The Hotel Corridor
The central symbol for how pragmatism works in its description as the corridor in a hotel. Behind each door is a philosopher situated in each room attacking a problem from a different rigidly conceived approach to pursuing knowledge, but they all must use the same corridor to get into or out of their respective rooms.
The Squirrel and the Man
In the lecture titled “What Pragmatism Means” James relates a story about a man chasing a squirrel as the squirrel runs around the tree with the ultimate question being does the man ever go round the squirrel. This becomes a symbol for The Pragmatic Method because the opposing answers to the question are determined based on what is precisely “meant” by the phrase “going round the squirrel.”
The Eucharist Wafer
Pragmatically speaking, a substance seems fairly obviously that which can be touched and literally engaged. Within the semantics of philosophy, however, there is material substance and there is also spiritual substance. The latter exists only in the abstract and is not tangible and therefore cannot be empirically proven as fact. The symbolism of spiritual substance is symbolically embodied in the wafer which is eaten during the Eucharist ritual; though the substance of the wafer has not changed materially, its substance has transformed metaphorically into the body of Christ.
Material Substances
Chalk, by contrast, is put forward as a symbol for material substance. As the phrase suggests, it consists of matter. Familiar things like chalk, wood and wool all share common attributes and properties despite the immediately obvious and manifest differences in structure between. The significance of this is that chalk, wood or wool all apply equally as symbols of material substances. The one singular existing example of spiritual substance that James can imagine, however, is the Eucharist wafer.
Weather
James specifies the weather patterns of Boston and how they are subject to constant and exponential shifts over a short period, but in a larger sense he means weather in a much broader sense of evolution of experience. Weather changes become a symbol for the manner in which singular momentary accumulations of factual evidence do not necessarily correspond to an absolute truth. Like the weather, facts are subject to constant changes over time and we must be prepared to accept alterations in the truth to which these facts point.
