Objective Truth and the Practice Relativity of Justification in the Pragmatic Turn

In the beginning, as they say, was the ‘pragmatic maxim’ of Peirce and James. Peirce’s early formulation of the maxim in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" ran as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (Peirce, 1878: 132; cf. Bernstein, 2010: 2-3, and O’Shea, 2008: 208-13) At its core, pragmatism thus originated as a method for clarifying the conceptual meaning or content of any term or idea. A common theme running throughout the subsequent attempted clarifications of this maxim or ‘principle of pragmatism’, by both Peirce and James (cf. James, 1898: 347-9, and 1907: 377-8),was the idea that, as Peirce puts it, "there is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice" (1992: 131). Of particular importance for determining the conceptual content of a given belief or assertion, on this pragmatist outlook, is the role that such beliefs and their constituent concepts play (Peirce emphasizes inference and James the "leadings" of ideas in experience and action) within what Sellars would later call the "logical space of reasons" (cf. Bernstein, 2010: 49).