The Deweyan development of the pragmatic method is obviously very much more in harmony with the procedure of science than that of James. James seems to have 'left the track' in his interpretation of the pragmatic method when he related truth to the predominantly valuable. Truth we have found to have no necessary or invariable connection with general value, for many ideas would be acknowledged to be perfectly true while at the same time being either useless or harmful. For Dewey this matter of value has no place in relation to the test of the truth of an idea, for its truth means nothing more than its ability to lead as it promises.
We seem, then, it may be said in conclusion, to be confronted with something like the following alternatives:
If we believe that Dewey could not have made a correct deduction from the pragmatic method when he developed it into a theory of truth making truth dependent upon fulfilled expectations alone, then very obviously the next step in this investigation is to find the point at which his inference went wrong. This means a re-examination of each step in his reasoning.
If we believe that Dewey does make a correct deduction from the pragmatic method in this development toward truth, then we are confronted with the alternative of either accepting the Deweyan theory of truth or of rejecting the Peircian theory of clearness. That is, if we begin with Peirce on method, we must then go clear through to Dewey on truth. And if we reject Dewey, while believing that Peirce gave a correct description of the method of science, then it seems that we must conclude that the method of science and the method of philosophy are not the same.
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