Yes, I see that you’re right and that my criticism is unfair and lacking in subtlety.
However, though it might be completely inappropriate to ask it of James, I still can’t help looking for a critique of the conditions that lead the individual epistemic agent, addressed by James, to the point of affirming or rejecting a belief. For James, whatever the passional nature is, is a given. I want to critique that given. Obviously this is a different project from what James is doing, and I was wrong to give the impression that James had forgotten something.
So although I appreciate this:
I feel the urge to ask “why do you want to stay home?”—and not psychologically speaking but in social or structural terms. Because I think that’s where the action is.
It has seemed to me that these addresses might now be worthy of collection in a volume, as they shed explanatory light upon each other, and taken together express a tolerably definite philosophic attitude in a very untechnical way.
Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I should call it that of radical empiricism, in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy.
I say ‘empiricism,’ because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience; and I say ‘radical,’ because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the half-way empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all experience has got to square. The difference between monism and pluralism is perhaps the most pregnant of all the differences in philosophy.
An hypothesis is ‘liable to modification’.
In Section X, when he talks of the ‘religious hypothesis’ - this is still a question. It is live and may be true.
James’ stake in this, and for anyone listening, is to have the right to choose their own form of risk. To believe in God, or not.
This ‘right’ as much as the ‘desire’ (the will) is what drives him and livens his lectures.
…
The apparent assumption is that the male Christian students are all of the same mind, custom and habit. Perhaps, they have all been brought up as believers in Christ. Perhaps, most might be scientific. However, they are attending this philosophy lecture willingly. James opens the door to questioning. And pluralism.
James’ philosophy along with his electrical spark has the power to jolt a synapse or two.
However, I am still wary of his offered options and their nature. How James can’t seem to hide the religious bias. The mention and sense of ‘risk’ or ‘peril’ targets actual or potential unbelievers or agnostics.
The scientific students - if they are looking for answers to religious tensions will find none. Apart from thinking about the world and their place in it. To ‘act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes…’
Humans don’t need to accept what is. Or the status quo. James challenges orthodoxy. Mysteries and myths explored.
Here is James the radical empiricist of pragmatic pluralism ( who needs labels? ) :
Something is always mere fact and givenness; and there may be in the whole universe no one point of view extant from which this would not be found to be the case. “Reason,” as a gifted writer says, “is but one item in the mystery; and behind the proudest consciousness that ever reigned, reason and wonder blushed face to face. The inevitable stales, while doubt and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the universe is wild,—game-flavored as a hawk’s wing. Nature is miracle all; the same returns not save to bring the different. The slow round of the engraver’s lathe gains but the breadth of a hair, but the difference is distributed back over the whole curve, never an instant true,—ever not quite.”[1]
This is pluralism, somewhat rhapsodically expressed. He who takes for his hypothesis the notion that it is the permanent form of the world is what I call a radical empiricist. For him the crudity of experience remains an eternal element thereof.
There is no possible point of view from which the world can appear an absolutely single fact.
James tells stories in wonder and reason. He needs to take the world religiously - it is in his nature. Or perhaps…it is faith in a certain kind of philosophy…
I don’t know how to respond to this.
Where is what action? The pragmatic? The spiritual? At home, on the internet, outdoors? Action or adventure - reflection and discussion - internal/external or individual/collective?
Just when you think TPF is unique, up pops another online reading group:
This section by section analysis of William James’ 1896 talk “Will To Believe” originated in an online reading room. James’ essay is an important analysis of decision making under uncertainty, often caricatured as a license for irrationality. Read carefully, it is something far more powerful: a theory of fixation belief that treats moral risk as epistemically unavoidable and perhaps even desirable. — “The Will To Believe” by William James - by C Trombley One
It includes an acknowledgement of user contributions; questions, answers, perspectives and insights.
Also:
Charles Peirce’s “The Fixation Of Belief”
William Kingdon Clifford’s “The Ethics Of Belief”
Wilfrid Ward’s “The Wish To Believe”
I haven’t read it all yet but it sounds promising…
We do want more from philosophy than understanding. We want critique. We want some reason to hope we can do better, maybe even some hints on how to.
The leaving home thing—in this particular case, venturing out would be taking a leap of faith. It’s a tough sell, and James knows it.
Now he could have just argued that no one in fact can justify everything they believe, and left it at that. If you claim that your resistance to some move is because it’s unjustified, because the arguments and the evidence aren’t convincing, you have to explain why that’s your standard in this case but not with the incredible number of beliefs you hold that never met that standard.
That would have been one way. Where would that leave us? I don’t know. That we’re all hypocrites? Or that we apply epistemic norms unsystematically? And?
Instead he argues for something more, which I think is the most interesting idea in the paper: there are possibilities you are cut off from if you don’t take the unjustified step; they depend on you doing so to become possibilities for you at all. And he does provide a sort of argument for this.
That’s a really interesting idea, and I think a stronger attack on the over-intellectualized view of life he’s combating than trying to turn the accepted standards of rationality against the people who proclaim those standards.
It’s an insight about the structure of inquiry and behavior. You could read it, for instance, as noting that we are always situated, and how we got into this position is not a matter of justification but merely history, so if you want change it’s not analysis alone that will get you out but a change in perspective and a change in behavior.
The future doesn’t wait for you to make up your mind. When it really counts, you have to have a way of going on that doesn’t require an exhaustive analysis that meets some external standard of rationality.
I was trying to say that what I’m interested in is the critique of those habits of belief we’ve been talking about, whereas James doesn’t really go there: whatever your passional nature tells you is a given.
For me, the action is in whatever it is that makes people fall into habits of belief, and that’s where I favour social philosophy, which is why I said that the social and structural is where it’s at (for me).
There is more to be said about habits, ethics and belief. And yes, it is more than religious belief. James is a fascinating mix with many critics of his aims, over centuries.
Thanks for that. Yes, I am interested in social philosophy and moral psychology. How religion, politics, economics etc impact on the individual within the status quo. The changes in any system…by whatever means…
…
Right now, I keep thinking about how one immensely rich and powerful man, wages global war - claims to be a Christian, invokes God, and Allah! but the only morals he believes in are his own. He is not concerned about committing war crimes. Why would he? He is a psychopathic felon running the USA and decimating others. For what?
Oil, minerals, money…
Did you say something about about ‘distancing’ from humanity…?
I have still to read the paper I have just linked to but it would seem to be useful, considering James works as a continuation of the ‘self-transformation’ story, if you like?
Not that it will do any amount of good, anyway…
Time for a walk in the cool, sunshine
