Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/189

THE AMBIGUITY OP TRUTH. 175 alist's rejection of our solution. If we are so very wrong in our very plain and positive assertion that the validity of a truth (claim) is tested and established by the value of its consequences, there ought surely to be no difficulty about producing abundant cases in which the truth of a doubtful assertion is established in some other way. I would ask, therefore, for the favour of one clear case of this kind. 1 And I make only one stipulation. It should be a case in which there really was a question, so that the true answer might have, before examination, turned out false. For without this provision we should get no illustration of actual know- ing, such as was contemplated by the pragmatist, whose theory professes to discriminate cases in which there is a real chance of acquiring truth and a real risk of falling into falsity. If on the other hand specimens merely of indubit- able or verbal truths were adduced, and it were asserted that these were true not because they were useful, but simply because they were true, we should end merely in a wrangle about the historical pedigree of the truth. I should contend that it was at one time doubtful, and accepted as true be- cause of its tested utility : my opponent would dispute my derivation and assert that it had always been true. We should agree that it was now indisputable, we should disagree about the origin of this feature ; and the past history would usually be too little known to establish either view. And so we should get no nearer to a settlement. By observing on the other hand truth in the making, infer- ences may be drawn to the nature of truth already made. And whether truth is by nature pragmatic, or whether this is a foul aspersion on her character, it is surely most desirable that this point should be settled. Hitherto the chief obstacle to such a decision has been the fact that while in public (and still more in private) there has been much misconception, misrepresentation and abuse of our views, there have been no serious attempts to contest directly, unequivocally, and out- right, any of our cardinal assertions. 2 And what perhaps is still more singular, our critics have been completely reticent 1 Since this was written Prof. Taylor has attempted to answer an earlier form of this challenge in the last number of MIND. I shall discuss his article in the next number. 2 Prof. Taylor may now perhaps be said to have supplied this desidera- tum by denying that psychology has any relevance to logic (loc. cit., pp. 267, 287). And yet immediately after (p. 287) he feels constrained to argue that the efficient cause of his accepting any belief as true is a specific form of emotion ! I should have thought that the fact that no truth could be accepted without this feeling constituted a pretty sub- stantial connexion between psychology and logic.