No subject

of the three.  He virtually invented the field of semiotics, did ground
breaking work in logic and mathematics, and developed a subtle
epistemology well suited to modern scientific (i.e. skeptical)
analysis.  Of the three, I think I could learn the most (at least about
logic) from studying his work in further detail.

William James was a self-described radical empiricist, but is set apart
from most empirical thinkers by his arguments in favor of religous faith
as a profoundly practical and effective way of thinking despite our
inability to know of its absolute truth.  He wrote about truth as
follows:

"Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its
verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its
verifying itself, its verification."

He also wrote:

"'The true' . . . is only the expedient in the way of our thinking."

Basically, he believed that truth is whatever works in practice.

Dewey basically continued along the same line as James, except his focus
was much more on traditional philosophical issues rather than
psychological ones.  But basically he seems to be skeptical about
causality and an external reality of things or substances in favor of
reality as a collection of events / experiences. He viewed the idea of
truth as primarily instrumentative in producing useful ends, hence the
term "instrumentalism".  He also turned American public education upside
down, but that is a subject for another time.

To me pragratism seems like an effective way to save philosophy from
itself primarily by avoiding the need to answer fundamental questions in
the first place.  In that sense it perhaps appropriately recognizes the
limitations of rational philosophy without ending in the nihilistic
quagmire that most European philosophy got stuck in.

However, from a Christian perspective all of these philosophies are
seriously lacking.  Indeed, modern philosophy is primarily the effort to
found a rational system of belief that is free from the taint of
religious belief.  But if we set aside the prejudice of the
philosophers, we could lay out some basic principles of a metaphysics
consistent with true Christianity (not to mention common sense and
intuition):


1. There exists a single, objective external reality 

2. This reality consists of real, independently existing, and 
   closely inter-related elements both material and spiritual.

3. Absolute truth is the precise time-invariant description of the 
   state of these elements and the relations among them for all times 
   past, present, and future.  It includes a correct account of all
   historic and future events.

4. Reality exists independently of the extent of our ability 
   to discover, understand, and comprehend it. 

5. The mental processes of perception, logic, inference, and 
   experiment allow us to develop statements about reality that can
   approximate many aspects of the truth to a high degree of accuracy.

6. However, the most fundamental aspects of our existence, including
   these basic axioms, the core principles of morals, ethics, and
   aesthetics, and the fundamental design, purposes, and origin of 
   the universe can only be known by inspiration and intuition.

7. God is the ultimate source of all true, useful, and productive
   inspiration recieved by mankind.  This inspiration, though 
   distorted by man's limited understanding, is singular, coherent, 
   and consistent with the ultimate reality of all things.

8. The true progress of scientific knowledge is achieved by developing
   a body of thought that is simultaneously consistent with experience,
   experiment, logic, and the basic inspiration that is common to 
   nearly all mankind.

9. Logic and experiment, standing alone, are never sufficient to gain
   a working knowledge of the critical governing principles of the
   universe and the attempt to restrict all knowledge to conclusions
   so derived can only lead to a sterile materialism completely
   inadequate for explaining the nature of the true, let alone the good
   and the beautiful.
   
Your comments are welcome.

 - Mark