Columbia, Obama, and Pragmatism in America

So let’s talk about pragmatism—Columbia’s (and America’s) greatest contribution to philosophy. But in order to do that, let’s talk about truth.

We might say that a true belief is one that corresponds to reality. But what’s this correspondence? You’re walking through the halls of Hamilton, and through the door window you see me reading in room 306. Now, you have a belief—that I’m reading in room 306—and you have reason to believe that the belief corresponds to reality. And you’re right. The trouble is, what you saw through the window wasn’t me—maybe it was someone who looked a lot like me, or maybe it was Tron, my life-sized mannequin. In fact, I was sitting under the desk where you couldn’t see me, reading comic books. You had a belief, it was true, yet did it correspond to reality? I don’t know. “Correspondence” is a tough thing to pin down.

Maybe we say that truth, as a property of a belief, is created from undeniable, basic observations. Thus “the cat is to the left of the bat” is true because you obviously see a cat, you obviously see a bat, and the two stand in some obvious relation to each other. But how do you see that the cat is to the left of the bat? Does seeing the two produce the automatic idea that the one is to the left of the other? Probably not. Does seeing the two allow you to see some magical “leftness” between them? Obviously not. It seems truth doesn’t just spring from undeniable, basic observations—something more must be happening.

Philosophers can and do tie themselves into much bigger and sillier knots than these trying to define truth. But what if we sidestepped the whole mess of how truth might correspond to reality, or how truth might spring from observation, and say that truth, as a property of belief, is what we can all agree on. Now this isn’t to say that there is no reality or that the world will cease to exist when the last person dies or anything like that. What I’m saying—and what Columbia philosophers like John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, and Sidney Hook, among many others, have said—is that a true belief is the belief that works for all of us, that is the most useful, and that forms the most coherent vision of the world.

So we can say that your belief—that I was reading in room 306—is true just because we could both agree on it. And we can say that your belief—that the cat is to the left of the bat—is true because the belief is useful and allows you to form other beliefs, goals, and desires (perhaps the belief that the bat shouldn’t be left out on the floor, or the desire to pet the cat). Truth is, says William James, “what works.” This is a metaphysical claim, but it has a number of political consequences:

First, democracy matters. If truth is agreement by convention, it’s pretty important that our convention be as inclusive as possible. Nobody, in principle, has special insight into reality: you see a picture of a rabbit, I see a picture of a duck. Which of us has the right to say what it’s really a picture of? So, each of us has a right to say what’s ultimately useful.

Second, moral progress matters (this is something I touched on in a previous column). Moral truth, like every other kind of truth, is determined by what people find useful, and what people find useful changes. Philosophers and theologians therefore shouldn’t cloister themselves off from the real world in search of unchanging ethical rules. The best we can hope for is not moral certainty but moral progress.

Third, dogmas are very, very dangerous. Whenever we subvert dialogue or the aim for consensus with bold abstract claims, we get further away from the truth. And while it’s important to believe in the value of liberty and personal rights, those rights should not be used as blunt objects in the public sphere. They, too, are malleable in the name of consensus.

I believe it’s no accident that pragmatism arose in large part in New York and in America. These are American ideals, and when our country has done its best, it has done so with this spirit of progress and consensus. That’s why I find President Bush’s ideology so horrifying, not just because I disagree with it, but because it is just that—an ideology.

Let me close with a warning. In this campaign, Barack Obama has, over and over again, talked about seeking consensus and avoiding partisanship. Now, I support Obama, and I think he really believes what he says. But I’m not sure that all of his supporters do. In public so many people I know are waving the Obama flag of compromise while in private they are espousing a certain “now it’s our turn” attitude toward the Republicans. This a terrible mistake. For one thing, it makes a joke out of public discussion—why, after all, should someone listen to your public political beliefs if they have no connection to your private political beliefs? For another, it turns ideas into dogmas—why, after all, should you change beliefs if they’ve never faced testing or debate?

So that’s why I worry about this refusal to talk, this refusal to compromise. It isn’t just selfish, or unhelpful—it is un-pragmatic, and, I think, un-American.

Brendan Ballou is a Columbia College junior majoring in philosophy. Philosophical Explanations runs alternate Tuesdays.
Opinion@columbiaspectator.com