Pragmatic Meaning James willingly incorporated many of Peirce's pragmatic principles as part of his own conception of the philosophical method. As James noted, A pragmatist . . . . . . This amounts to the development of a distinctively pragmatic theory of truth. It becomes true, is made true by events. Although he accepted the most general definition of truth as a correspondence with reality, James supposed that the most crucial aspect of reality is experiential regularity.
Some reasonable qualifications follow, of course.
There remains a clear sense that truth is the characteristic feature of beliefs that tend to help us to be ready for what happens in our experience. In some instances, naturally, we don't yet have enough experiential evidence upon which to base a reliable judgment. James argued that it is appropriate to resolve such cases on non-rational grounds, as a matter of choice, passion, or volition. According to James, Clifford honored the second maxim so rigidly as to risk violating the first, while a dogmatist would do the reverse. James himself supposed it vital at least to allow for a deliberate decision to believe in the absence of rational demonstration or scientific confirmation.