William James On Truth And Reality

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TRUTH AND REALITY FOR WILLIAM JAMES Truth is an essential issue for the philosophy of William James. When we think of his theory of meaning and mind, it is obvious that there is a connection between the concept of truth and those. In fact, it is connected also to his understanding of reality which is mostly subject of this paper. The term truth, aside whole discussions being made around it, imply a form of relation. That is, those we call truth as same those we call false must be referenced with a kind of relation. Rather than the things themselves, the notions of truth and false are treated according to something different which they relate to. That means, it is clear that when we take a pencil abstracting it from all its connections and mediations, it is meaningless to claim it to be whether true or false. İt is the relations of that pencil and propositions of those relations could be the things belonging to truth realm. The truth in question is whether the truth of correspondence theory which basicly says that true propositions, expressions or believes build a harmony with the reality by means of reflecting, picturing or copying it or whether it is the truth of coherence theory which maintains that true porpositions are true if and only if it is involved in an absolute whole of truth system and according to its partaking of it, or it is the turth of pragmatism which is totaly differennt from those above, still truth is an activity of adding value to a relation. In that sense, considering those theories of truth, even prima facie, pragmatist position seems more adventegous to be chosen among others since it simplifies the quality of the relation whcih is to be added value. İt is more like physicists picking up the most simple theory among others instead of sophisticated ones. As a matter of fact, pragmatic understanding of truth is the simplest one among
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