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this is James! he is also a pragmatist, albeit much more comprehensible than Pierce. for him, the pragmatic method is a method of settling metaphysical disputes that might otherwise be interminable. the conduct of thought for the pragmatist is "the sole significance." there is no meaning in the impractical! it's like empiricism, but more radical and less objectionable. theories are instruments, not answers to enigmas. we move forward in our theories, we don't lean into them like some cushion-y metaphysical toilet seat. pragmatism, in fact, turns away from depending on principles and looks into facts and consequences. theories are just a man-made language, a conceptual shorthand with which we write our reports of nature.
beliefs are pretty solid things, and for the most part we are all extreme conservatives in holding onto our beliefs. the most violent of thoughtful revolutions still leaves most of our beliefs standing strong. "time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one's own biography remain pretty much untouched." in fact, truth to us is just an addition of new kinds of facts to our trusty framework. day follows day, content is simply added as we go. the new concepts we attain aren't in themselves truths, the simply come and are. truth is what we say about them! we lean on old truths and grasp for new facts. truth is mutable and subjective and relative.

this is his scope of pragmatism! it is a method and a genetic theory of what is meant by truth.

in "The Will to Believe," he basically hypothesizes that beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies. if we believe in something, we cause evidence for that belief to come into existence, and the evidence for us is satisfactory in proving the belief. a belief is verified if it leads to a happier interaction with the believers world, and so as long as belief self-validates for one person and makes them happy, why would anyone complain?

James is not a strict determinist! but he has determinist qualities. "soft determinism." just because the universe is determined does not mean the future is known--a person's actions can influence their future. fatalism is not the way to go for James. chance must exist, otherwise the world would sink into a pit of pessimism, where "what ought" appears impossible because of what is, and what is right now kind of sucks.