Analysis Of The Will To Believe By William James

William James argues in his paper “The Will to Believe” that humans must use their feelings to form their beliefs when they cannot use logic, science, reasoning, or evidence (12). James starts his paper with definitions to lay the groundwork for what he’ll discuss. He explains what he means by a hypothesis and your options when deciding between two hypotheses. Options can be of a few varieties - living or dead, forced or avoidable, and momentous or trivial (James 3). In the second section of James’ paper, he goes on to explain Pascal’s wager and the problems he has with it. One of the problems James had with the wager is that the hypothesis is not living to people of other religions. James also thinks that if people only believe in God because

Definitions pop up again as James explains the difference between absolutists and empiricists. James believes that we tend to be absolutists without thinking about it (14). However, we should try not to be complete absolutists. James goes on to say that he is an empiricist because he believes that when you believe something to be true, you shouldn’t believe that it can never be false or incorrect (14-15). He also says that just because empiricists don’t believe in certitude doesn’t mean that they will give up looking for the truth - in fact, it makes them better thinkers (James 17). In the seventh section of James’ paper, there are two rules for our quest for truth: knowing the truth and avoiding error (18). James explains W.K. Clifford’s argument that it is better to not know the truth than to believe a falsehood that resulted from an error. James does not agree with Clifford because there are worse things that can happen than believing in a falsehood (19). James then argues that we can prevent ourselves from believing falsehood by refusing to make a decision of belief by waiting for concrete evidence that the belief is true

Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”. Clifford begins with an analogy of a ship and its owner to explain that it is more important to know how a belief is formed and what evidence is provided than to know whether the belief is true or false (par. 2-3). Clifford seems to infer that if you believe something with insufficient evidence and it is false, you could be considered untrustworthy and cannot take your word for things (par. 4). However, if you believe something that is proven to be true but was still based on insufficient evidence, you would still be untrustworthy but people wouldn’t have found you out (par. 5). Clifford then says that we must judge people’s actions that their beliefs fuel (par. 6). Next, Clifford goes on to say that every belief someone holds is important as it affirms other beliefs and it influences a person’s actions regardless when the action might happen (par. 8). Clifford also explains that every man’s belief affects every other person (par. 9). Clifford states that humans want to believe we know the truth because we find comfort in it and that we are afraid of being wrong because we feel powerless (par. 13). Clifford believes that we have a responsibility to mankind to have true beliefs to further our understanding of the world (par. 14). Clifford explains that there are 3 components of testing (and all three must be verified) if someone has sufficient evidence for a belief and they are veracity, knowledge, and judgement