Notes for 10/28/2025 - William James - The Will to Believe

 

10/28/2025

[Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")]

[Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.]

 

Do you agree with the following?

“It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." (William Clifford)

 

(Class notes?)

Evidentialism is the view that one should proportion one’s belief to one’s evidence.

 

Let:

P = some proposition

E = the totality of one’s evidence

 

If E supports P more than not-P, then one should believe P.

If E supports not-P more than P, then one should believe not-P (believe that P is false).

Otherwise, one should suspend judgment regarding P.

 

Evidentialism may differ from Clifford’s dictum depending on how “should” and “wrong” are understood.

 

Clifford seems to intend “wrong” to be taken in a moral sense. Unevidenced belief is unethical because false beliefs are more likely to have bad consequences than true beliefs. (There are some non-consequentialist readings of Clifford.)

 

 

 

I propose to distinguish strong from weak Evidentialism:

Strong Evidentialism: “should” means “wrong not to”.

Weak Evidentialism: “should” means “in order to be rational.”

 

William James counters Clifford in The Will to Believe.

 

James agrees that beliefs are action-guiding.

 

There are two ways one could interpret James:

A)        Rational considerations represent only one type of belief justification. There are also pragmatic considerations.

B)        It is impossible to completely separate pragmatic from rational considerations. (I favor this one, but it doesn’t really matter that much for current purposes.)

 

 

James blurs together beliefs and choices/actions.

When presented with alternatives in belief or action, these alternatives are hypotheses, and the choice between them is an option.

 

Options can be:

Living or dead.

A living option presents two (or more) living hypotheses.

A living hypothesis is one that presents itself as deserving serious consideration (having some “appeal”).

 

This needs some defense.

 

Suppose I present two hypotheses:

H1: Earth is round.

H2: Earth is cubical.

 

To you (I assume) only the first of these is a living hypothesis.

 

But what about to someone who has been raised in a flat Earth community?

 

It seems neither option is living for such a person. But H1 is true, which means that a true hypothesis can be dead for someone.

We THINK that if a hypothesis is true, then it SHOULD be living for anyone.

 

In fact, though, we can distinguish between different reasons a hypothesis may be dead for someone.

 

The most salient consideration is whether the deadness of a hypothesis is a function of obstinacy or willful ignorance.

 

James’ title (The Will to Believe) has been wrongly interpreted as a defense of willful ignorance.

 

A hypothesis can have life breathed into it by giving reasons for it or placing it a broader context.

 

In the absence of such reasons/context, there is no fault in continuing to see it as dead.

Options can also be:

Forced or avoidable.

 

Often, options are presented where there are additional alternatives, including “both” or “neither” or where suspension of judgment is possible. Such options are “avoidable.”

 

But James suggests that there are options that are forced. In particular there are cases where suspending judgment or remaining in indecision is tantamount to deciding.

 

Finally, options can be momentous or trivial.

Momentousness is a function of what is at stake, pragmatically-speaking; where how one decides makes a significant difference in what happens afterwards.

 

An option is GENUINE when it is living, forced, and momentous.

 

 

Doxastic voluntarism (DV) is the view that we can choose whether or not to believe some proposition.

 

DV appears to be false, especially in cases where one side of an option is evidentially decided (so alternatives are not live), where the option is avoidable, and where it is trivial.

 

This is a flaw with Pascal’s Wager (it’s better to believe in God than not because the potential benefits are much greater than the potential losses). PW is momentous, and maybe forced, but for some it is not live.

 

James is not proposing a variant of Pascal’s Wager.

 

BUT…

 

Our motives DO influence our beliefs and actions.

Motivated reasoning is generally classified as an undesirable cognitive bias.

 

James rejects this in part holding that there can be cases where motivated reasoning is not necessarily undesirable.

 

On James’ view, beliefs are not purely intellectual labelings of proposition as true, false, or undecided.

 

Acting on a hypothesis – TAKING it as true is not different in kind from belief.

 

For James, believing a proposition and believing in an action are of the same basic type.

(Because to think a claim is true is to “bet” on it returning experiential value.)

 

So, if an option is genuine and undecidable on purely evidential grounds, it is not wrong to decide on motivational (“passional”) grounds.

 

James thinks this can be true of SOME religious hypotheses.

James’ view does NOT give blanket permission to religious beliefs.

(This is important and very underappreciated.)