Science Fiction Anthology: Far Travellers No. 1 [Mass Market Paperback]

James challenges philosophers of all ilks to give us a net value to their systems; that is, how do they affect human life or make the world we know better or worse for us? James insists that no philosophy finally matters unless it impacts life in concrete terms. To lock down his philosophy he fashions a new model of truth, stating that whatever is beneficial is true.

There are huge problems here, e.g., the rise of the subjective. James doesn't specify to whom truth should be beneficial (humanity in general? Subjective selves?), so his theory leads to strange quandaries. It would be "true" for a sound-minded criminal on trial to plead insanity, and it would also be "true" for the prosecutor to charge guilt and sanity. Obviously, confusing "useful" and "true" is a category obfuscation. As well, morality would suffer on this view. If lying is useful then regarding lies as truths is fully permissible by James's line of thought.

Nevertheless, the book is important to read because so much of today's world is run in terms of the useful rather than the ideal or intrinsically good. That is why art is marginalized, morality compromised, and capital generating systems glorified. We need James's Pragmatism to understand ourselves today.

Now with all that background as setup, and picking up what some of the other reviewers have to say, James offers an entirely different approach not based on absolutes but rather on the process of building truth. He's an excellent writer though his depth of thought is often disguised by the simplicity and 'downhominess' of his expression. What he constructs, in language reminiscant of Hemingway or Hogan on Golf, is a systematic view on achieving "Truth" based on what we can know, the relationships built up from earlier conclusions and testing those. It seems that his late 19th century American slang disguises some of this all too well. If one substitutes implications and consequences for his use of phrases like 'how does it pay out' the material moves forward in time and interpretation.

What James appears to have acheived, to me, is the first serious consideration of a constructed and dynamic philsophical system that evolves based on both external facts and it's own workings yet also carries the burdens and benefits of insisting on strong rules for construction and truth testing. He applies this system to many of the major and daily conundrums we face in our lives while also tackling many of the major paradoxes, at least implicitly, of modern philosphy.

To close the loop if James subtle and nuanced philsophy had been more widely understood we might not have avoided the disasters of various absolutist systems. But we would be in a better position to deal with the post catasrophe consequences and achieve a more balanced, courageous and forward-looking approach to things. In fact one could argue that what James does is put a systematic approach in place, based on methods and processes, and an admission that this is a pluralistic not monlithic universe where Truth is contingent. If you like he has adapted the scientific method, or engineering analysis, to philosophy and done so in such a way that a lot of groundwork is laid for the rest of us.