term or expression is to be found in the bearing it has on our behavior or conduct in the context of inquiry...
...I don't know how to test a theory of truth except by reference to some acknowledged truths of science and everyday life and the conditions under which we concluded they were true...
...In my original article ("Abraham Lincoln, American Pragmatist," NL, March 18), I did not mean to imply that Lincoln was a pragmatic philosopher...
...All theories of truth make the same claim as the pragmatic theory of truth to explain what it is that leads us to call some statements true and some false...
...I am merely making the innocent point that if pragmatism as theory of meaning and truth is valid then it must explain the applications of sound intelligence more adequately than any other theory...
...This holds not only for the truth of theories but for a theory of truth, too...
...They become less ambiguous in use...
...The phrase, I believe, was first used by Quine...
...that time on, I have always used it in the sense Peirce and Dewey gave it...
...If we found that we possess or are acting on truths which cannot be explained by the pragmatic theory, then we would have to abandon or modify the theory...
...Gardner takes issue with my statement that pragmatism purports to be "the theory of sound intelligence wherever and whenever applied...
...Looking aside from the deliberate attempt to obfuscate matters for purposes of propaganda, I think it is safe to say that all the large philosophical terms like "idealism," "materialism" and "pragmatism," insofar as they designate movements, stand for a family of doctrines...
...There is such a thing as the ethics of words, and I have tried to abide by it...
...But I hesitate to give up the use of all large terms because they have often been used in a corrupted way...
...I take the liberty of referring New Leader readers to my The Ambiguous Legacy: Marx and the Marxists (Van Nostrand & Co...
...But my sentence does not imply that everyone is a pragmatist or that every intelligent person is a pragmatist or believes the pragmatic theory of truth...
...November 18) is very far-fetched...
...The pragmatic theory of truth asserts that the truth of any statement about matters of fact is to be tested by the observation of the logically relevant consequences...
...He objects that he can imagine no one who does not consider himself a pragmatist...
...But their theories are different...
...for an elaboration of my argument...
...I do not have the space to go into a detailed refutation of his view [hat Marx is to he classified as a totalitarian instead of as a fighter for human freedom...
...The issue of defining complex and controversial terms is troublesome...
...The pragmatic method is method of analysis which clarifies our ideas by interpreting them in the light of the pragmatic theory of meaning...
...Thirty years ago, in my Metaphysics of Pragmatism, I sought to distinguish the different senses of the term "pragmatism...
...Before we can test whether any theory of truth is valid, we must at least be in possession of some "truths...
...I am only saying that the consistency or coherence of theory is not sufficient test of its truth...
...From...
...But for purposes of popular communication it is often sufficient to indicate without further refinement that a person holds one or another general position or is following a certain method of thought...
...Nor do I think I am...
...Must we give up the term "liberalism" because it is sometimes identified with free enterprise or capitalism, the term "socialist" because Hitler called himself one, "democracy" because the Communists and other totalitarians speak of their systems as "higher" or "directed" or "organic" democracies...
...I would not like to be guilty of employing the same technique in the definition of pragmatism...
...The nuances among them may be very important for technical philosophical clarification...
...In my second article ("Marx, Dewey and Lincoln," NL, October 21), I was concerned primarily with showing that Max Eastman's historical interpretation of pragmatism as the doctrine that a proposition is true if it pays to believe it is unjustified, and that his attribution of this doctrine to Dewey is utterly false...
...There are some sects calling themselves "Christians" which seem not to believe in the divinity, and are doubtful of the historicity, of Christ...
...I am not saying that there are truths or facts in renim natura, or that there are pure observation terms...
...Bernard Herman's interpretation of the paragraph I wrote on Marx ("Dear Editor...
...Perhaps it would be best to surrender the term altogether to those who identify it with the view that anything is true which anyone chooses to believe, so long as it is convenient or useful or profitable...
...I meant that, in some of the specific analyses he made of important problems, the method of analysis he followed in distinguishing empirically significant questions from trival and verbal ones was pragmatic...
...Even Bertrand Russell, despite the title of his recent book, Why I Am Not a Christian, professes to believe in "Christian love...
...Most words have a penumbra of ambiguity about them, especially when they are taken out of context...
...I should deeply appreciate hearing from anyone possessing materials or information pertaining thereto at the following address: 3749 Chesapeake Street, N. W., Washington 16, D. C. Leonora Cohen Rosenfield...
Vol. 40 • December 1957 • No. 49
