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William James and the Ethics of Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

G.L. Doore
G.L. Doore
Affiliation:
Wolf son College, Oxford
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Extract

There is widespread agreement among philosophers that William James's well-known attempt to justify religious faith in ‘The Will to Believe’ is a failure. But despite the fact that James wrote his essay as a reply to the ‘tough-minded’ ethics of belief represented by such thinkers as W. K. Clifford and T. H. Huxley, the reasons commonly given today for rejecting James's position seem to be mostly based on the same principle of intellectual ethics that motivated Clifford and Huxley. Clifford, it may be recalled, maintained that ‘It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’. Although this is a rather rhetorical way of stating it, the principle is basically the same one adhered to by most scientists and philosophers who consider themselves rigorous and ‘objective’ thinkers. Even philosophers not associated with the hardheaded modern Anglo-American style of empiricism commonly pledge their allegiance to such a principle. For example, Brand Blanshard (who is an epistemological idealist) holds that the ‘main principle’ of the ethics of belief is that one should ‘equate one's assent to the evidence’ and he then goes on to criticize James, on the basis of this principle, for advocating self-deception and intellectual dishonesty.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 58 , Issue 225 , July 1983 , pp. 353 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1983

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References

1 In The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897), 1–31.Google Scholar

2 In Lectures and Essays (1879); reprinted in Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, B. A. Brody (ed.) (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 246.Google Scholar

3 Reason and Belief (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974), 410Google Scholar

4 Op. cit. 25.

5 God, for example, is no more likely to exist if we believe than if we do not. Belief in an after-life is, I suppose, a belief that could conceivably tend to produce its own verification, i.e. if it just happens that those who believe in survival survive, whereas those who don't, don't. But this is not very plausible.

6 ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life’, in The Will to Believe and Other Essays, 184–215. The passages quoted were called to my attention by Paul, Dietrichson.Google Scholar

7 ‘Belief and Will’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume (1954).

8 Ibid. 19.

9 Op. cit. 424.

10 Problems in the Philosophy of Mind (London: Duckworth & Co. 1975),.Google Scholar

11 Faith, and Reason, : A False Antithesis?, Religious Studies 16 (1980), 131–144.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. 137.

13 Cf. Mitchell, 140..

14 There is a question, of course, whether the ‘ought not’ here is moral or prudential, a question which I shall return to shortly.

15 ‘Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief, in Rationality and Religious Belief, Delaney (ed.) (Indiana: Notre Dame, 1978), 130.Google Scholar

16 Op. cit. 25.

17 Blanshard, op. cit. 410.

18 And unfortunately for Blanshard he is a cognitivist in his meta-ethical theory, so he must regard the ought-statement expressed in the Rationalistic Principle as either true or false. See Reason and Goodness (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963).Google Scholar

19 Cf. Price, op. cit. 26.

20 ‘The Simple Believer’, in Religion and Morality, Gene, Outka and John, P. Reeder Jr, (eds) (New York: Anchor Books, 1973), 412.Google Scholar

21 It should be noted that even if the Rationalistic Principle did not lead to inconsistency on the ‘intellectually normative’ interpretation, it would still lose the indefeasible status its defenders have often claimed for it. For if the principle is merely a hypothetical imperative then it is open to one to deny the condition of the antecedent (‘z/you wish to make it more likely that you will have true beliefs’) in cases where one thinks that the advantages of accepting a non-theoretically justified belief would outweigh the advantages of making it more likely that one will have true beliefs.

22 I have benefited from discussion of earlier drafts of this paper with Dr R. C. S. Walker, Professor Basil Mitchell and Professor R. M. Hare.