- sociations with the word "pragmatic." Thus James says in his
California address: "The effective meaning of any philosophic proposition can always be brought down to some particular consequence, in our future practical experience, whether active or passive; the point lying rather in the fact that the experience must be particular, than in the fact that it must be active." (Italics mine.)
Now the curious fact is that Peirce puts more emphasis upon practise (or conduct) and less upon the particular; in fact, he transfers the emphasis to the general. The following passage is worth quotation because of the definiteness with which it identifies meaning with both the future and with the general. "The rational meaning of every proposition lies in the future. How so? The meaning of a proposition is itself a proposition. Indeed, it is no other than the very proposition of which it is the meaning: it is a translation of it. But of the myriads of forms into which a proposition may be translated, which is that one which is to be called its very meaning? It is, according to the pragmaticist, that form in which the proposition becomes applicable to human conduct, not in these or those special circumstances nor when one entertains this or that special design, but that form which is most applicable to self-control under every situation and to every purpose." Hence, "it must be simply the general description of all the experimental phenomena which the assertion of the proposition virtually predicts." Or, paraphrasing, pragmatism identifies meaning with formation of a habit, or way of acting having the greatest generality possible, or the widest range of application to particulars. Since habits or ways of acting are just as real as particulars, it is committed to a belief in the reality of "universals." Hence it is not a doctrine of phenomenalism, for while the richness of phenomena lies in their sensuous quality, pragmatism does not intend to define these (leaving them, as it were, to speak for themselves), but "eliminates their sential element, and endeavors to define the rational purport, and this it finds in the purposive bearing of the word or proposition in question." Moreover, not only are generals real, but they are physically
