n. The metaphysical opinion that all existence and all actual happening is of the nature of an individual effort (against a resistance) which has on each occasion a peculiar conscious quality and is also discriminative or, at least rudimentally, purposive, and so cognitive. In so far as this opinion makes cognition essentially purposive, it agrees, in effect, with pragmatism from which, however, it differs in being a metaphysical hypothesis founded on arguments drawn from psychology, instead of being a maxim of logic deduced from an analysis of the nature of signs.n. A type of psychological theory, which regards the will as fundamental, and accordingly emphasizes the volitional rather than the intellectual aspect of our nature: ordinarily opposed to intellectualism.