• The key part of the last section before the conclusion, for our purposes at least, is the last few pages (pp. 514-516). Here Putnam points to the idea that we will discuss next week under the label “pluralism.” Putnam has been trying to show that “common sense realism” need not imply “metaphysical realism,” but he has had little to say in a positive way about the difference between the two. What he says here suggests a possible difference: the substantive character of truth according to common sense realism need not imply the uniform substantive character that draws philosophers to speak of things like “correspondence.” (The possibility of an alternative “pluralist” view of truth is something he suggested already in the middle of p. 501.)
• In Putnam’s conclusion, he seems to aim to inspire. Since the inspirational side of Putnam is the side I’m least sympathetic to, I have little help to provide here except with regard to his final comment on pragmatism. Although he had a good deal to say about James in the earlier lectures we didn't discuss, that didn’t concern James’ pragmatism as such. But the attitude to truth Putnam is trying to suggest seems to me to be in keeping with some of the things James says when explaining the pragmatists’ view of truth—for example, in the following two paragraphs from the beginning of his “The Meaning of the Word Truth”:
My account of truth is realistic, and follows the epistemological dualism of common sense. Suppose I say to you The thing exists
— is that true or not? How can you tell? Not till my statement has developed its meaning farther is it determined as being true, false, or irrelevant to reality altogether. But if now you ask what thing?
and I reply a desk
; if you ask where?
and I point to a place; if you ask does it exist materially, or only in imagination?
and I say materially
; if moreover I say I mean that desk
and then grasp and shake a desk which you see just as I have described it, you are willing to call my statement true. But you and I are commutable here; we can exchange places; and, as you go bail for my desk, so I can go bail for yours.
This notion of a reality independent of either of us, taken from ordinary social experience, lies at the base of the pragmatist definition of truth. With some such reality any statement, in order to be counted true, must agree. Pragmatism defines agreeing
to mean certain ways of working,
be they actual or potential. Thus, for my statement the desk exists
to be true of a desk recognized as real by you, it must be able to lead me to shake your desk, to explain myself by words that suggest that desk to your mind, to make a drawing that is like the desk you see, etc. Only in such ways as this is there sense in saying it agrees with that reality, only thus does it gain for me the satisfaction of hearing you corroborate me. Reference then to something determinate, and some sort of adaptation to it worthy of the name of agreement, are thus constituent elements in the definition of any statement of mine as true
.
The Meaning of Truth, ch. IX
Notice in particular here that the way James fills out the idea of agreement is tied to the specific subject matter and also, in a very concrete way, to specific things (shaking the desk).