The Will You Believe By William James

Bragg writes, “… we believe some things regardless of science and sometimes common sense. And what we mostly

“I have not lost faith in God [despite] moments of anger and protest; sometimes I have been closer to him for that reason.” Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explains the struggle of his changing beliefs in God during the Holocaust in his memoir Night. In Night, Elie Wiesel, a religious boy, is taken to several concentration camps along with other Jews, and separated from everyone in his family except for his father. He and his father live dangerous lives in the concentration camps, from being beaten, watching other prisoners die, and being close to death, until eventually Elie’s father dies and the camp is liberated. As Elie Wiesel’s time in the Holocaust lengthens, his devoutness in God begins to diminish.

In Clifford’s universal demand for evidence he states that you base all of your beliefs on evidence (138). Clark utilizes this premise to restate the argument in which he will eventually will give reasoning to why the claim is false. In the article he foreshadows the problem with Clifford’s demand for evidence by saying, “ No one would disagree: some beliefs require evidence for their rational acceptability. But all beliefs in every circumstance?”(139) Clark is somewhat supporting the demand for evidence. However, he does not find it rational to believe that evidence is required in every situation.

God challenges people in times of hardships, however, it depends on the person if they can take upon the challenge and keep faith in God. Eliezer Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author of the memoir Night, is one of these people who have to take this test. Elie demonstrates faith is tested in times of trouble through the use of character relation, change in setting and the conflicts that he witnesses.

The wager is neatly-structured and clearly explained, each conclusion is supported by the premises and they all make sense from a structural-level point of view. Yet, it is a bold attempt to clarify belief in God not with an appeal to evidence for his existence but rather with an appeal to self-interest. Pascal’s wager seeks to justify Christian faith by considering

William James (1897), on the other hand, attempts to define the permissible cases in which it is intellectually respectable to believe without sufficient evidence. James (1897) begins by providing three criterion for judging beliefs: either beliefs are 1) living or dead; 2) forced or avoidable; or 3) momentous or trivial.

In his lecture, “The Will to Believe,” William James addresses how one adopts a belief. There is a hypothesis and an option, where you choose between two live hypotheses. An option has the characteristics to be live or dead, forced or avoidable, and momentous or trivial. In his thesis, James argues how “our passional nature” must make our decisions about our beliefs when they cannot be certainly determined on “intellectual grounds,” however, this is not the case, we can always make the decision based on intellectual grounds. One can use Bayesian probability to gain some grasp of the situation and eventually to make a decision.

First it is important to understand the type of belief we are talking about before we can truly understand Frede’s and Burnyeat’s dispute between epistemic and non-epistemic appearances. In The Outlines of Scepticism Sextus

During the time James was writing his paper, another professor, William Kingdom Clifford was backing the opposite. He believed that belief without evidence is immoral. He wrote an essay called the ‘The Ethics of Belief’; he wrote ‘It’s wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’. He first used this statement to explain all aspects of life but he later applied it specifically to religious belief. The will to believe was written after the ethics of belief and was written to combat the arguments and plays off all the failures in

William Clifford argues that we should never “believe anything on insufficient evidence” (Philosophy of Religion, p. 103)1 and if we do decide to believe in God without any evidence it would be considered “wrong,” however, William James’ The Will to Believe essay argues, in response to Cliffords essay, that believing anything without sufficient evidence is “an irrational rule” (James, p. 109)2. James’ essay suggests that there is some level of truth to the fact that no one can decide what it is that you truly believe in because if that were to be true somewhere along the way someone else probably forced those beliefs on you, either directly or indirectly. He suggests that your true beliefs are the ones that you have without any rhyme or reason. James goes to say that it is better to believe in something wholly, even if there is no evidence to prove it because that may be the only way to find your true faith, while Clifford believes that it is safer to believe in nothing until you have clear evidence so you do not have to run the risk of possibly believing in a inauthentic belief.

Since the 19th century, William Clifford and William James have been the foremost religious theorist and have attempted to answer significant creation and theological mysteries. However, Clifford and James have varying views on the belief debate, each formulating a rational argument of what the basis for belief should be. Clifford’s, Ethics of Belief and James’ The Will to Believe outline their respective arguments which are vastly similar and but have marked differences. Both articles will be examined for these similarities and difference and stated within this paper.

Finally, we can see how William James takes an objective point of view from a few quotes in his book “The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy”. One of these quotes was, “ That is why I call pessimism an essentially religious disease.”Now although this may seem to go against his view of allowing people to believe their own thoughts, it is actually the contrary. This is because pessimism is essentially the belief of seeing things negatively or viewing things in a negative light. But, I thin this leads to the point in which William James says that religion is personal. Along with this, he stated, “Be not afraid of life. Believe

This section provides us with two selections from the essays of William K. Clifford (1845-1879) and William James (1842-1910). Clifford's essay, The Ethics of Belief, is based on the concept of evidentialism. This concept 'holds that we should not accept any statement as true unless we have good evidence to support its truth'; (Voices of Wisdom, 346). James wrote his essay, The Will to Believe, as a response to Clifford's essay where he endorsed a philosophy called pragmatism.

Clifford’s argument states that we shouldn’t believe anything upon insufficient evidence. Insufficient evidence is any type of evidence that has not been tested or proven for. Good sufficient evidence is accurately true without any doubts. He believes anything tested and proven builds up a society and strengthens it. In this paper, I will be discussing Clifford’s argument and the objections and Clifford’s responses to those objections.

The production of knowledge is a process that occurs through a sequence of related actions, these series of actions allows for the Ways of Knowing to interact in a way that works to develop the knowledge that is being produced. From the prescribed title we can claim that while the Ways of Knowing may appear to be acting in isolation when forming knowledge, they are actually working in a variety of different ways in the construction and formation. In some cases, the Ways of Knowing are interacting so closely together that it is often hard to differentiate between them, for example emotion and reason, or imagination and memory. Given the right circumstances faith can be isolated to a point where it can be acting by itself to produce knowledge. However, this knowledge is often deemed as unreliable, due to faith being seen as one of the more “subjective” ways of knowing. This inability to differentiate the ways of knowing from each other during the production of knowledge, raises the questions “Can any knowledge in any Area of Knowledge be produced by a single Way of Knowing?” and “Is it possible to distinguish between Ways of Knowing if they are working together?”. While reason is used in almost all production of knowledge, it is the other Ways of Knowing used that can determine whether the knowledge is reliable or not, as some Ways of Knowing are more subjective than others. This essay will attempt to