Synthesized answer
For James, "verifiability" is the possibility of an idea becoming true, much like "mortality" is the possibility of death [1]. It is a potential that exists prior to the actualization of truth [1]. In contrast, "verification" refers to the process by which an idea becomes true or is made true by events [2]. This process involves the idea assimilating, validating, corroborating, and verifying itself [2]. James adds that "verifiability" is as valuable as "verification," noting that many truth-processes in our lives function in a nascent state rather than being fully completed [2].
The passages indicate that "verifiability" is a key component in defining what it means for an idea to be "true" [3]. James links the "as-ness" of an idea, or its correspondence to reality, to its verifiability [3]. He asserts that the truth-relation is constituted by the existence of a "fundamentum of circumstance" between the object and the idea, which makes a satisfactory passage between them possible, whether that passage is fully developed or not [4]. This implies that the possibility of such a passage (verifiability) is essential for an idea to *be* true and *have been* true, even if full…
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
to constitute the as-ness (or 'not-as-ness') in which the trueness (or falseness) is said to consist. I think that Dr. Pratt ought to do something more than repeat the name 'trueness,' in answer to my pathetic question whether that there be not some CONSTITUTION to a relation as important as this. The pathway, the tendency, the corroborating or contradicting progress, need not in every case be experienced in full, but I don't see, if the universe doesn't contain them among its possibilities of furniture, what LOGICAL MATERIAL FOR DEFINING the trueness of my idea is left. But if it do…
experiences [may] be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? How will the truth be realized? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?" The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: TRUE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CAN ASSIMILATE, VALIDATE, CORROBORATE, AND VERIFY. FALSE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CANNOT. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as. 'The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth HAPPENS…
Pratt's whole book hardly takes the matter farther than the article to which I retort in Part I of the present paper. He repeats the 'as'-formula, as if it were something that I, along with other pragmatists, had denied, [Footnote: Op. cit., pp. 77-80.] whereas I have only asked those who insist so on its importance to do something more than merely utter it--to explicate it, for example, and tell us what its so great importance consists in. I myself agree most cordially that for an idea to be true the object must be 'as' the idea declares it, but I explicate the 'as'-ness as meaning…
of the object itself, if we were led up to it by our idea, would be to pass on to those connected things by its means. So we continually curtail verification-processes, letting our belief that they are possible suffice. What CONSTITUTES THE RELATION known as truth, I now say, is just the EXISTENCE IN THE EMPIRICAL WORLD OF THIS FUNDAMENTUM OF CIRCUMSTANCE SURROUNDING OBJECT AND IDEA and ready to be either short-circuited or traversed at full length. So long as it exists, and a satisfactory passage through it between the object and the idea is possible, that idea will both BE true, and…
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'. You cannot get at either the reference or the adaptation without using the notion of the workings. THAT the thing is, WHAT…