Views of William James and Charles Peirce

Views of William James and Charles Peirce

Introduction

Truth and reality are considered to be amongst the most important aspects of life. Perhaps they are the topics of debates for a number of philosophers. As far as the philosophical perspective of reality is concerned, it is defined as the state of things in which they exist in actual, rather than how they appear or are imagined. In a broader perspective, everything, whether observable and understandable or not, that exists or has been in existence falls under the definition of reality. Another way of defining reality is that it is the totality of all the things, events, structures, phenomena etc., that may be either observable or not. It is the view of the world that is attempted in order to describe the concept of reality.

There have been a number of different theories regarding reality that originate from physics, sociology, criticism and philosophy. Each of these theories attempts to define the term reality in its own way. A number of philosophers have devised their theories regarding truth and reality. Two of such philosophers who put forward their theories regarding different aspects of life are William James and Charles Peirce.

William James was an American psychologist and philosopher who was born in 1842. He is considered as the first person who offered a course of psychology in the United States. He wrote a number of books that were influential. The topics he had worked on include psychology, educational psychology, religious experience psychology and mysticism and pragmatism.

Charles Sander Peirce was also an American philosopher and mathematician. He was a good logician too and was born in 1839. Due to his extensive work in the domain of pragmatism, he is also known as the father of pragmatism. He had been educated as a chemist and worked as a scientist for a period of 30 years. Due to his works in the field of mathematics, pragmatism, logics and philosophy, he is still appreciated.

In this essay, the views of both William James and Charles Peirce regarding truth, reality and the existence of God would be discussed. Moreover, a comparison of the ideas of both of these philosophers would also be made.

Discussion

As mentioned above, there had been a number of philosophers who devised different theories to define the concepts of truth and reality. The two of them who would be discussed in this essay are William James and Charles Peirce. First, the views of William James would be discussed in detail.

Pragmatism is defined as a philosophical tradition that is aimed at linking of practice with theory. As far as the pragmatic view of William James regarding the truth is concerned, he had characterized truth in terms of its acceptance and usefulness. According to his perspective, truth is observed by attending the practical outcomes of ideas. In his view, it is incomplete just to say that truth is just an agreement of ideas with the matters of ...