ABSTRACT
The objection is that without possessing the concept of truth the people cannot even begin to explain the properties that make a belief true. Peirce's inconsistency exposes the dilemma that any pragmatist faces in attempting to reconcile the universalist demands of truth with the inherently contextual properties of belief. It was of course precisely in an effort to restore the link between truth and the consequences of belief that James was so anxious that one should explore what he called the 'cash value' of truth claims. The point is that if truth is a property of belief, then all reference is a function of belief, and a distinction between actual and intended referents can no longer be given any clear meaning. Pragmatism not only favours a pluralistic conception of the world, but it suggests the kind of pluralism from which any sense of cohesion is absent.
