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The Right and Duty to Will to Believe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Peter Kauber  and
Peter H. Hare
Peter Kauber
Affiliation:
Bowling Green State University
Peter H. Hare
Affiliation:
S.U.N.Y. at Buffalo
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Extract

Rights and duties to will to believe have too long been considered an embarrassing indulgence by philosophers who pride themselves on their methodological rigor. A fresh look at William James's work will show how a more robust, though no less analytically rigorous, ethics of belief is possible.

The history of James's ethics of belief is a stormy one, filled with mainly hostile criticisms on the part of others, with seminal suggestions, gropings, and retractions on the part of James himself. At various points in the development of this ethics of belief, one encounters such expressions as “duty to believe,” “will to believe,” and “right to believe,” the last gaining prominence (and the others dropping out of sight) as James grew older.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , December 1974 , pp. 327 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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References

1 For recent literature on the question of the meaningfulness of the ethics of belief, see: Chisholm, R. M. “Lewis’ Ethics of Belief,” in The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis, ed. Schilpp, P. A. (LaSalle, III.: Open Court, 1968). pp. 223–227Google Scholar; Grant, C. K. Belief and Action, Inaugural Lecture of the Professor of Philosophy (Durham, England: University of Durham Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Price, H. H. “Belief and Will,” in Belief, Knowledge, and Truth, ed. Ammerman, R. R. and Singer, M.G. (New York: Scribners, 1970), pp. 57–76Google Scholar; Price, H. H. Belief (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969)Google Scholar; Ammerman, Robert R. “Ethics and Belief,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, LXV (1964-65), pp. 257–266Google Scholar; Harvey, Van A. “Is There an Ethics of Belief?” Journal of Religion, XLIX (1969), pp. 41–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 He had apparently borrowed the expression from Charles Renouvier, always the major philosophical influence on James, and whom he had first read in 1868. See Wilbur Long, “The Philosophy of Charles Renouvier and Its Influence on William James” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1925). p. 369, n. 2.

3 Perry, Ralph B. The Thought and Character of William James (2 vols.; Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1935), I, 529Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as TC.

4 TC, I, 531-532.

5 This essay may be found, among other places, in James, William Essays on Faith and Morals (Cleveland: Meridian, 1962)Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as EFM.

6 EFM, p. 201.

7 EFM, p. 209.

8 E.g., “[T] here is some believing tendency wherever there is willingness to act at all“ (EFM, p. 34).

9 James's, recognition of the distinction between actions and habits of action is most evident in The Principles of Psychology (2 vols.; New York: Dover, 1950), II, 321–322Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as PP. Sometimes James writes of belief as causing action; cf.PP, 11,309.

10 This essay may be found in EFM. The paper was first delivered in 1895.

11 Around this time, A.J. Balfour, H. G. Wells, and F. C. S. Schiller were all, to varying degrees, advocating a rather extreme liberality with respect to belief and its connections with fact.

12 James, William Pragmatism (Cleveland: Meridian, 1955). p. 168Google Scholar. It is Wilbur Long who suggests that the title was taken from Renouvier; see Long, op. cit., p. 369Google Scholar.

13 PP, II, 486.

14 See, for example, PP, II, 296; EFM, p. 40.

15 EFM, p. 195.

16 PP, II, 288-289.

17 EFM, p. 39.

18 EFM, p. 39.

19 For a vivid illustration of how such incompatibilities arise, see PP, II, 289-290.

20 PP, II, 321.

21 Cf. PP, II, 321-322.

22 Bk. II, Chap. iv of the Nicomachean Ethics. See also James's note to the literature, in PP, II, 322.

23 James, William Some Problems of Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911), p. 224.Google Scholar

24 Ibid.

25 Chauncey Wright got James to agree to this condition in 1875: “[James) agreed that attention to all accessible evidence was the only duty involved in belief” ( TC, I, 531). We try to show, of course, that this is not the only duty,given the whole of James's philosophy.

26 E.g., James says: “We cannot control our emotions” (PP, II, 321); “ [Man's desires] are the lowest terms to which man can be reduced” (TC, I, 301).

27 TC, II,222.

28 E.g., EFM, pp. 105ff.

29 TC, I, 301.