1The book William James, MD by Emma K. Sutton focuses on the idea that William James’s medical training played a decisive role in the development of his multifaceted thought. The influence of medical studies on James, radically denied by some historians (e.g., White 1973), has already been emphasised by others (e.g., Brett 1962; Hearnshaw 1987; Leary 2022; Croce 2024). Arguably, however, never before this monograph had the far-reaching consequences of James’s early vocation been analysed in depth.
2The key to understanding how much the medical forma mentis influenced James throughout his career as a thinker is the circumstance that it is not the “medical materialism” of the early years that remains constant over time. Sutton makes it perfectly clear how James progressively shows interest in, for instance, phenomena “generally called mystical.” And how his attitude towards them changed. “When he first encountered the world of psychical research,” as Sutton (2023: 101) writes, “he saw no reason why such observations would not, one day, be reconciled with the assumption that ‘the world’s body is all mechanical’.” Later, however, his attitude seemed completely different: “James became increasingly convinced [...] that these new ‘mystical’ facts could not be accommodated within the bounds of conventional scientific thinking” (ibid.). What indeed never changed was the constant interest in physical and mental health and hygiene: “the promotion of health became the aim around which many of James’s private and public activities were organized” (ibid.: 46).
3From what Sutton writes, it can be understood that James’s concrete interests were also in some way directed by the precarious health conditions that characterised his youth, and in particular the problems he had with his back. “Writhing in pain’s grip, he repeatedly debated, with himself and others, how he should manage it, how it was managing him, and, ultimately, what it all meant” (ibid.: 13). Curiously, it may be noted, another important thinker of the 19th century had a life strongly affected by an unhealthy back: Søren Kierkegaard. The Danish philosopher fell out of a tree as a boy and had his spine permanently damaged. James and Kierkegaard indeed have other elements in common: certainly, an anti-rationalist tendency (McLane 1977), an interest in the spiritual world, which pushed the two towards comparable positions with respect to the justification of faith (Chipp 2009; Sands 2001, 2014), and a horror of simplistic explanations. Both also developed a conception of human personality that considered the possibility of different experiences, however legitimate, having different approaches to the meaning of existence. James expressed this both in the dualism between tough-minded and tender-minded personalities (James 1907), in the theorisation of different possible religious experiences (James 1902), and, to some extent, in the idea of a “pluralistic universe” (James 1909). Kierkegaard elaborated a complex theory of the stages of life, each of which could be considered legitimate and worthy of being lived through to the end, as long as it is coherent (Kierkegaard 1843, 1845). Moreover, if James developed a “metaphysics of misery” (Sutton 2023: 17), the most famous works by Kierkegaard are on anxiety (1844) and on despair (1849). As much as one cannot reduce a philosophy to a backache, it is possible that a “thorn in the flesh,” in the expression of St. Paul dear to both philosophers, can exert no small influence on thought.
4In line with what the author proposes, in this paper I would like to put forward the hypothesis that James’s medical training may have played a fundamental role in the birth and evolution of his theory of truth, or more specifically, of different aspects of his theory of truth. Indeed, it must be emphasised that, on the one hand, the best-known version of James’s theory of truth is the one set out in perhaps his most popular book, Pragmatism: it is a theory that has aroused widespread resonance and a strong polarisation between full support and violent rejection. On the other hand, as Hilary Putnam pointed out in her seminal essay on James’s Theory of Truth: “The howlers and the enthusiasts were careless readers, however. They virtually ignored what James wrote about truth elsewhere” (Putnam 1997: 166). It must also be emphasised that the concept of truth to which James refers is not necessarily superimposable on areas such as science and religious experience and, as Sutton points out, “[James’s] understanding of ‘God,’ ‘religion,’ and ‘science’ morphed considerably, and these transformations were embedded, like so much of his thinking, in matters of medical nature” (Sutton 2023: 79).
5Pragmatism, in fact, on a not fully attentive reading, seems to identify truth with what is subjectively satisfying, suggesting the possibility that James was advocating an irrationalist position (which, as Putnam himself pointed out, could be a great virtue for some and a serious flaw for others). In reality, however, even if only Pragmatism is taken into account, James (1907: 512) states rather “that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience.” However, this sentence follows the premise that “truth in our ideas and beliefs means the same thing that it means in science” and precedes the timely clarification that others before him (such as Dewey and Schiller) “in reaching this general conception of all truth, have only followed the example of geologists, biologists and philologists” (ibid.). In the light of this clarification, the only way to test a truth is to ascertain “what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience’s demands, nothing being omitted” (ibid.: 522). The fact that we should not confuse what is satisfying with what is convenient in the most trivial sense is then underlined by the fact that according to James “neither consolidation nor augustness are decisive marks of truth” (ibid.: 569).
6Putnam’s essay identifies four different fundamental strains in James’s thought, through the analysis of Pragmatism, The Meaning of Truth (James 1909) – i.e. the two most important essays written by James from the point of view of defining truth – and other earlier and later writings:
(1) A Peircean strain ([...] this strain is quite strong, but James’s critics ignore it). (2) The un-Peircean idea that truth is partly shaped by our interests [...] (3) a realist strain, summed up in the claim that truth involves agreement with reality, although that agreement is not one single relation, and (4) an empiricist strain, summed up in the claim that “truth happens to an idea.” (Putnam 1997: 166)
7Can we identify something that unites these different ways of conceiving truth? We can start from the classification proposed by Horwich (1998) of the types of theories of truth, excluding of course the one according to which truth cannot be theorised in any way (Künne 2003 defines this position as primitivism). From this perspective, we can include the different proposals in four groups: correspondentist theories, coherentist theories, utilitarian theories and deflationist theories.
8James explicitly opposes the classical correspondentist position (which he calls rationalist), according to which veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus, i.e. truth constructs something in the mind that corresponds to what exists in the external world:
The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalizes. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. (James 1907/1987: 516)
9If James refers to the correspondentist intuition, i.e. the idea that an absolute truth must also exist, he does so in order to essentially deny its attainability, as he does, for instance, when he states in Psychology: Briefer Course:
The full truth about states of mind cannot be known until both Theory of Knowledge and Rational Psychology have said their say. Meanwhile an immense amount of provisional truth about them can be got together, which will work in with the larger truth and be interpreted by it when the proper time arrives (James 1892/1992: 12)
10In Pragmatism, he even uses sarcasm towards those who “speak as if our ideas possessed truth just in proportion as they approach to being copies of the Absolute’s eternal way of thinking” (James 1907/1987: 573).
11Deflationist conceptions, for which the words “true” and “truth” do not attribute any particular property to the proposition or concept to which they are attached, did not in fact emerge until after James had concluded his own theoretical journey. Nor does James seem in the least to have anticipated them: from his point of view, affirming the truth of something always constitutes an important step. Coherentist conceptions, linked to the definition of truth as the absence of contradiction, although less demanding than the correspondentist position, are equally distant from James’s thought due to their relative abstractness. On the contrary, the different strains of James’s definition of truth seem to converge in the utilitarian family: true is what “works.” In summary, as Alfred J. Ayer has written, James addresses the question of the nature of truth “from the standpoint of the individual thinker who is actually concerned with forming his beliefs.” Surely:
For someone in this position the cash-value of the question “What is truth?” is “How can I decide what proposition to accept?” James’s general answer to this question is that a preposition is to be accepted if and only if it works. (Ayer 1968: 109)
12And although the verb “to work” can take on different meanings to describe the different nuances of James’s thought, all are compatible with the deep root of medicine.
13The “Peircean strain” (1) brings James closer to Peirce’s famous definition of truth as “the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate” (Peirce 1960, §407). Putnam points out how James converges several times in his works on this definition, and as early as the late 1870’s, except that Peirce intends investigators to converge on the true opinion “if inquiry were indefinitely continued” (Putnam 1997: 170). More precisely: “This notion of truth is an ideal and absolute one: the truth is not relative to time, person, or circumstance; it is the fixed limit toward which inquiry tends” (Scheffler 1974: 100). While “James is talking about an ultimate convergence to be actually, not counterfactually, brought about” (Putnam 1997: 170). When James therefore echoes Peirce’s definition, he makes “an attempt to clarify the idea of truth by application of Peirce’s pragmatic maxim.” It is an approach that goes, however, in a completely different direction from the Peircean ideas: “The ironic result of this attempt was that James, using Peirce’s maxim, produced a theory of truth that diverges radically from Peirce’s own view” (Scheffler 1974: 103). This is therefore the same order of truth that can be reached in a medical consultation: for practical purposes, the agreement of different doctors (perhaps with different areas of experience) can be considered true for the purposes of treatment, although an absolute level of certainty, such as the convergence of the opinions of all researchers in the field, cannot be expected.
14With regards to the “un-Peircean strain” whereby truth is at least partly “shaped by our interests,” (2) we can distinguish two planes of analysis. The most obvious consideration is that it is a view linked to the fundamental element of James’s pragmatism: our thinking is aimed at action, at praxis (and thus the utilitarian element, the fact that an idea must work in practice constitutes the fundamental aspect of its evaluation). In any case, as Putnam points out in another paper:
James has been almost universally accused of identifying truth with “value for life.” Of course, careful readers have pointed out that it is not value for life merely in the case of the individual believer but value for life “in the long run and on the whole, of course” that James speaks of, but that truth cannot go beyond value for life on the whole. (Putnam 2017: 189)
15The second point to consider is that, on the one hand, any kind of interest could obviously be compatible with the emergence of the definition. On the other hand, it is a typical feature of medicine to focus on a specific element (what is most urgently needed to be cured) and to leave out (at least temporarily) the rest. From this point of view, diagnosis and treatment are “true” depending on the specific problem being addressed by the doctor.
16When James moves towards the “realist strain” whereby truth can be defined as “agreement with reality” (3), it is certainly not to be thought of as a conversion towards the correspondentist conception. On the contrary, as Putnam always warns, one must understand what James means by “agreement” and “reality.” “Agreement” by no means stands for “copy” in his vocabulary. To take an example from James, when one thinks of a watch, for the idea of a watch to be true, it is certainly not necessary to possess the professionalism of the craftsman who is able to make one or repair it: for practical purposes, it will suffice to recognise a watch (possibly a particular watch) and perhaps be able to tell the time by the position of the hands. Indeed, quoting a passage from the Essays in Radical Empiricism (James 1906) that can best clarify the concept, Putnam (1997: 187) explains: “In short, mere resemblance never suffices for truth. It is what we do with our ‘images’ that makes the difference.” Here again, medicine offers a concrete example consistent with this consideration: it is not enough to have a correct image of what the human body looks like. One must know how to use such an image from a practical point of view: for diagnosis, prognosis or treatment (which seems even more true today than in James’s time, since we are in an era in which “images” of the body offer ever greater detail – and all the more specialist knowledge is needed to interpret them).
17Regarding the “empiricist strain” whereby “truth happens to an idea,” also for the sake of brevity it is worth quoting Putnam again:
James came to the conclusion that beliefs do not (unobservably) “agree with reality” independently of whether they are verified, but rather come to agree with reality as the conjunctive relations in question come into existence. Hence the doctrine that “truth happens to an idea”! (Putnam 1997: 178)
18Once again, we are faced with a position compatible with the medical attitude, where diagnosis and prognosis are linked and one somehow confirms the other, even if certain outcomes of a disease are only partly predictable and sometimes the truth of a diagnosis can only be ascertained on the basis of the outcome. In nineteenth-century medicine, for example, Kraepelin (1883) expressed the belief that dementia praecox was linked to a lesion of the brain and as such only after autopsy could the relevant diagnosis be considered conclusively true.
19A passage from Sutton’s book reveals a possible reason why the question of truth in James’s thought is on the one hand very multifaceted, and on the other hand traceable to the American philosopher’s aforementioned change of attitude regarding the relationship between medical cognition and psychic phenomena:
[James’s] newfound respect for the spiritualistic and magnetic physicians had brought with it a glimpse of a fresh field of vision: the possibility that useful medical knowledge may originate outside of the scientific study of life and that this lay healing community possessed a unique and valuable perspective that would prove indispensable in the accumulation of certain “truths.” (Sutton 2023: 89)
20In short: “it happens” that the path to truth(s) that work(s) is not necessarily the result of a single method or research tradition. Somehow one can see prefigured in this the idea of the distinction between “context of discovery” and “context of justification” that would be theorised by Hans Reichenbach (1951).
21A final consideration concerns the complex relationship of Henry and William James. The protagonist of Henry James’s novel Washington Square (1880) is a doctor. That there may be some autobiographical traces in the novel seems quite indubitable, since 21, Washington Place is the birthplace of Henry James. Certainly, this is a novel that tells a rather dark story: “Cruelty and sadism, familial punishment and revenge; dead children, deadened lives, ghostly relics hatching plots, and unwanted figures from the past returning as if from the grave; everyone and everything in the end tasting of ashes and ruin” (Maine 2016: 209). However, there is also no lack of ironic elements in the tale. It would be interesting to understand the extent to which William’s medical studies may have influenced Henry and whether Henry’s novel left a mark on William’s thinking, particularly on how certain truths are eventually revealed.