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The difference is that when the pragmatists speak of truth, they mean exclusively some thing about the ideas, namely their workableness; whereas when anti-pragmatists speak of truth they seem most often to mean something about the objects.
Because the 'abstract' sciences cannot and do not attempt to reach ultimate truth, it is assumed that they are altogether 'barren forms, This is the error of much Oriental mysticism, which denies all value to what it regards as the lower categories. In his later writings Mr. Tyrrell objects to being classed with the American and English pragmatists the school of Mr. William James.
They begin to quarrel only after the question is raised as to what may precisely be meant by the term 'agreement, and what by the term 'reality, when reality is taken as something for our ideas to agree with. In answering these questions the pragmatists are more analytic and painstaking, the intellectualists more offhand and irreflective.
That truth-satisfaction par excellence which may tinge a belief unsatisfactory in other ways, it easily explains as the feeling of consistency with the stock of previous truths, or supposed truths, of which one's whole past experience may have left one in possession. But are not all pragmatists sure that their own belief is right? their enemies will ask at this point; and this leads me to the
Had his question been about truth, only a pragmatist could have told him the particular go of it. I believe that our contemporary pragmatists, especially Messrs. Schiller and Dewey, have given the only tenable account of this subject. It is a very ticklish subject, sending subtle rootlets into all kinds of crannies, and hard to treat in the sketchy way that alone befits a public lecture.
Since the pragmatist, if he agrees that an idea is 'really' true, also agrees to whatever it says about its object; and since most anti- pragmatists have already come round to agreeing that, if the object exists, the idea that it does so is workable; there would seem so little left to fight about that I might well be asked why instead of reprinting my share in so much verbal wrangling, I do not show my sense of 'values' by burning it all up.
The bare quality of standing in that transcendent relation is what makes any thought true that possesses it, whether or not there be verification. You pragmatists put the cart before the horse in making truth's being reside in verification-processes.
A distinction is sometimes made between Dewey, Schiller and myself, as if I, in supposing the object's existence, made a concession to popular prejudice which they, as more radical pragmatists, refuse to make.
Altho this second way seems prosaic and earthborn in comparison with the first way, yet no one can accuse it of tough- mindedness in any brutal sense of the term. Yet if, as pragmatists, you should positively set up the second way AGAINST the first way, you would very likely be misunderstood.
Recently the word "pragmatism" has been brought into popular use to denote the test by which the pragmatists measure all systems, theories and doctrines. The pragmatic inquiry when applied to any system, theory, or doctrine may be understood to mean, "does it meet its claims in practice?"