Note 23 — THE INTELLECTUALIST CRITERION FOR TRUTH19

This suggests that many of the stock arguments against pragmatism fail to take its contention seriously enough. They proceed from the assumption that it is an account of truth which leaves untouched current notions of the nature of intelligence. But the essential point of pragmatism is that it bases its changed account of truth on a changed conception of the nature of intelligence, both as to its objective and its method. Now this different account of intelligence may be wrong, but controversy which leaves standing the conventionally current theories about thought and merely discusses “truth” will not go far. Since truth is the adequate fulfilment of the function of intelligence, the question turns on the nature of the latter.