That would not only mean the end of inquiry, but also the end of democracy.
Even so, pragmatist theories also have an affinity with coherence theories, insofar as we expect the end of inquiry to be a coherent system of beliefs.
With the pragmatists, Putnam sees the ideal conditions as something which can be approximated, echoing the idea of truth as the end of inquiry.
Explicitly adopting one of Peirce's concepts, Royce argues that to define truth using any conception of "the long run" — short of the ideal end of inquiry — is self-refuting.
Since at the idealized end of inquiry we have a complete understanding of some object, there need be no further interpretant of that object; our understanding cannot be developed any further.
Using slightly more simplistic terms, Ransdell (1977, 169) describes the dynamic object as the "object as it really is", and Hookway (1985, 139) describes it as "the object as it is known to be [at the end of inquiry]".
Even those who think the aim of inquiry is something more accessible than the truth (such as the empirically discernible truth), as well as those who think the aim is something more robust than possessing truth (such as the possession of knowledge) still affirm truth as a necessary component of the end of inquiry.
Deeply influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce, particularly the lectures that Peirce gave in Cambridge in 1898, Royce incorporated aspects of Peirce's pragmatism into his version of idealism, giving an idealist spin to Peirce's conception of truth as what would be known at the end of inquiry were that ever to be reached.
A person sympathetic to Mr. Rove said that the questions seemed typical of those posed by a prosecutor wrapping up the loose ends of an inquiry.
Another possible route, is to give up on a unique end (or even a set of reconcilable ends) of scientific inquiry and take actual scientists' rational motivations at face value.
