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PRAGMATIC PHILOSOPHERS ON RELIGION:

Peirce, James, Royce, Dewey, Rorty, Haack

by John Caiazza, Ph.D.

In making the case that there are rich resources for philosophy of religion in the Pragmatic
philosophical tradition, the most effective way is to present, in a somewhat critical fashion,
the religious thinking of the big three i.e. Peirce, James and Dewey. None of these thinkers,
it is important to recognize, wrote on only one or two themes, but on virtually on all of the
themes and issues current in their day. Beyond the time of Dewey the Pragmatic tradition
has continued and most attention has been paid to Richard Rorty who declines to recognize
the possibility of moral and political absolutes, and of truth itself. His primary critic who
does not think Rortys philosophy can be reasonably termed Pragmatic is Susan Haack, and
it is Haacks thought rather than Rortys that completes the account of Pragmatic thinking on
philosophy of religion.
The presentation in this essay is not merely a recitation of particular religious
elements found in the Pragmatic philosophers however, because it also reflects the authors
own belief that the history, a philosophical history in fact, of the Pragmatic tradition is one of
decline. As I have written elsewhere, the Pragmatic tradition is a story of decline from the
novel and noble philosophizing of its founder, Charles Saunders Piece, to the secondary
figure of William James, who refused to give accord to the realistic elements of Peirces
philosophy, to the pragmatism of Dewey for whom the direct aim of philosophy is to enact
social change, and finally in the last moment of decline, to the inchoate relativism of Rorty.
[The Disunity of American Culture, Transaction Publishers, 2013; Chapter 13, Decline of
the American Philosophy: A Tragedy in Three Acts pp.???] Assuming that the story of

Pragmatism as a story of decline from the robust philosophical realism of Peirce implies that
opportunities for developing significant philosophic insights on religion has been lost, a point
of view which is reflected and somewhat justified I believe by the noticeable reduction in the
quality of insights into the nature of religious belief which is prominently indicated by each
philosophers idea of the divine nature, i.e. from Peirces argument on behalf of Gods reality
to the completes dismissal of traditional religious belief by Dewey with James as the
transitional figure. Such a reduction however has not blocked development of ethical insights
in a secular mode, which is true of Deweys progressivism and represented by the thought of
Haack. Despite my own interpretation, each philosopher will be treated on his or her own
terms.
1. CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE, A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER
That Charles Sanders Peirce wrote about a wide variety of topics is well known but
that he also wrote on religious topics is not. His thinking about religious subjects is found in
several essays which taken together do in fact comprise a coherent philosophy of religion.
Peirce acknowledges the reality of God, which for him is a hypothesis that implies a universe
that is not determined by scientific laws, contains human beings who have practical and
intellectual freedom, and the possibility of life after death. In one essay in Volume VI of the
Collected Papers, Peirce answers questions concerning my belief in God. He deals with in
order: the reality (existence) of God, creation, purpose, the omniscience, omnipotence, and
infallibility of God, plus miracles, prayer, immortality, and evil. Peirce offers comments on
each of these topics, but needless to say his own take on each of them is somewhat unique.
Here is a brief account of Peirces philosophy of religion, presented not as a finished product

of Peirces thought, but as open ended and as a subject for future research and hopefully a
part of the reinvigoration of philosophy in the 21st Century.
Peirce as a Christian philosopher. As one considers Peirces philosophy of religion
as a whole, he appears to be a somewhat unorthodox, covert Christian philosopher. He
acknowledges the reality of the One God of traditional monotheistic religions, argues for the
possibility of life after death, rebuts Hume on miracles, and looks to a long arc of human
history characterized by chance and love, culminating in a final epistemic revelation.
However, this is not to say that Peirce picked up his philosophy of religion from, for
example, a study of the Nicene Creed or the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church; nevertheless
a distinctly Christian influence is detectable. The influence of Christian doctrine is indirect,
for when treating topics of religious interest, Peirce approaches them in an unorthodox
manner, refashioning them in terms of his own pragmaticist philosophy. Two primary
Christian teachings are quite evident in Peirces religious philosophy, namely the Trinity and
the Incarnation.
The trinitarianism of Peirces philosophy is prominent, albeit in a non-theological
sense, and appears in two important areas, his metaphysical categories of Firstness,
Secondness and Thirdness, and his semiotic theory which is based upon the three distinct
elements of object, word and thought, terms easily transferable into the relevant properties of
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The incarnationalism of Peirces philosophy can be
discerned from his concept that reality which exists independently of any persons opinion,
and which will eventually guide the human race to a full belief in truth, at the end of time.
The implied Christology of Peircean epistemology was taken up by Teilhard de Chardin and
spiritualized as his famous Omega Point. Whether Peirce intended these connections with

Christian theology or was aware of them, is not clear, but they are, I believe, provocative and
thick enough to provide for investigations into the philosophy of religion for the 21st Century.
On God. [see below!!! ] Peirce offers not a proof of the existence of God, but of
Gods reality, and in this way assents to the monotheistic thesis of the One God as presented
in the three monotheistic world religions. Thus Peirces philosophy of religion is not a
philosophy of religion in general, nor does what he terms his neglected argument of Gods
reality offer a proof amenable to syllogistic treatment as in the five proofs of Aquinas; rather,
Peirces proof, like M Theory as described by Stephen Hawking, is a proof of proofs since
it is a description of how by musing the mind eventually will reach the hypothesis of God,
but then so compelling is this hypothesis that it is received with awe and love and eventual
acknowledgement of its reality. But musing is individual to each person, and a critic must
wonder if Peirces Neglected Argument is a psychologization of Anselms ontological proof.
How would Peirce reply?
Metaphysics, a Triad. Peirce anticipates that such musing will involve the minds
traveling within and about his three metaphysical categories. Without discoursing at length
on the famous categories, it is noteworthy that Firstness is not brute fact, for that is the
category of Secondness; rather Firstness is the realm of unattached ideas. The usual manner
of philosophy would be to put the brute experiences as Firstness and then in fine empiricist
fashion, to make Secondness the ideas that emanate from the experiences, but Peirce reverses
the process. Thirdness, is the category that contains the ideas that relate the categories of
Firstness and Secondness to each other.
On belief. Peirces early essay, The Fixation of Belief places the enforcement of
religious belief as the third of the four methods, but it is by no means the best since it

depends in effect on social pressure and outright coercion. The last and best of the methods is
science which for Peirce does not mean relying exclusively on physical causality, but rather
the free form of unfettered thought, empirical testing, hypothesis and eventual habit. The
issue is the fixation rather than the truth value of beliefs in the short term. But what then fixes
belief in the long term? Peirce, it is noteworthy, refers in his writings several times to the
notion of the Real as it was discussed among medieval philosophers, defining the real as
something that is unaffected by peoples opinion of it. For Peirce, in the long term, it is the
foundation of reality which over time, the human race will come to discover that ultimately
fixes, i.e. stabilizes belief. An aspect of Peirces thinking in this context is that as explained
in the essay, belief is not an individual matter but is social. This is especially true of the third
method of religious orthodoxy, but then does religious belief imply a social dimension, i.e.
the existence of a church, or is it inherently an individual matter, i.e. is religious belief more
exactly Catholic or Protestant? (Peirce however does not deal with denominational issues
and himself was an Episcopalian).
Evolution and religion. Although evolution is seen as the ultimate scientific
challenge to religious belief in contemporary debates, for Peirce this is not so. For Peirces
view of evolution is not Darwinian, but is based on a close analysis of the logic of
evolutionary explanation -which ends with an unexpected conclusion. Peirce points out that
there are two contradictory views of evolution (current at the time he wrote and current
now!), namely a necessitarian (deterministic) view, and a tychist (probabilistic) view. Of
Darwins theory, first proposed when Peirce was at the height of his philosophic powers, he
says that it is an application of Adam Smiths idea of the free market to biology. But then as
now the arguments for a Darwinian view of evolution seem contradictory since they imply

that evolutionary process is deterministic and thus leads inevitably to the production of an
intelligent species, yet at the same time the process is based on unpredictable genetic
variations that undergo different kinds of selection; so evolution today is defended as both a
deterministic and a probabilistic process, the same contradiction that Peirce noted. Peirce
proposed a third way for evolutionary process to take place, influenced by Lamarcks view of
evolution, namely that of agapic love. Now agapic love is the love that requires self-sacrifice
and based on concepts in the New Testament, but in terms of evolutionary process what
could this mean? Peirces view of evolution is purposive (teleological), Idealistic and not
materialistic. Compared to the point of view of Daniel Dennett for whom natural selection is
Darwins dangerous idea because it undercuts any attempt to form a purposive view of the
universe or the existence of God, for Peirce evolution is fully consonant with the reality of
God.

PEIRCES NEGLECTED ARGUMENT

One of Charles Sanders Peirces most interesting but least read works is his essay, A
Neglected Argument for the Reality of God. Although certain parts of it seem impenetrable,
it is apparent by a brief read that the argument is not a formal proof based on, for example,
the cosmic effects of Gods existence or the order of nature. Rather Peirces argument
depends upon the solitary mental activity of musing, which is an odd way to approach the
subject if not downright contrarian. Peirces assertion, however, is that anyone, philosopher
or clodhopper, can come to the knowledge of the reality of God through the process of
thinking about not just God, but about things in general, an indefinite but rigorous mode of
thought Pierce calls musement. The implication is that real, unfettered but not

undisciplined thinking about any topic eventually can reach a true belief about the reality of
it, including in this instance, God, even though that is a process that takes time.
Because Peirce uses neologisms and obscure references, and at certain points departs
from the point at hand, his NA is difficult to understand. The excursion into his logical
theories (deduction, induction, abduction), and the fact that he immersed his exposition in the
phenomenological metaphysics of his three categories (Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness)
make the argument of the NA obscure to the point that continual rereading is required for
understanding; yet I cannot escape the idea that there is after all something valuable here, and
that Peirce has nailed a perception about the reality and nature of God that has been missed
by other philosophers or as he stated, neglected by them.
Given its difficulty and importance, several approaches by which to understand
Peirces NA are required; I will begin with a summarization, pointing out major aspects of
the NA and its hypothesis of Gods reality, but then engage in a series of comparisons - with
Anselms ontological argument, Jamess will to believe, M Theory in contemporary physics,
and Newmans illative sense.
Peirces essay which was published in the Hibbert Journal in 1908 is divided into
seven headings, the first two or three of which are most important; Peirce begins with a
definition of terms, including God, whom he refers to in terms of classical metaphysics as the
Ens necessarium and which he asserts is the Creator of his three metaphysical categories,
real which Peirce defines a substance which possesses properties that exist independently of
any one persons or group of persons opinion about them, and argument which when
successful lead to a belief expressed as a habit. He proposes that the basis for his argument
for the reality of God is the mental process that he terms Musement which occurs while

when having some time to oneself, letting the mind to wander where it wants, without a
specific project or subject intended to guide it. But because we are dealing here with a major
philosopher and not your average dreamer walking on the beach, Peirce anticipates that such
musing will involve the minds traveling within and about his three metaphysical categories.
Without discoursing at length on the famous categories, it is noteworthy that Firstness is not
brute fact, for that is the category of Secondness; rather Firstness is the realm of unattached
ideas. The usual manner of philosophy would be to put the brute experiences as Firstness and
then in fine empiricist fashion, to make Secondness the ideas that emanate from the
experiences, but Peirce reverses the process. Thirdness, is the category that contains the
ideas that relate the categories of Firstness and Secondness to each other. Whatever the
metaphysical and epistemological complications arising from the use of these categories,
Peirce maintains that musing will be defined by them. Despite this description of musement
in terms of the categories, Peirces NA, I believe, can be understood somewhat apart from
them.
Peirce next defines musement in relation to the three means of reasoning deduction,
induction and abduction and here is the heart of his argument, where he addresses what he
calls the hypothesis of God, for the concept of God is unique, since, Peirce implies, the full
understanding of it brings about belief in the reality of its subject, i.e. God. Here, we can see
a resemblance of the NA to Anselms ontological proof, for in rough terms, the NA could be
called a psychologicized version of the ontological argument. For Anselm, the concept of
God as that entity which is so perfect that it must necessarily exist (it is no accident, that at
the beginning of the NA, Peirce uses the classical definition of God as Ens necessarium);
thus no acquisition of evidence or estimation of the validity of a series of inductive or

deductive proofs is required; to discover the reality of God, one need go no farther than a
personal analysis of the concept, and the reality of God can be discerned from within. For
Peirce, once a person considers it, they will eventually become convinced that the hypothesis
of God designates a reality; however, they will express this belief not by acceptance of the
truth of the conclusion of a syllogism or of a complex dialectical argument, but rather express
their acceptance of the reality of God by their behavior. As the old song says, Youre getting
to be a habit with me.
Belief, as a habit of mind, and the method or process by which we get there is one of
Peirces major philosophic concerns; how then does this apply to religious belief? For Peirce
in NA, God exists at first as a hypothesis and becomes more real, as it were, the more it is
considered, since the hypothesis is at first attractive, then becomes compelling until it seems
to transcend the categories of formal logic and personal psychology to become the kind of
commitment we associate with love. Agapic love is a category that Peirce examined in
connection with his understanding of the vast span of human intellectual and practical
history. Peirces treatment of religious knowledge in one his best known essays, The
Fixation of Belief is however, not amenable to religious orthodoxy as a means of settling
belief, of fixing it in the sense of making it stable. Enforcement of religious orthodoxy for
Peirce is the third of the four methods he proposes and not the most effective.
Peirce in the NA discusses belief, in general terms at first, as in belief of the reality of
natural laws, for example. The template for Peirces discussion is his logical apparatus that
distinguishes among three kinds of inference: deduction, induction and abduction or
hypothesis. Abduction is Peirces major contribution to the theory of logic which he
developed from his own experience as a scientist and from the history of scientific thought.

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Abduction is the weakest form of inference but the most common, for we propose solutions
and examine possible explanations as we first approach a subject of interest and then by
experience develop a firmer understanding of it, which if followed consistently leads to a
rejection, clarification and possibly eventually a belief in a particular hypothesis, which is for
Peirce a habit that is reflected in or defined by a pattern of action. In effect, if you act as if
you believe in God, you do so believe. For Peirce religious belief is indistinguishable from
belief in any major thesis or viewpoint, such as politics, metaphysics, science, etc. The
difference for religious belief is the primary subject of belief, namely God. [comp. Newman]
We may ask how Peirce can argue that we can reach the settled belief of the Reality
of God only through mental musement? To answer, it is worth considering some examples
that indicate that the hypothesis of God provides a sense of the unity of religious experience.
The rationalization of religious experience typically begins by a piecemeal effort to find
divinity in this or that separate aspect of human experience, resulting as we say in
polytheism. Ancient Greeks culture posited separate gods for war, transportation, home life
and erotic love. Contemporary critics made the simple but profound point that one God really
is enough, if you are looking to rationalize religion; no need for Zeus, Hermes, Venus, etc.
The pre-Socratic philosopher, Xenophanes, made this point, stating that there only one God
who is eternal, not subject to change and without organs such as eyes and ears, a point of
view which was adopted by Plato and Aristotle and apparently Socrates. In our own day, we
can observe the most polytheistic of the major religions, Hinduism with its plenitude of gods;
yet Hindu worshippers know that above all the varied manifestations of divinity, there exists
a unity of the divine in the concept of Brahma or the Atman, a single divinity of which the
various gods such as Vishnu and Krishna are manifestations.

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These examples illustrate the appeal of the God hypothesis on an intellectual level
since as a matter of practical theology, it provides a source of unity to the issues surrounding
religious devotion and the universal impulse of humans to reverence something larger than
themselves, and also to give a sense of purpose and meaning to the onerous tasks and daily
events of ordinary living. Peirce calls the hypothesis of God adorable and goes so far as to
say that at the end of the process of musement, the hypothesis provokes a sense of devotion
and even of love. Peirce states even to the point of earnestly loving and adoring his
strictly hypothetical God, and to that of desiring above all things to shape the whole conduct
of life and the springs of action into conformity with that hypothesis. Now to be deliberately
and thoroughly prepared to shape ones conduct in conformity with a proposition is
Believing that proposition.
Peirce admits that the hypothesis of God is a unique and inherently confusing one, but
we should note that these aspects of the hypothesis have been present in the conversation for
over two thousand years, and remain so today in contemporary philosophy of religion. In
another essay, Peirce deals with the traditional properties ascribed to God such as
omnipotence and omniscience, finding in each case a basis or a probability for the accuracy
of the ascriptions. Among the properties, not incidentally, is the question of whether growth
is a category properly assigned to God.
The difference between the philosophies of Peirce and of William James is pertinent
in the matter of religious belief. Peirce renamed his philosophy pragmaticism in order to
distinguish it from James version of pragmatism, a difference that is manifested in their
respective ideas regarding religious topics. The difference surrounds what may be termed
Peirces scientific realism, i.e. the notion that scientific investigation does not immediately

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and necessarily, but will ultimately gain the truth, that is will recognize and accommodate the
reality of the subject matter being pursued. That this is not the case for James is what caused,
I think, Peirce to distinguish pragmatism from pragmaticism. On the issue of religious belief
in general and the knowledge of God in particular, we can see the effect of their differences;
for Peirce a possibility of a proof of Gods reality is at hand, manifest in his NA, while James
reduces the question to the will to believe, a point of view which, frankly evades the central
question of whether God, as traditionally understood, actually exists.
Now James has produced one of the signal works in the philosophy of religion,
namely his Varieties of Religious Experience. There are many things to be said about this
impressive work, but the major point is that while James presents a description and
categorization of types of religious experiences, his survey does not lead to a validation of a
proposed proof for the reality or the existence of God. Rather James thinking leads to his
neutral monism which in effect swallows up the reality of God as traditionally understood,
leaving religious belief in an indefinite form as a result. (James was a believer in occult
manifestations and attended sances.) Peirce however presents a comprehensive
phenomenological theory based on the three categories in which experience is mediated
through ideas, and then applies this philosophical template to the hypothesis of Gods reality,
which as we have seen, Peirce finds convincing in its more or less traditional form.
That Peirces NA is not a proof of the existence of God in a la Aquinas five proofs is
readily apparent, for he eschews the use of a syllogistic and formal structure of argument. It
is important to examine the contrast; the traditional means of proof is to collect types or
pieces of empirical evidence, assemble them in frames such as the order of the universe or
the universal processes of causality, and then derive a conclusion about the existence of a

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creator of order or the logical requirement for a first cause to explain such effects. Peirce,
following the tenets of his pragmaticist philosophy, distinguishes between existence and
reality; evenso, the NA is not a replacement or a refined version of one of the five Thomistic
proofs. Instead, to propose a useful metaphor, it is like M Theory. M Theory according to
Steven Hawking is the most abstract and powerful theory yet proposed by theoretical
physics, for it is not merely one theory, but as Hawking points out a theory of theories. M
theory is compatible with a nearly infinite number of accounts of the mathematical structure
of the universe, which includes quantum gravity, alternative universes, strings and other
such arcane entities. Likewise, Peirces NA is not really a single proof, but a template for a
nearly infinite number of proofs by which people come to believe in God. The process of
musement will naturally involve different items for consideration for different people, and
unique patterns of thought through which each person, musing, will reach that ultimate
hypothesis of the reality of God.
Peirces NA bears comparison with that of Peirces contemporary (they were most
likely unknown to each other), the English churchman, John Henry Newman. The most
important aspect of both Peirces NA and Newmans Grammar of Assent is that they do not
offer proofs of the existence of God in the usual manner; rather they are like M Theory for
they are not a single proof, but a template for a nearly infinite number of proofs by which
people come to believe in God. Peirce and Newman do not rely on formal logic involving
syllogisms, premises and derived conclusions, but rather on what is now known and studied
in universities as informal logic. Peirce and Newman attempt an accurate portrait of how the
religious believers typically come to a belief in God, in which most often formal proofs do
not play a part. But the difficulty in Peirces and Newmans approach is that they are not

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merely not formal proofs, but may be seen as perhaps nothing more than psychological
descriptions; evenso, their accounts have a cogency based on the attractiveness of the
hypothesis of God.
Cardinal Newman developed the idea of the illative sense which he presented as a
mental faculty by which people developed firm beliefs in large propositions about science,
politics and literature as well as belief in God. The illative sense according to Newman
combines different types of evidence and arguments any one of which is too weak to provoke
firm belief, but which when combined with other such slight strands, can be combined to
form a unified and compelling argument. Like Peirces NA, Newman account can be
different for different believers, and constitutes a proof of proofs based on the actual
experience of religious believers. Unlike Peirces NA however, Newmans illative sense
allows for the potential believers evaluation of empirical evidence for Gods existence as
well. Peirce and Newman both conclude that in the end it is the cogency and inherent appeal
of the concept of God that confirms his existence for the religious searcher! Strangely, in
their respective accounts, it is not Newman, the English Cardinal famous for his sermons and
hymns, but Peirce, the American philosopher of a scientific bent, who gives an emotional and
lyrical description of the hypothesis of God!
Reflecting on these musings on the NA based on explications and comparisons, where
do they leave us? First, I reluctantly conclude that Peirces argument ultimately fails for the
same reason Anselms does, namely that it is a proof which is strictly internal to the
individual considering it and further that the extension of the internal conviction reached
by musement, no matter how strong, to a proof of external reality is not accomplished. A
contemporary of Anselms, the monk Guinilo, criticized the ontological proof by saying that

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conceiving of a perfect thing like the blessed isles did not mean that the blessed isles
actually existed, no matter how pleasant or theoretically perfect the idea; likewise the idea of
a God as the summit of perfection could not prove that God exists outside the confines of
ones own logical process. Although the process of musement that Peirce describes is more
psychological than logical, the criticism made by Guinilo and other critics including Aquinas
and Kant is likewise fatal, for Peirces three categories do not seem to me to transcend the
divide between internal perception and external reality.
Yet, the last point is in Peirces favor, for the NA rests on the perception that the
hypothesis of God is unique and has a splendor, a power that provides a clear idea of divine
unity and presence. Peirce himself, it is useful to remember, was a member of the Episcopal
Church throughout his adult life, and it seems that to accept the hypothesis of God as a
proved reality requires a prior consent, as it were, that it can be so.

2. WILLIAM JAMES: MOVEMENTS OF THE SOUL

Peirce, while grateful to James for his popularizing the Pragmatic philosophy, was
aware of the signal difference in their versions, so much so that he chose to distinguish his
own version with a new name, Pragmaticism, a term which he wrote is so ugly that no one
would ever borrow it (and no one has!). [CITE/quote ] The difference is in whether the
actions of the mind ever gather a truth that it by definition an equivalence of the mind with
reality, a definition that Peirce took from Medieval Scholasticism, specifically from the
writing of John Duns Scotus. This difference effects their somewhat different approaches to
the philosophy of religion

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William James as a principal contributor to the development of modern scientific

psychology stands in an obscure place. Since psychology was in transition roughly from a
subdepartment of theology and philosophy to a science in its own right, James own version
of it seems neither fish nor fowl in contemporary terms, neither a strictly empiricist approach
as reflected in behaviorism and laboratory research into human and animal behaviors that are
testable and measurable, and neither on the other hand a form of self-empowerment
psychology or an approach that provides a practical means for counseling clients suffering
from various form of psychological distress. Rather, James did advance the field with his
own research which resulted in his producing a widely influential text, entitled simply,
Psychology. Which in contemporary terms seems inconsistent. That is, James places much
emphasis on the will, the faculty of individual human beings to assert their own desires and
purposes, a faculty which he takes as not only a real element, but the apparently dominant
one in human psychology. This reflects the Medieval conception that human psychology
consists of will and intellect, the notion of free will developed first explicitly by St.
Augustine for purely theological motives. [de libero arbitrio!!!] However, the will, and the
free will in particular, is a faculty which is not easily or at all describable by the quantitative
methods that are central to modern science; that is there is no part of the central nervous
system or separate ganglia in the human brain that is associated with the will and so it is
not usually part of contemporary scientific psychology, certainly not of behavioral
psychology or of recent developments in neurobiology which are deterministic in its
explanations of human behavior.
But the empirical aspect of James theorizing resides in his detailed knowledge of
contemporary research into physiology especially empirical research into human cognition.

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Thus research into human ability to discriminate between sounds and colors, studies of
reaction time to physical stumuli and of the nervous system are frequently mentioned by
James. [e.g., essay Reflex Action and Theism] James research and that of many others at
that time must be seen against the background of a basic tenet of British empirical
philosophy, that of sense data theory, i.e. the explanation of sensory cognition in terms of
separate single elements of color and shape that impact the separate senses. But sense data
theory was used by empiricist philosophers such as Locke and then Russell, to explain not
just sense knowledge but as the source of all human knowledge of what is termed the
external world. But because James philosophy is not a consistent materialism or a
consistent and comprehensive idealism, as reflected in his own development of the field of
modern scientific psychology, he includes as part of the impact and flow of experiences upon
the human psyche not just sense data, but inner psychological intuitions or movements as
well. This is a substantial departure from empiricism and obviates immediately one could
assume the possibility of materialism. [cf Varieties early on!] But where to find that materials
for such internal movements? The problem is significant: how to gain fruitful scientific
knowledge of internal mental states and to classify and compare them? The problem is
overwhelming from the point of view of forming a perfectly empirical account of human
psychology, so much so that the school of behaviorism was developing shortly after James
wrote and published his Psychology.(date?) [William James: Writings, Gerald Meyers editor;
New York, Library of America, 1992.]
What James depended on was reports, accounts by religious believers themselves of
their personal experiences; thus his Varieties of Religious Experiences recounts the reports,
classifying them (e.g., conversion experiences ) [The Varieties of Religious Experience; New

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York, Modern Library (reprint), 1999.] James Varieties was instantly popular, and remains
so, seized upon by people who are questioning the validity of traditional religious forms, but
who are still desiring to maintain belief in the validity of religious belief in a general way.
Eschewing dogmas and the particularity of biblical assertions about miracles and direct
divine intervention in human affairs such as the burning bush and the Resurrection, James
appreciative readers could nonetheless be assured that religious belief has a serious and
independent basis even from a scientific point of view.
There are certain critical points that arise in James Varieties, however, the main one
of which is that its presumptive account of religion in general is just that it is mainly if not
exclusively a matter of internal impression attached to the individual believers. (Thus, there
is an implied contradiction with Peirces own highly social understanding of belief and
knowledge .) In this, James version reflects almost in a rigid manner, the individualism
typical of the Protestant Christian tradition. There is little if any emphasis on the social nature
religious belief or of religion itself, of cult or hierarchy, influence on society, etc. The vast
edifices of Gothic cathedrals of Europe that so impressed James contemporary Henry Adams
or the white Congregational churches that dot the New England landscape are not part of
James religious imagination and did not bring up for him the highly social nature of religious
worship. If his ignorance of the social aspect of the religious phenomenon is reflective of
James identification of Protestantism with true Christianity, it is also reflected in his
occasional expressions of outright anti-Catholicism, as in his treatment of St. Teresa of Avila
whose Autobiography is full of her descriptions of internal religious movements up to and
including conversations with Jesus Christ. [REFF ] But St. Teresas descriptions are
summarily rejected for consideration in Varieties. James failure to deal with social aspects

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may however also be caused by his concentration on psychology rather than say sociology as
the newly developing field of social science. For if this is so, then that fields emphasis on
personal individual behavior could easily lead to exclude consideration of social forces and
influences.
James wrote frequently on religious topics and besides his Varieties, which was given
over two sessions of the Gifford Lectures in 1901 and 1902. His best known work on the
subject is his essay, The Will to Believe. which is based on a lecture that was written in
response to a claim by the philosopher Clifford who asserted that it was simply immoral to
give belief to propositions/doctrines that could not be scientifically proven. [461] Thus, for
example, the existence of an afterlife could not be proven and so to believe in it was a form
of a moral fault; so also obviously with most of the doctrines of the Christian religion,
including the Resurrection, Atonement, the Trinity, etc. James argument, was in effect a
kind of voluntarism by which he distinguished between dead and live hypotheses,
defining live hypotheses as those which direct our future actions; religious doctrines
inevitably have an effect on our modes of behavior and thus, we are, James argues, entitled to
make bets as it were on live hypotheses. [p. 460] Indeed, he seems to say we have no choice
in the matter and that prescinding from making such a choice (skepticism) regarding belief
is itself a choice, one that runs the risk of losing the truths of faith, presumably those of
Protestant Christianity. [p. 475]
It is of interest to note that for James (and Peirce as well?) that in their discussions of
belief, evidence, and the meaning of conceptions, that even when applied to religious topics
they do not use the term faith. Nor do they analyze faith even thought James mentions St.
Paul, known especially to Protestant Christians for his teachings on faith overcoming

20

obedience to the law [Romans]. But is faith properly speaking the same as belief? Belief
seems a more generic term, because it is applicable to acceptance of the truth of any type of
assertion whereas faith is most appropriately applied to acceptance of religious doctrines, e.g,
the divinity of Christ. For James at any rate the term belief includes faith. (But faith is a gift
from God in Christian parlance; does this make a difference? )
A comment on James writing style which reveals in a direct manner his style of
philosophizing. It is a sign of a powerful and magnanimous mind, such as James, to
seriously consider opposing points of view and then respond to them in a deliberate and
honest manner. But it is usual to describe objections and counter-arguments separately as in a
legal document, or in the case of philosophic works by enumerating opposing opinions
paragraph by paragraph as Aquinas and Aristotle do, or as separate speeches in dialogues as
Plato and Hume do. But James often mixes up his own arguments with opposing arguments
in the very same complex sentence, using loosely defined or allusive terms, which makes his
arguments difficult to follow. As a result you tend to get only the gist of his arguments, and
find they can be condensed from several long paragraphs into one or two sentences. The
pertinence of reflections on James writing style is that it seems to influence or directly
reflect the manner of the conclusions James himself reaches in the end of his discourses.
Thus the chapter entitled Philosophy toward the end of Varieties contains James diverse
opinions on several related topics and long sections consisting of extended quotations and
criticisms of prominent theologians both Protestant (Caird) and Catholic (Newman). But in
the end James philosophy of religion reduces to the assertion that theology is not a science,
that religion depends more on sentiment than logic, and that philosophy of religion cannot
prove anything much about the nature of God, including his existence. [pp. 469-498]

21

The foremost example of this mixing of his opinion with counter-opinion is the
indefiniteness of his metaphysics. For James neutral monism is not the result of his intense
thinking in the abstract realms of classical metaphysics, but rather the result of his taking the
internal data of religious interior experiences as seriously as external sense data. If both kinds
of experience have probative value, then the kinds of reality they indicate, spiritual in the
case of interior experience, physical in the case of sense data, both exist in an unreducible
manner; the ultimate or final account of metaphysical reality is that both realms exist for
James, however without differentiation. Which may be seen as either the brave and consistent
result of Pragmatic thinking about religion, a process which gives the full value of religion
from a scientific point of view; or, on the other hand, a refusal to face the hard intellectual
choice of given that there are two kinds of metaphysical reality, which kind predominates, i.e.
Idealism or Materialism. It is apparent that James wanted to avoid both options and thus the
doctrine of neutral monism is a kind of skepticism.

3. JOSIAH ROYCE
William James foremost contemporary critic was Josiah Royce who was, like James
a Professor of Philosophy at Harvard College and had been James student. The presentation
of some aspects of Royces philosophy here may seem out of place, since even though he
placed himself squarely within the Pragmatic tradition, Royce is more likely seen as an
Absolute Idealist [Stanford philosophy url] Nonetheless, a presentation of Royces
philosophy of religion is useful at least for comparison with that of both Peirce, whose
philosophy of signs he relied upon, and James whose philosophy of perception he rejected.
Originally from California, Royce was known for his intellectual brilliance, who was

22

influenced by the critical philosophy of Kant and German Idealism that followed, in which
the predominance of the reality of ideas not only took precedence but added complexity to
James Pragmatic analysis of sense knowledge. Since the 19th Century philosophical
Idealism has all but disappeared from Anglophone philosophical discourse. Royce however,
like James and Peirce applied himself to a variety of topics including the philosophy of
religion, on which he wrote several volumes. Royce explicitly utilized several of the
doctrines of Peirce in his major work, The Problem of Christianity., Lectures XI to XIV in
which Royce utilizes Peirces doctrine of metaphysical Thirdness which Royce called
interpretation and which used to overcome the dualistic description of knowledge in terms
of sense data and concepts. More essentially, Peircean interpretation (and Peirces theory of
signs as well) formed the basis for Royces idea of how individual minds can create a
universal community (comparable Gospel of St. John. [REFF] )The more striking
comparison with the thought of James however is not on matters of evidence or practical
logic but on the fact that while for James religion is primarily a matter of analyzing
individual religious belief that for Royce, religion is primarily a social phenomenon. This
explains Royces concern with the relations between the individual and his/her community as
contained, in his writings on loyalty and the beloved community. It is also relevant that for
Royce, our personal experience has a fundamentally social nature, implying also the presence
of interpretation.
At the end of his career, and after having written books in which he presented his
philosophy of loyalty [Reff] and the relationship of the individual to society [reff], Royce
wrote his culminating work on philosophy of religion, The Problem of Christianity. [CITE!]
It is 350 pages long and given Royces penchant for discursive forays into other philosophers

23

and issues, could have been easily condensed into half that space which would have resulted
in a cleaner and more persuasive presentation. In a certain sense, Royces philosophy may be
termed eclectic as the combination of Idealism and pragmatic themes do seem not to
match; however, more often than not, the Idealistic theme is dominant. Thus Royces early
philosophy, stemming from his having to contrast his thought to James, asserted that only a
doctrine of the Absolute could insure that human thought could reach ultimate truth, as
surety for the possible truth value of individual propositions, that is. Another departure from
James is Royces insistence that human knowledge is not a relation of knowing mind to
external fact, i.e. a dualistic relation, but rather involved third element resulting in a triadic
description of human knowledge.
For Royce, the process of human knowledge involved not merely perception of a
sense datum from which the mind would form a concept, but between those two steps is
another, namely conception, for in the assimilation of knowledge, the mind is not a blank
slate receiving impressions from which it inductively reasons to a pattern, but rather the
immediate percept is made the subject of conception, so that in the Kantian sense,
knowledge, including sense knowledge was in a manner, a process of creation by the mind.
Here Royce followed Peirce with his doctrine of Thirdness, but in his own philosophy
Royce called this interpretation and thus made interpretation into first a philosophy of
mind, then to a philosophy of community, and then into a primary metaphysical stance of
absolute idealism, with the universe itself consisting of minds engaged in perpetual and
collective acts of interpretation.
Royce explicitly follows Peirce here, reworking his triadic philosophy which
fruitfully combines his metaphysics of the three categories (i.e. Firstness, Secondness,

24

Thirdness) with his triadic epistemology and theory of signs [symbology???]. For Peirce, the
category of Firstness which the first element in the process of cognition, is not a datum as in
empiricist accounts from Locke to Russell, but rather a concept; the reality which is at the
basis of cognition is in fact Thirdness . Interpretation, in Royces terminology, is built into
the process of cognition (cf. Hansens theory laden observation terms), and so the process
is described in a subtle but different manner from Peirce, for put simply, in his epistemology
opinion is fixed finally at the end of a process of cognition which may take a historical length
of time to accomplish, by explicit reference to reality which by definition is unaffected by
any persons opinion of it. (see above, Fixation) This is not the case for Royce however in
which cognition itself creates its own object; and the only aspect of reality which can insure
that the process of cognition reaches truth is the ideal Absolute.
The problem of Christianity that Royce is concerned with is how Christian ideas
can fit into, not to say survive in the ideological context of the modern world. [p. 62] In
what sense, if any, can the modern man consistently be, in creed, a Christian? He seems to
take for granted that the modern ideas regarding science, historical progress and the new
criticism of the Bible have largely de-legitimated Christian belief. our creeds should be
tested, and if need be, revised. [p. 64] However, while Royce will attempt in effect a rational
reconstruction of the case for Christian belief, he, like James, understands the live importance
of the issue, for above all, Christianity is a way of life, in which it has many positive aspects.
[p. 62] a life-problem, an intensely practical, a passionately interesting issue, the
problem and the issue of a religion. His answer to the problem is in two parts in the first
part, he presents what he thinks are the main elements of the Christian religion in some
detail; they are its communal nature, original sin and atonement. Of these three, the latter two

25

are well known and understood as part of the Christian religion, but its communal aspect,
expressed as the Beloved Community, puts Royces thinking directly against the
individualism of James thinking, i.e. in Varieties . And it is this communal element that
Royce develops in detail and in large philosophical scope in the second part of Problem .
He sets the table, so to speak, by devoting the first three chapters of Part II, The Real
World and the Christian Ideas, to a presentation of the idea of community as time bound, i.e.
based on the (common) memory of its inhabitants; on the relation of the individual to the
whole community (loyalty); and the epistemological basis of his philosophy of religion,
Perception, Conception, and Interpretation in which the mind is portrayed as engaged in
the construction of personal experience. The next three chapters constitute the base of what is
unique and pertinent in Royces philosophy of religion, namely the argument that
interpretation is the common basis of the many individual minds and personalities that
make up the community as they encounter other minds and compare experiences and
expectation. Implied is the idea that Christians will have each the personal experience of
enacting Christian ideas within their own lives, and thus by a conscious, i.e. willed effort, of
comparison with other individual adherents, derive a common reality, i.e. that of the
Beloved Community. At this point, Royce leaves off any consideration of contrast with
James, and relies wholly on Peirces theory of signs.
Peirce developed an intricate and useful theory of signs, of the power of those
expressions which designate something beyond themselves. For Peirce, this necessarily
implied a triadic relationship among the sign, the thing designated by the sign, and the
knower or intellect who would make the interpretation of the sign. The relationship was

26

incomplete without what Peirce (and Royce) considered a necessary part of the logic of
signs, [REFF, CSP and Royce] namely an interpreter. [Letters to Lady Welby! ]
While for Royce, this insight stood as the basis for a metaphysical description of the
reality of the Christian community, it lacked an element that Peirce argued for but that Royce
rejected, namely that the endpoint of interpretation was the derivation of an idea which was
then matched to reality, to discover whether it is true or false. [ How to Make Our Idea
Clear] An indication of the inherently Idealistic nature of Royce thought is that he denied
the need for reverencing or in effect worshipping the founder of the Christian religion,
instead relying on an extended reference to the writing of St. Paul in his epistles to the
various primitive Christian churches of the time. For Royce, the Christian religion was a set
of ideas which was directed at the formulation of a sacred community, but no more than that.
Royce was interested in the Catholic religion for its expressed communalism, but never really
approached the likelihood that he would ever convert since for him the tangibility of
Catholic worship (the Real Presence, icons and statues, veneration of saintly relics) directly
contradicted his own idealistic philosophy of religion, i.e. that religion is in general a set of
ideas, based on the mental activity of communal interpretation. Thus for Royce the essence
of the Christian religion is the Beloved Community but without reference to what its
adherents uniformly state is its essential idea, namely that Jesus is the fulfillment of the
promises made to the Israelites and true son of the living God [Bib reff!!] (in this way
denying the statement of Emerson that an institution is merely the extended shadow of a
man).

4. DEWEY: THE DENIAL OF RELIGION AND SOCIAL ETHICS

27

In a certain sense, there is no reason to include the thought of John Dewey in a

summary of philosophy of religion, for he discounts the reality of what is traditionally
understood as religious belief. That is, unlike James and certainly Peirce, Dewey refuses
from the outset to understand traditional religious belief in its own terms. As a result, he
developed, despite his ruminative style which includes many specific references to religious
history, basically a reductive theory of religion and religious belief. Furthermore, he does this
from the outset in what may be his one work dedicated to the philosophy of religion, A
Common Faith [New Haven, Yale U. Press, 1934, originally given as three lectures]. And
again, despite his voluminous writings on social morality and the application of Progressive
ideals to practical issues of the day, for example the reform of education, Dewey not merely
avoids but effectively renounces the possibility that religious beliefs as such have anything
positive to offer in debates and formation of policies on practical, i.e. political affairs. In this
manner, Dewey stands as a kind of prophet of secularism for his antagonistic exclusion of
religious influences from the public square is easily reflected in political and legal
developments currently.
In Deweys case, the issues surrounding religious belief are impacted into his deeper
metaphysical thought regarding experience which frequently takes an Idealistic, i.e. Hegelian
turn. Since Deweys thought in politics, art and philosophy is based on his theory of
experience it is necessary to briefly note its major thesis: experience is an engagement in the
persons environment, and not a passive reception of sense data on a mental blank slate as in
British empiricism. Rather experience is the result of actively engaging in the environment,
as an infant gropes for his mothers breast, or a society passes laws to engage newly
emerging crises. In effect, (following James?) experience is the result of willed action rather

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than the basis for mental reflection on individual packets of data impacting on the sensory
organs of the human person. Furthermore, he asserts that art provides the cumulative type of
experience associated with religion (however he does not in any way concede that artistic
experience opens the door to some other, extra-natural reality): The highest because most
complete incorporation of natural forces and operations in experience is found in art. [p.
xix, Experience and Nature (2nd ed.); LaSalle, Open Court, 1929]
What Dewey seeks to do from the outset is to separate what he terms religion from
the religious. [Reff to Common Faith ] so it is important to understand what he means by
his application of these terms, as well as what they may mean within themselves apart from
the context of Deweys thought. For what Dewey intends to do is to de-valorize religion as
commonly understood and yet in effect retain some of its aspects as far as they can be applied
to his progressive political agenda. In order to accomplish this, Dewey eliminates what he
terms the supernatural from religion and then consistently applies this somewhat clumsy
insight throughout his short book; it is an unsatisfactory treatment because Dewey by this
means effectively dismisses religion as a human phenomenon that focuses on a non-physical
reality, real or imagined. Instead, what Dewey hopes to accomplish is to take religious
sentiment and redirect it to its proper and effective end, namely the transformation of society
by progressive norms. The strategy of detaching the psychological and social force of
religious belief and redirecting it to approved, non-otherworldly ends is to be seen in other
contexts and promoted by others besides Dewey; James, for instance, wrote an essay
regarding the moral equivalent of war which called upon the higher, i.e. religious instinct
of mankind [REFF] The same technique can be seen within the Catholic Church recently as
the opposition against liberal state supported abortion availability has arisen not so much

29

from the leadership of the Church but most actively from the Catholic people in the United
States. The hierarchy of the Church however deems such anti-abortion activism as an
opportunity to direct it to the Churchs policy of social justice reforms. [REFF]
Dewey follows James in reducing religion to sentiment, an absurd point of view since
such a reduction belies the vast amount of theological writing that also accompanies
religions, an element which is often ridiculed by ignorant critics. It is easier to attack Calvin
or Aquinas as producers of large volumes of spiritual nonsense than to actually read them.
Once attempted, it is almost impossible to disregard them as serious thinkers given the
intense intellectual efforts they make to define the inner logic of their religious beliefs and
their applicability to actual living as Christians. The final point here is that in separating the
religious from religion Dewey has had to basically distort the meaning of religion in
daily life of believers, but also ignore the vast social fact of how religions actually exist. It is
fine to produce a complex theory of experience as Dewey has accomplished, but if in order to
do so you ignore the facts of what really constitutes religion as a social force and discount the
validity of religious beliefs a priori, it becomes extremely difficult to see what value there
may be in Deweys philosophy of religion.
But what Dewey might mean by reference to the supernatural is a question worth
some comment, for it may not be so easy to detach reference to the supernatural from
religion as Dewey thinks, and if it is so in definitional terms, so also in actual terms. Indeed,
the textbook definition cites reference to an Ultimate Sacred Reality as part of the
definition of religion that is explicitly designed to be inclusive, i.e. to apply to all the known
world-wide religions, including Islam, Buddhism, etc. [Andrew Eshleman, editor, Readings
in Philosophy of Religion: East Meets West; Malden, Ma., Blackwell Publishing, 2008; p. 4.]

30

Thus reference is made in all cases of what are commonly understood as religions but if
this is so, it means that one of the defining aspects of religious belief that constitutes a
religion as such, is reference to some element beyond and besides the common reality,
physical and social in which men and women live their lives. Thus the separation of religious
activities from the mundane, daily run of things; feast days, holidays, Sabbaths; and the
special activities such as liturgies, prayers and devotions that do not otherwise appear in daily
life. In fact, there is as observed a real aspect of separation of religion from daily life, which
implies in a further step of analysis the belief and the actuating principal of an ultimate
sacred.
Furthermore, in experiential terms, the evidence from personal accounts of dramatic
and specific interventions from an ultimate sacred whether real or imaginary is paramount,
from the Enlightenment of Buddha, to St. Pauls being knocked off his horse by seeing Jesus,
to the angelic visitations of Mohammed, to the experiences of Teresa of Avila and George
Fox, and many more. How can an all-encompassing account of experience such as Dewey
attempts leave out the significant evidence throughout history of such supernatural
interventions, perceived or otherwise? In a pragmatic vein, such claims of sacral
interventions have had enormous practical, i.e. social and historical effects, including the
foundation if world religions. How then can they have been discounted? The only relevant
answer is that Dewey simply wanted to ignore them, because his philosophical project was
largely political and totally secular.
At this point, it may seem appropriate to describe Deweys ethical philosophy since in
a sense it is apparent that his social ethics is a replacement or a subsumption of religion to
political reform. However, Deweys contributions to the ethics of political reform are so vast,

31

written over approximately a 75 year span, and his writing style well known to be wordy
tending to obscurity, that no such survey will be attempted here except to make one or two
points with reference to religion in general. First, as part of the project of progressive reform,
the political influence of denominations such as Baptists, Episcopalians and Catholics must
be eliminated, for as been pointed out Dewey in effect displaces the sentiments usually
associated with the practice of religion and religious belief to social reform and progressive
politics. In this manner, his thought replicates the actual formation of political ideologies
which have done the same thing, such as Fascism and Soviet style Communism; the
difference obviously is that Dewey works in a democratic context, which however does not
exempt his progressive heirs from utilizing the power of government via the courts,
legislature, executive actions, the tax power of government and the application of criminal
and civil laws to eliminate religious influence from the public square.
There is a precisely Orwellian aspect to Deweys political philosophy in that in his
view of democracy, the complexity and Hegelian aspect of his thought, implies that the
individual citizen is seen not as a voter who independently assesses the political aspects
surrounding public issues, and then participates in making policy by voting, attending
meetings, expressing his/her opinion, etc., but rather as a participant in a process in which
his/her interest and opinions are (somehow) subsumed into the general democratic process,
into an ongoing search for a more perfect union. The individuality of the individual citizen is
thereby suppressed. In this manner, Deweys political philosophy at this point resembles the
mystical aspect of religious belief which subsumes, as it were, the individuality of the
believer into the community of believers.

32

What is happening in the transition from James treatment of religion to Deweys is

that the Pragmatic tradition has detached itself from implicit or explicit reference to the
Christian faith. From Peirces attempt to provide a neglected proof of the reality of God
which is done in a categorically Christian mind set (following Anselm, Aquinas, Newman) to
James psychological description of Protestant Christian types of personal religious
experience, now to Deweys rejection of any possible reference to religious reality. Reference
to religion in general and respect for it as a social fact declines in the history of the big
three for it is a fact that Dewey not only dismisses religious belief as sentiment (perhaps as a
variety of aesthetic experience) but also declines to observe much less try to make sense of
the vast social manifestations of religious faith, prominent and (one would have thought)
inescapable on the American scene. It is also a fact as represented by Deweys place among
the big three that as reference to religion and religious belief as things in themselves
declines, that reference to social ethics increases, indeed becomes dominant. This also is part
of Deweys place in the history of religious thought in the Pragmatic tradition.

5. RORTYS DENIAL THAT THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

How far the decline of Pragmatism can proceed is represented in the thought of
Richard Rorty. Like Dewey, Rorty was progressive in his political views, which by the time
he wrote was called Liberalism. Rorty however stands not as a principled defender of
contemporary democracy unlike Dewey, or for that matter Rawls or Popper. Rather, he stands

33

for a kind of feckless relativism which while energetically promoting Liberal social values
and policies, refuses to defend them in an intellectually coherent manner. Furthermore, he
takes this inability or unwillingness as a principle in itself, arguing in effect that the
presumption that one knows the truth is the source of what is wrong in contemporary thought
and politics. It is as if the Nazi philosophy was not wrong because of its infamous race
theories since there is no such things as an Aryan race, or as if Stalin was not wrong
because class warfare is so innately cruel and destructive; rather Hitler and Stalin were wrong
for having any beliefs that truth could be attained. Rortys attitude, which he termed Liberal
ironism is a common one these days, when we are repulsed by any advocate of a position
who is too energetic, too convinced of his or here own rightness, but he took it to an extreme
position of absolute epistemological and moral relativism. All such assertions, he claimed,
merely reflected the power structure of the surrounding culture. Later in his life, he was
consistent in giving up on philosophy as the search for truth, writing as a literary and cultural
critic while disdaining the defense and promotion of democratic values altogether. Such a
position however consistent would seem to render his claim that he is a member of the
Pragmatist school in doubt; it is this claim of filial descent that Susan Haack particularly
denies. http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/rortyism-haack-3261
The above paragraph states facts that are well known so the question is how do they
apply to religion. Rorty did not specifically write about religion but nonetheless his attitude
can be surmised since the typical function of religion epistemologically is to provide a set of
truths to believers who must accept them on faith. That is, religious believers accept
assertions that may not or cannot be proven to be true, or contradict known scientific laws,
but who assert nonetheless that these assertions are true, i.e. correspond to reality. Rortys

34

position must deny both ends, so to speak, about religious belief, first the end point of
believing that certain assertions are true but also by implication the beginning point that it is
proper for serious human beings to accept the truth of any statement whatsoever. [cite
Contingency, irony, and solidarity (sic); New York, Cambridge U. Press, 1980] Rortys book
The Mirror of Nature , the book that made his reputation among professional philosophers, is
an extended argument that denies that modern empirical science provides the truth about
nature, in this manner rebutting one of the foremost cultural beliefs of the Enlightenment. [cf
Peter Gays The Enlightenment !!] This is Rortys philosophic case for epistemological
relativism, but we may note that in denying the ability of science to provide truth even within
its purported field or remit, he denies the possibility that mankind can know truth at all. Rorty
applies this epistemological relativism to politics especially, a position that denies the
validity of any political philosophy whatsoever, an assertion which has caused consternation
among people of a left-wing political philosophic bent whom have depended on Rorty as a
big named philosopher for defense of their common position. [E.g., Mexican adventure!!!]

6. SCIENTIFIC TRUTH AND THE NEGLECT OF RELIGIOUS REALITY HAACK

As mentioned earlier, I have depicted the history of the Pragmatic tradition as one of
decline and tragedy. The decline has been reflected unfortunately in that traditions inability
to create a serious philosophy of religion, although given the thought of Peirce and James,
such a development would have seemed at the beginning of the 20th Century to be a sure
thing. Peirce did not decline to consider metaphysical reality as a possibility, creating in the
manner of Aristotle for whom the existence of God was the climax of his metaphysics, an

35

argument for the reality of God. James was unwilling to dismiss the validity of religious
experience by taking it on the ground on its own terms, thus declining to approach religion
in a manner predetermined by scientific reductionism. Dewey and Rorty however did not
take religious experience or belief on its own terms, and so in what may the last act of a
tragedy, the figure last to be considered is the best known contemporary exponent of
Pragmatism, Professor Susan Haack of the University if Miami. Haack is well known not
only to a philosophic but a general audience for her well written books and articles which
utilize the pragmatic tradition to analyze and discourse on contemporary issues including
legal ones; thus the title of a collection of essay, Putting Philosophy to Work which contains
the important The Integrity of Science which does not simply defend the integrity of
science but shows its practical implications in the field of bio-medical research, particularly
for the complex issue of drug trials.
Haack made her name as a philosopher with her re-consideration of the place of
science as the basis of the Pragmatic philosophy, and here is generally on good ground.
Pragmatism was founded in large manner as a scientific philosophy by Peirce and James,
who had recourse to scientific method and the history of scientific thought but also the
content of scientific theories as inspiration. Science in the late 19th Century had a cache and
an intellectual influence which lasted up until the middle of the 20th Century, but has now
come under, it is fair to say, suspicion and outright attack. This counter-reaction arose not
from literalist readers of the King James Bible or papal encyclicals, but from within
academia and by some of the most influential historians and philosophers of science. Kuhn,
Popper, Polanyi and Lakatos are the chief representatives in this movement away from the
belief in the certitude of modern science, but the most destructive analysis of science as the

36

truth teller of Western civilization came from Continental schools of post-modernism and
Existentialism, of whom Foucault and Heidegger are chief representatives. Haack in her
book, Defending Science, attempts to restore science as the chief model for Pragmatism
which is necessary if that philosophy can retain the notion that human beings can really be
said to know things. In short, a serious understanding of modern empirical science is
necessary for undergirding the notion of reality and truth that are essential elements of
Pragmatism. Haacks program is to restore the basis of the Pragmatic philosophical tradition
by means of a reconsideration of the nature of the scientific enterprise.
Haacks strategy is to maneuver between what she describes as the cynicism of the
recent critics of science (including the historical (Kuhn) and the critical (Foucault)), and the
prior sense of scientism meaning the idea that the only reliable source of all knowledge is
from science and that all other human activities including literature, politics, love, family life,
human history, philosophy and religion are completely reducible to scientific explanations.
She has done this in her book Defending Science Within Reason. (The winsomeness of the
title is a good example of Haacks appealing style.) She has also made it a point to look to
Peirce among the representatives and founders of the Pragmatic tradition, but has chosen to
ignore his philosophic legacy in the area of religion. While it is hard to see at first glance,
Peirces take on religion is in many ways traditionally Christian, Haacks take on religion by
contrast is complex but ultimately dismissive, offering little that is new beyond the standard
rationalistic criticism. Haacks view is available from the chapter entitled A Point of Honor
in Defending Science in which she states that for her, religious belief isnt a live option. I
have never felt moved to write a manifesto explaining Why I am not a Christian [see

37

Russell]; but now I can neither avoid the question of the relation of science to religion, nor
duck the obligation to answer it honestly. [Defending, pp. 265, 266]
Haack organizes the chapter by means of a direct comparison of science with religion
mostly on an epistemological basis, by which she finds that religion asserts its beliefs in the
absence of compelling evidence, with quotes from Weinberg, Dawkins, Hume and
Mencken. She says that science refuses to go beyond its evidence which she argues is the
better of the two alternatives. Haack claims that According to the best-warranted theories of
modern science, the earth is just one small corner of a vast universe, a small corner which
just happened to be hospitable to life [p. 267]. Why say just one corner or just
happened to be except to demean the value of human life itself, indeed of human existence?
The sentence is harshly dismissive, unworthy of a serious philosopher. She distinguishes
religion from theology which she states is a form of inquiry that seeks supernatural
explanations. Usually, furthermore, it calls on evidential resources beyond sensory
experience and reasoning, most importantly on religious experience and on the authority of
revealed texts. [p. 267] The chapter follows through with a historical account of how over
time scientific explanations have replaced the need for religious ones, intelligent design
theory, and Goulds attempt at reconciliation NOMA. In each topic, she develops her
counter-argument carefully, analyzes the religious arguments in detail, ultimately rejecting
them, usually depending on the expertise of other writers (e.g. Futuyama in debate with
Johnson). Haacks one original entry into criticism of religious faith is her analysis of James
Will to Believe whose defense of religious belief she characterizes as caught in a dilemma;
James defense either presupposes the truth of theism, or is a defense of wishful thinking.
[p.291]

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From the beginning, Haack has put the case against religion mainly on an
epistemological basis, disregarding the actually metaphysical aspects of the Pragmatic
tradition found in Peirce but also in James and Dewey. Her implied rejection of the
metaphysical realm prevents any serious consideration of for example the existence of God
and other issues typical of philosophy of religion. Haacks flatly horizoned picture of religion
may derive from a kind of philosophic prejudice in which the Pragmatic tradition is reduced
to a refined form of scientific naturalism. In her attempt to set up a compromise between
scientism and cynicism she confines her treatment of science to its epistemology, i.e. to its
experimental method and standards of proof. But those whom she refers to as the cynics
attempted to place science in a social and historical context, a frame by which they could
then show the connections between science and culture in a free-based manner, connecting
the content of scientific theories to political, social and yes, religious aspects of Western
culture. The frankly speculative inferences of Peirce on a theory of evolution based on love,
or of James neutral monism which did not exclude either scientific evidence or religious
experience are foreign to Haacks approach to modern science. She has emphasized sciences
method to the exclusion of the content of the theories of science, which in turn has foreclosed
an appreciation of religion.