Lecture Supplement on James The Will To Believe

[1]
[1896]

Copyright 2014 Bruce W. Hauptli

1. Introduction:

In his Pragmatism and Humanism James maintains that this article is unhappily titled. He would
prefer (at least later he said so) that it be titled: The Right To Believe (when evidence is not
available). James claims that this essay is about the lawfulness of voluntarily adopted faith. James
contends that there is a conflict between the maxims believe truth and avoid error, and he contrasts
his view with that of William K. Cliffordwho maintains that it is wrong always, everywhere, and
for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. According to James, there are some
truths where belief comes before the truth may come to be (e.g., his train robbing example). Thus, he
claims,

141 our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions,
whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to
say under such circumstances, Do not decide, but leave the question open, is itself a passional
decisionjust like deciding yes or noand is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.

While James says that this essay is concerned with defending the legitimacy of religious faith,
[2]
I think it is most fruitful to say that he is actually concerned with the legitimacy of moral belief.
William Earle maintains that:

Jamess own religious belief, expressed without dogmatism in the last chapter and the Postscript of
The Varieties [of Religious Experience] and again in the last chapter of Pragmatism, consists
essentially in the affirmation that the world is richer in realities than conventional science is willing
to recognize. Religious experience at least suggests that there is what James called a higher part
of the universe ...which, though beyond the immediate deliverance of the senses, is nevertheless
effective in the world in a way that makes a noticeable difference.
[3]


This comment, and James examples, suggests that the religious experiences are only part of this
higher part, and James is open to moral (and aesthetic) aspects also.

The Text:

I will divide the text into seven parts:

Types of Hypotheses,
James on Pascals Wager,
James and Clifford on the Ethics of Belief,
James on Believing in the Possibility of Attaining
Truth,
Avoid Error vs. Know Truth,
Some Truths Are Made Possible By Our Believing,
The Importance of Freedom of Belief.

2. Types of Hypotheses:

136 Hypotheses may be living or dead.

-a live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed.

-...deadness and liveness in hypotheses are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the
individual thinker. They are measured by his willingness to act.

136-137 Options amongst hypotheses may be: forced or avoidable.

Options amongst hypotheses may be momentous or trivial.

Genuine options are forced, living, and momentous.

3. James On Pascals Wager:

137-140 James asks whether we should not take Pascals wager (posthumously 1670) seriously:

Pascals wager argument is not intended as a substitute for proofs of Christianity but, rather, as a
preparation for faith for those who are in a state of suspended beliefthose who were neither
atheists nor Christians.

///////////////// God Exists God Doesnt Exist
You Believe You win very very, big! You lose the effort of
believing and sacrifice
whatever effort you made.
You Dont Believe You lose very, very, big! You win a little (you save the
effort of believing).

Pascal: Let us now speak according to natural lights.

...God is, or is not. But towards which side will we lean? Reason cannot decide anything. There
is an infinite chaos separating us. At the far end of this infinite distance a game is being played and
the coin will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose
one way or the other, reason cannot make you defend either of the two choices.
So do not accuse those who have made a choice of being wrong....
Yes, but you have to wager. It is not up to you, you are already committed. Which then will you
choose....You have two things to lose: the truth and the good, and two things to stake: your reason
and will, your knowledge and beatitude; and your nature has two things to avoid: error and
wretchedness....Let us weigh up the gain and the loss by calling heads that God exists....if you win,
you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing....
[4]


...I am made in such a way that I cannot believe. So what do you want me to do? That is true.
But at least you realize that your inability to believe, since reason urges you to do so and yet you
cannot, arises from your passions. You want to find faith and you do not know the way? You
want to cure yourself of unbelief and you ask for remedies? Learn from those who have been
bound like you, and who now wager all they have. They are people who know the road....take
holy water, having masses said, etc.
[5]


-138 James: We feel that a faith in masses and holy water adopted willfully after such a
mechanical calculation would lack the inner soul of faiths reality; and if we were ourselves in
the place of the Deity, we should probably take particular pleasure in cutting off believers of
this pattern from their infinite reward.

-139 We cant will ourselves to believe in dead hypotheses!

4. James and Clifford on the Ethics of Belief:

140 William Clifford: If [a] belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence [even though the
belief be true...] the pleasure is a stolen one....It is sinful because it is stolen in defiance of our duty
to mankind....It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
[6]


-Contra Clifford: we believe many things without sufficient evidence (that there are molecules,
that democracy is good, etc.).

-Our reason is quite satisfied, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand of
us, if it can find a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticized by
someone else. Our faith is faith in some one elses faith, and in the greatest matters this is most
the case. Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are
made for each otherwhat is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social
system backs us up?

-140-141 To the Pyrrhonistic sceptic
[7]
who asks us how do we know, we must reply that
doubt and knowledge here are competing volitions.

-141 As a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use.

-Pascals argument, instead of being powerless, then seems a regular clincher, and is the last
stroke needed to make our faith in masses and holy water complete. The state of things is
evidently far from simple; and pure insight and logic, whatever they might do ideally, are not
the only things that really do produce our creeds.

Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions,
whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to
say under such circumstances, Do not decide, but leave the question open, is itself a passional
decisionjust like deciding yes or noand is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.

5. James on Believing in the Possibility of Attaining Truth:

142 We can have our faith that truth exists in an absolutistic way or in an empiricistic way. To
know is one thing, and to know for certain that we know is another. One may hold to the first
being possible without the second.

Material which is not included in our selection includes the following which is relevant to our
discussion:

-I live, to be sure, by the practical faith that we must go on experiencing and thinking over our
experience, for only thus can our opinions grow more true; but to hold any one of themI
absolutely do not care whichas if it never could be reinterpretable or corrigible, I believe to be
a tremendously mistaken attitude, and I think that the whole history of philosophy will bear me
out. There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism
itself leaves standingthe truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists. That,
however, is the bare starting point of knowledge, the main admission of a stuff to be
philosophized about.

--Note: Here James says, in effect, that he has a faith (a) that truth exists, (b) that this faith
is best held in an empiricistic manner, and (c) that the way to ensure that our opinions will
grow more true if we pursue the methodology which he recommends. As we saw, Peirce
also seems to have a faith in his methodology (though he would, certainly, not phrase it in
this manner)he claims his method of fixing belief is better than the other methods
because it yields truth and reality, but he is not clear as to what substantiates this claim. Are
we simply being presented with an item we must take on faith here?

There is no concrete test of truth. James discusses traditional philosophical criteria of truth
(perception, agreement of ideas, intuitions of the heart, and Cartesian reason, Reid and common
sense, Kant and a priori reason) and contends they are all wanting. While his discussion is too
brief, his claim is that none of these give us a guarantee of truth.

James pragmatism (as did Peirces) would reorient us. Instead of looking for certainty,
foundations, and guarantees (or truth), he counsels that we look to the consequences: ...when as
empiricists
[8]
we give up the doctrine of objective certitude, we do not thereby give up the quest or
hope of truth itself. We still pin our faith on its existence, and still believe that we gain an ever
better position toward it by systematically continuing to roll up experiences and think. Our great
difference from the scholastic lies in the way we face. The strength of his system lies in the
principles, the origin, the terminus a quo [starting point] of his thought; for us the strength is in the
upshot, the terminus ad quem [ending point].

-It matters not to an empiricist from what quarter an hypothesis may come to him: he may have
acquired it by fair means or by foul [note play on Clifford]; passion may have whispered or
accident suggested it; but if the total drift of thinking continues to confirm it, that is what he
means by its being true.

--Note: there is a tremendous difference between emphasizing the origins, foundations, and
guarantors of our beliefs, claims, and theories, on the one hand, and emphasizing the
consequences of our beliefs, claims, and theories, on the other.

--Question: Is this subjectivistic? Is his appeal to (or faith in) experience one which
provides a merely subjective criterion of truth?

6. Avoid Error vs. Know Truth:

...these feelings of our duty about either truth or error are in any case only expressions of our
passional life.

-...I have also a horror of being duped; but I can believe that worse things than being duped
may happen to a man in this world; so Cliffords exhortation has to my ears a thoroughly
fantastic sound....Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are
so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier
than this excessive nervousness on their behalf. At any rate, it seems the fittest thing for the
empiricist philosopher.

-Where the issue is not momentous, we can throw the chance of gaining truth away and adopt
the strategy of avoiding error.

Here our editor picks up again with his selection:

-143 With moral questions, for example, we can not wait until the evidence is all in.

--The question of having moral beliefs at all or not having them is decided by our will. Are our
moral preferences true or false, or are they only odd biological phenomena, making things good
or bad for us, but in themselves indifferent? How can your pure intellect decide?....Moral
scepticism can no more be refuted or proved by logic than intellectual scepticism can. When we
stick to it that there is truth (be it of either kind), we do so with our whole nature, and resolve to
stand or fall by the results. The sceptic, with his whole nature adopts the doubting attitude; but
which of us is the wiser, Omniscience only knows.

7. Some Truths are Made Possible Only by Our Believing:

144 The desire for a certain kind of truth here brings about that special truths existence; and so it
is in innumerable cases....

-A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) will be looted by a few highwaymen,
simply because the latter can count on one another, while each passenger fears that if he makes
a movement of resistance, he will be shot before any one else backs him up. If we believed that
the whole car-full would rise at once with us, we should each severally rise, and train robbing
would never even be attempted. There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a
preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that
would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the
lowest kind of immorality into which a thinking being can fall. Yet such is the logic by which
our scientific absolutists pretend to regulate our lives.

--Question: his example cuts both waysif the passengers believe, a truth can come
about, but if the robbers believe, it may also happen that a truth can come about. But
this seems to clearly violate the moral core of his example. Now it is clear that he wants to
offer a theory which allows for moral truth. If his theory entails a subjectivistic theory,
however, he does not seem to have arrived at the point he wants. The claim he makes above
[in the material omitted from our selection] that we have no concrete test of truth, and that
we have to reorient ourselves from origins to consequences here seems to, at best, leave us
with an article of faith here: both the passengers and the robbers can appeal to the
consequences and maintain that their orientations are lawful and proper. This would
mean, however, that anything goes. James might try, in both science and morals, to appeal
(as Peirce does) to some larger community of inquirers, but this does not seem to guarantee
that the recommended method will yield the same truths for all participants. As we
continue to look at his articles, we need to keep this concern in mind.

145 In truths dependent on our personal action, then, faith based on desire is certainly a lawful
and possibly an indispensable thing.

-Religious beliefs belong to this class. According to James, religion says (1) eternal things are
the best things; and (2) we are better off, according to religion, if we believe (1). If religious
belief is a living option, it is also a momentous and a forced one.

-146 This feeling, forced on us we know not whence, that by obstinately believing that there
are gods (although not to do so would be so easy both for our logic and our life) we are doing
the universe the deepest service we can, seems part of the living essence of the religious
hypothesis.

-147 The difference between the skeptical and the hopeful attitudes: ...a rule of thinking
which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of
truth were really there would be an irrational rule.

--Reminder: the freedom to believe which James recommends is only supposed to cover
living options (which are momentous).

--(Footnote): Since belief is measured by action.....The whole defense of religious faith
hinges upon action. If the action required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no way
different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure
superfluity....I myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an
expression which specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part unlike
what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief.

8. The Importance of Freedom of Belief:

147-148 But if we are empiricists, if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain
when truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of idle fantasticality to preach so solemnly our
duty of waiting for the bell. Indeed we may wait if we willI hope you do not think that I am
denying thatbut if we do so, we do so at our peril as much as if we believed. In either case we
act, taking our life in our hands. No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we
bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one
anothers mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall
we have the spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is
empiricisms glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as practical things.

-Criticism: there is a tension between his contention regarding freedom of belief, and his
ultimate appeal to the consequences of our beliefs. If the beliefs are to guide action, and this
surely seems what he recommends, then the competing truths to be created by the beliefs of
the passengers and the robbers seem to be equally lawful and appropriate. Here James seems to
be in need of some standard which would discriminate between the consequences. This
problem seems to apply not only to his view of morals, but to his view of inquiry generally.

In his final paragraph, which is not included in our selection, James quotes Fitz-James Stephen: In all
important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark....Each must act as he thinks best....

-Such passages encourage us to distinguish between an individualistic and a social (or
collectivistic) pragmatism (James vs. Peirce and Dewey).

(end)

9. Overall Comment on James and Pascal:

As William Earle notes that we must be careful as we discuss James and Pascal lest we confuse the
two here:

the doctrine of the will to believe with all its genial encouragement of risking belief, is balanced, in
James, by an unremitting fallibilism. Belief, however, justified originally, is always conditional.
Belief must continue to justify itself; there is no possibility of a definitive, once and for all
certification. Both the options of practical life and the tenets of religion may be justified as
peculiar kinds of scientific hypotheses, the first sort peculiar because of their limitation to some
particular matter or situation, the second because of their elusive generality.
[9]


That is, James is concerned with consequences in action in this life, whereas Pascal is concerned with
consequences given an eternal verity. Of course, this contrast adds zest to the concerns regarding the
apparent flexibility of his moral view.

10. Paul Henles Plausible Response to My Critique Above:

In his Introduction to our James readings, Paul Henle contends that the epistemological version of
the critique I offered above is unfair:

Jamess critics took full advantage of this possibility of misrepresentation [regarding what he means
by truth]. Suppose, for example, I am invited to dinner by an utter bore and invent a previous
engagement even though I have no plans for the evening in question. The man is satisfied, arranges
dinner without me, and I am spared a tedious evening. In a sense, this works, and in a sense, if I
dislike the man sufficiently, this is a good guide for conduct. Thus pragmatists were accused of
saying what they pleased and calling it the truth.
But this is not the sense of working or being a good guide to conduct that James intended, and he
was careful to make the point entirely explicit. Before one can say that a theory works, one must
recall what work it is supposed to do. We have seen that the function of beliefs is to anticipate
experience and, in the sense of a deliberate lie such as we have been considering, there is no accurate
clue to what is coming.
In order to work, and be a good guide to conduct, then, a belief must not be arbitrary but must take
account of the realities with which it deals. There are other limitations as well. A belief which came
in conflict with most of our other beliefs would lead only to confusion.
[10]


Thus the charges of relativism or subjectivism are to be silenced by reference to the purposes of
believing noted above in his discussions of our inquiry process. While I am tempted by this sort of
response, I would point out that in this essay James seems to indicate we have moral and religious
purposes, and here working and being a good guide to conduct could, plausibly, have different
characters.

To try and deal with this we need to turn to James metaphysics. Once we have done so, we will
return to the religious and moral concerns.

Notes: (click on note number to return to text for the note--emphasis has been added to several of the
citations)
[1]
The essay was first read by James to the philosophy clubs at Yale and Brown Universities in April and May of 1896.
The selection this supplement refers to is in Classic American Philosophers, ed. Max Fisch, op. cit., pp. 136-148. The full
essay may be found in The Will to Believe and Other Essays In Popular Philosophy and Human Immortality (bound as
one) [1897], (N.Y.: Dover, 1956), pp. 1-31.
[2]
Cf., William James, Preface to his The Will to Believe and Other Essays In Popular Philosophy and Human
Immortality (bound as one), op. cit., p. x.
[3]
William Earle, William James, op. cit., p. 245.
[4]
Blaise Pascal, Penses and Other Writings, trans. Honor Levi (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1995), section 680, p. 153.
[5]
Ibid., pp. 155-156.
[6]
James is discussing William K. Cliffords [1845-1879] The Ethics of Belief, Contemporary Review (1877). The
essay can be found online at:
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/w_k_clifford/ethics_of_belief.html , cf., Andrew Chignell, The Ethics of
Belief, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/ethics-belief/ .
[7]
Pyrrho of Elis (c. 365-275 B.C.E) is the classical example of the skeptical philosopher. He held that it was impossible
to know the true nature of things and that we should abstain from believing anything beyond what we are compelled to
hold because of our senses, conditioning, or culture. Only by avoiding such beliefs, he held, could we be happy. In effect,
he and the skeptics hold that human beings know nothing.
[8]
It must be noted, of course, that his empiricism is going to be different from that of the British empiricists (Locke,
Berkeley, and Hume), since he doesnt believe that we can achieve knowledge by comparing and contrasting our
phenomenal experiences.
[9]
William Earle, William James, op. cit., pp. 245.
[10]
Paul Henle, Introduction to the James Chapter in Classic American Philosophers, ed. Max Fisch, op. cit., pp. 115-
127, p. 118.
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