Audiobook Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth written by William James. William James was one of the most influential figures in 19th-century American philosophy and psychology. His Pragmatism is a set of lectures that he gave in 1906–07 in answer to the enduring debate between empiricism and rationalism. Shifting between them, he proposed pragmatism as a method, the idea being that the value of any truth is dependent upon its utility – upon its practical and experiential consequences.