This piece by James was written as one
article to stand on its own. Here James criticizes the views of Clifford, who
held that one should never go beyond the evidence when forming an opinion.
James thinks that our reasoning has to sometimes use other considerations apart
from what the evidence points to, and furthermore, if our primary aim is to
have true beliefs, (rather than merely avoid error) then we sometimes have to
take the risk of believing without strong evidence. He applies this to several
areas of life, and it is only in the last section that he comes to discuss the
relevance of his view to religious belief.
I. James
distinguishes between live and dead hypotheses. A live hypothesis is one
which appeals as a real possibility to him whom it is proposed. Some hypotheses
refuse to scintillate with any credibility at all. Liveness is not an intrinsic
property of an hypothesis, but is relational. The decision between two
hypotheses is an option. There are different kinds of options: 1, living
or dead; 2, forced or avoidable; 3, momentous or trivial.
II.
What are the ways in which we actually come to have beliefs? Can we chose to
believe something simply by an effort of will? For instance, can we make
ourselves "feel certain that the sum of the two one-dollar bills in our
pocket must be a hundred dollars?". This is a dead option for most people,
i.e., they could not make themselves believe this no matter how hard they
tried. There are many beliefs that we cannot will. Pascal's wager, as an
argument for belief in God, is based on the assumption that we can chose
whether or not to believe in God simply on the basis of our self-interest. But
James says that he doubts that anyone ever came to believe in God through such
a thought process. That is not how our minds work. People with scientifically
oriented minds are shocked by the suggestion that we should just chose what to
believe without strong evidence. For instance, Clifford says that it is wrong
always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
III.
Yet it is clear that it is not just pure reason that settles what we believe.
It is only already dead hypotheses that we cannot bring to life by
willing. For many of our beliefs, the evidence plays only a small part in
determining what we believe. Exactly what determines the beliefs we have is
hard to say, since we have very little insight into the causes of our beliefs
for the most part. But we do know that often, it is the prestige of beliefs
that lures us to them. At other times our faith is faith in someone else's
faith. This is not just true of a few insignificant beliefs, since we form our
beliefs on shaky evidence almost all the time. We reassure ourselves by being
able to say a little about why we believe what we do, but if pressed on the
issue, we would be unable to give any good justification.
But if a pyrronistic sceptic asks us how we know all this,
can our logic find a reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition
against another, - we willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption
which he, for his part, does not care to make.
A "pyrronistic sceptic" is
someone who doubts everything that is normally taken for granted. James is
saying that we have no good answers to justify our beliefs in the face of such
doubt.
Note
that James is not necessarily condemning us for lacking evidence in our
beliefs. He is so far just setting out what our psychology is like, not saying
what it should be. And we will see that he later argues that it is inevitable
that our psychology is the way it is, given our limited minds. If we tried to
justify all our beliefs we would never come to any significant beliefs at all.
IV.
James will argue:
Out passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an
option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its
nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such
circumstances, "Do not decide, but leave the question open," is
itself a passional decision-just like deciding yes or no-and is attended with
the same risk of losing the truth.
By "passional" James means
something like passionate or emotional, as contrasted with intellectual. He is
saying that sometimes we have to go beyond the evidence, and use some
non-intellectual way to come to a decision about what to believe.
He
also makes a distinction between "empiricist" and
"absolutist" ways of thinking. An absolutist insists that we must
have certainty in our knowledge, which means not just that we know a fact, but
that we know we know it. An empiricist, in his rather non-standard use of the
term, says that ordinary knowledge does not require certainty. We can know most
of the things we know, and yet be unsure whether our beliefs are right, and
ready to admit that we might be wrong.
V. James distinguishes between
skepticism, (which says we don't know anything), empiricism, (which says that
we can have knowledge but not be sure we have it), and absolutism, (which says
we can have knowledge and know that we have it). He says that we are all
absolutists by instinct and only by reflection can we achieve empiricist
moderation.
VI.
James thinks that although we instinctively wish to be absolutists about our
beliefs, and that we feel much more secure with certainty, it is much more
rational to be empiricists and give up the quest for certainty. Certitude is
hard to find. In fact, the only certainty we will ever have is that we possess
minds (consciousness). All our other beliefs are less than certain, so we
should constantly reflect on them, in the hope of getting closer to the truth.
But there is no concrete test of what is true. In philosophy and the rest of
life, James points out, completely contrasting views have been held to be
certain. He gives some examples of this (in philosophy, the disagreement
between Aristotle's and Hegel's logic). He further points out that in the past,
people's certainty in religious belief has led them to persecute and tortures
others. He says that this gives us even more reason to be suspicious of
absolutism. We should keep with our quest for truth, but give up our need for
certain truth.
VII.
James expands on this last point. Requiring certainty requires us to shun
error, but search for truth does not require us to completely avoid the
possibility of being wrong. Once we accept that in searching for truth we can
risk error, we see that aiming to believe truth and aiming to shun error can
take us into two different directions. If one really wanted to avoid all error,
one could just stop believing anything at all. But obviously we would not have
any true beliefs then. James thinks someone who was so afraid of error is just
showing their own personal emotional character, rather than showing us what is
rational for everyone. He uses a military analogy which suggests that he thinks
this is being much too timid.
It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to
keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories
either over enemies or over nature gained.
VIII. Some will say it is always
better to reserve judgment than believe something without objective evidence as
to the matter. James agrees that this is generally true in the case of science.
In physical nature facts are as they are independently of us. In these areas
options are not forced on us. It is not crucial for us that we come to a
decision about many of the obscure controversies and unanswered questions in
science, and we can just wait until there is enough evidence to decide.
In
our own speculative questions, we are not always able to wait for objective
evidence to come along. He quotes Pascal who wrote, "The heart has its
reasons that Reason doesn't understand." But he does agree with Clifford that at least in cases where the
need to come to a decision is not urgent, it would be best to wait until there
is enough evidence to decide the issue.
IX.
However, there are many parts of life where we cannot wait for there to be
enough evidence. One case of this is moral questions. Whether or not to
have moral beliefs is, psychologically speaking, decided by our will. James is
very doubtful that we will ever be able to come up with a rational proof of
what is morally right and wrong.
Furthermore,
in many parts of our life we need to go beyond the evidence in order for our
lives to go well. For instance, whether you like me or not can depend upon my
beliefs about you and whether I believe you like me, and show you trust and
expectation. If I stand aloof, then it is likely you will never like me. Here
the desire for the truth of something can bring it about. There are many cases
where we need faith in order to create the fact.
Cooperation
is needed between members of a society, and if everyone waited for proof that
others were going to reciprocate, nothing would ever get done. Sometimes this
happens:
A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) will be
looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter can count on one another,
while each passenger fears that if he make a movement of resistance, he will be
shot before any one else backs him up. If we believe that the whole car-full
would rise at once with us, we should each severally rise, and train-robbing
would never be attempted.
So it is useful, and sometimes
essential, that we trust each other when we don't have proof that we are
trustworthy.
X.
What about religious matters? James defines religion very broadly, as having
just two elements, first, that the best things are eternal, and second, that we
are better off if believe the first element than if we don't. Religion is a
momentous option, since it could make a big difference if it were true and we
believed it. It is a live option for some people. It is also a forced option,
since if we just wait and remain agnostic, we will not get the good that true
believers do, should religion be true. Waiting to decide is like the man who
waits to ask a woman to marry him because he is not sure that she will be an
angel. This is cutting himself off from the option of marriage a with her as
sure as marrying someone else. There are different risks involved in belief,
disbelief, and agnosticism. Being churlish with belief in God might cut us off
from the benefits of living a religious life. The agnostic approach could rule
out the very possibility of acknowledging some kinds of truth that one is
concerned to find out about. So adopting a rule of evidence that would force
one to be agnostic, as Clifford does, would be irrational.