Synthesized answer
James links "expedient thinking" to truth by defining truth as "only the expedient in the way of our thinking" [1, 2, 4]. This means that an idea is considered true if it helps us deal with reality, either intellectually or practically, without causing frustrations [1]. It "FITS, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality's whole setting" [1].
This expediency is understood in a broad sense, meaning "expedient in almost any fashion, and expedient in the long run and on the whole" [2]. The passage also notes that the word "expedient" has been interpreted by some as solely meaning "self-interest," a interpretation that James seems to be rebuking [3]. The passages suggest that the truth of an idea is related to its utility in guiding our experience and interactions with reality, acting as "shorter cuts" that can be substituted for direct verification when they lead to the same goals as their objects [5].
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
rification. For one truth-process completed, there are a million in our lives that function in [the] state of nascency. They lead us towards direct verification; lead us into the surroundings of the object they envisage; and then, if everything, runs on harmoniously, we are so sure that verification is possible that we omit it, and are usually justified by all that happens.'] 'To agree in the widest sense with a reality can only mean to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such working touch with it as to handle either it or something…
IS ONLY THE EXPEDIENT IN THE WAY OF OUR THINKING, JUST AS THE RIGHT IS ONLY THE EXPEDIENT IN THE WAY OF OUR BEHAVING. Expedient in almost any fashion, and expedient in the long run and on the whole, of course; for what meets expediently all the experience in sight won't necessarily meet all farther experiences equally satisfactorily. Experience, as we know, has ways of BOILING OVER, and making us correct our present formulas.' This account of truth, following upon the similar ones given by Messrs. Dewey and Schiller, has occasioned the liveliest discussion. Few critics have defended…
among all the other good workings by which true beliefs are characterized, this kind of subsequential utility remains. The second misleading circumstance was the emphasis laid by Schiller and Dewey on the fact that, unless a truth be relevant to the mind's momentary predicament, unless it be germane to the 'practical' situation,--meaning by this the quite particular perplexity,--it is no good to urge it. It doesn't meet our interests any better than a falsehood would under the same circumstances. But why our predicaments and perplexities might not be theoretical here as well as…
ive cognition proper and not merely another name for the impulsive tendencies themselves in the state of satisfaction. The owner of a picture ascribed to Corot gets uneasy when its authenticity is doubted. He looks up its origin and is reassured. But his uneasiness does not make the proposition false, any more than his relief makes the proposition true, that the actual Corot was the painter. Pragmatism, which, according to M. Hebert, claims that our sentiments MAKE truth and falsehood, would oblige us to conclude that our minds exert no genuinely cognitive function whatever. This…
e object would. Experience leads ever on and on, and objects and our ideas of objects may both lead to the same goals. The ideas being in that case shorter cuts, we SUBSTITUTE them more and more for their objects; and we habitually waive direct verification of each one of them, as their train passes through our mind, because if an idea leads AS the object would lead, we can say, in Mr. Pratt's words, that in so far forth the object is AS we think it, and that the idea, verified thus in so far forth, is true enough. Mr. Pratt will undoubtedly accept most of these facts, but he will…