The Will[iam James] to Believe

The Will[iam James] to Believe

William James seems to set out upon a quest to critique W.K Clifford’s The Ethics of Belief in his own article The Will to Believe. James’ line of argumentation came across to me as disreputable based on the tone of the criticism, and also the apparent complexity of his premises.

In regards to the first point, I found that James came across as more of a character assassin than a critical philosopher. For he uses such vocabulary as “[d]oes it not seem preposterous on the very face of it to talk of our opinions being modifiable at will” (James, 520, emphasis added), and also referring to Pascal’s Wager as an attempt to “force us into Christianity” (James, 520, emphasis added) going on to reference the same argument as a “last desperate snatch at a weapon against the hardness of the unbelieving heart” (James, 520, emphasis added). Perhaps it was nothing more than such linguistic-choices which caused such repulsion at James’ later reference to Clifford as an “enfant terrible” or a ‘terrible baby’ (James, 521).

As I sat with this repulsion I set out to look past the emotions and seek James’ authentic argument; I was disheartened to find that this too I found fault with. James makes several binary classifications to setup his counterargument. The first is a Genuine versus Ingenuine option, of which he is only concerned with genuinity. Genuinity is then classified based on a tripartite binary distinction of its sub-attributes: Living versus Dead, Forced versus Avoidable, and Momentous versus Trivial. For the purposes of this paper I shall assume the reader is familiar with the particulars of each classification. The issues I find with these classifications are two-fold. The first is the complexity of the setup: for I am well aware that, given enough assumptions, one may derive any valid conclusion. Secondly, I find the distinctions themselves to be homogeneous. James allows that, to avoid the option of ‘believe this theory or don’t’, that I may choose to withhold judgement; but in the same breathe James manages to deny the possibility to withhold judgement from such an option as to ‘go with this truth or without it’. It seems perfectly reasonable to presume that I may entirely avoid the option of taking or rejecting the truth by simply walking away and forgetting I encountered such an option. The momentousness is similarly problematic, in that the true distinction between momentous and trivial seems to be complete bafflegab that could be twisted any-which-way to suit oneself. As I mentioned, the only option one need be concerned with is genuinity, and genuinity is defined by being forced, living, and momentous.

Chaos in The Deep

But allow me to suspend my disbelief and examine a later section of James argument which seems to hold some sound conclusions regarding the nature of belief. This is the argument for religion. James claims that religion says two things:

1. “the best things are the more eternal things” (James, 524), and
2. “we are better off, even now, if we believe the first affirmation to be true” (James, 524)

These two arguments land with me as a sort of mashup-flavour of Aquinas’ ontological argument for the existence of God, and Pascal’s wager -thus combining to create an argument that God exists and also that one ought to acknowledge that God does so exist- This is the beginning of the softening of James’ unbelieving heart towards the Pascalian position which he so quickly dismissed earlier on in the paper.

There are a few passages which follow this initial trailbreak, the sensibility of which particularly appealed to me:

We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active goodwill, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypotheses halfway to take a trivial illustration: just as a man who in a company of gentlemen made no advances, asked a warrant for every concession, and believed no one’s word without proof, would cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn - so here, one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or not get it at all might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity of making the gods’ acquaintance (James, 525)

the essence of this passage seems to be: by seeking rationality for our faith, we disallow ourselves the experience of faith itself. Later down the same page James claims that “a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those truths were really there, would be an irrational rule” (James, 525). Which makes sense, especially in the light of the previously referenced passage. There seems, within this toiling narrative, to be an underlying taste of the thought that religious believers tend to commit a fallacy of thought by assuming that there is no possible other alternative than their particular religious narrative; but so too do non-believers commit this fallacy by assuming absolute certainty of the religious-foil.

James proceeds to conclude in an epic fashion, saying:

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 . . . We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ‘Be strong and of good courage.’ Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes . . . If death ends all, we cannot meet death better (James, 526)

which serves to express the ultimate epistemic truth: ‘we don’t know what we don’t know’. Metaphysically speaking, everything is uncertain; even the uncertainty itself is uncertain. Methodologically speaking, however, we can only play with the toys we are given and thus the only position that actually does anything for us is the pragmatic position: believe whatever works best to solve the puzzle(s) of your own personal reality, and if those beliefs cease to serve you, then you ought to cease serving them, and progress to a more functional understanding of the mist you are obscured within.

I am now thoroughly satisfied with my choice of reading. I came in with the belief that James was an ignorant and unskilled critic, and I set out in this paper to break him down and expose his faults to the world. In my exercises to better understand the depth of his argument, however, I came to see him for what (I now believe) he is truly saying, and it is a position with which I firmly identify. Perhaps this was his plan from the get-go, to antagonize the reader into grasping his position. Or, perhaps more likely, is the possibility that the God of my own understanding is that which antagonized me into choosing this analysis, as a means of demonstrating to me that to claim objectivity in the frigidity of the unseen and unseeing tempests of metaphysical reality will be certain only in dashing me to pieces upon the rigid crevasses of the valley below.

Bibliography

James, William. “The Will to Believe” in The Theory of Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Readings, 3 ed. Pojman, Louis P. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2003), 518 - 526.