My paper for the bachelor's degree in philosophy this year focuses on how we come to give our assent to religious beliefs. Are religious beliefs basically like our other beliefs, or are they not?

I'm focussing on the debate between two thinkers: Victorian positivist/atheist W.K. Clifford (d. 1879) and American liberal Protestant thinker William James, who wrote his essay, "The Will to Believe" in 1897. You can read both essays here.

Lest anyone suppose we have nothing to learn from an argument between an atheist and a liberal Protestant, I can say at least that both of these figures have things to say which are indispensible for Catholicism, and by no means granted in our lazy, postmodern society.

Clifford says, "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." (Agnosticism is implied here).

James says two things, namely, (1) "Our 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," and (2) "a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule."

My project is an examination of James' essay. How are our "passional natures" tied up in our coming to belief? For it is true that we believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist with even more vigor than we uphold the reliability of "2+2=4". But do we believe these in the same way?

This is just an introduction. When I finish my paper, I'll post it here. My basic thesis is this:

William James is right to say that our "passional natures" play an important and rightful role in forming our beliefs, but he is unclear about exactly what these passions are or the variety of ways they affect our belief. I will catalogue in my paper the differences in kinds of passions based upon James' own examples and analogies, whereby I will show that:

The connection between our passions and our beliefs depends largely both upon the complex relatedness of our passions to reality, and upon our activity insofar as it gains us access to new realities (or closes them off).

-- anon (ymous@God.bless), March 27, 2004

Answers

One is told that we can give a mathamatical proof that 2+2=4. That if one is convinced that 2 + 2 = 5, then that is not proof alone. It is said that the longest path back to an axiom from 2 + 2 = 4 is 122 levels deep. I don't think people think that way when they think of Christ as God.

In Christ,
Bill

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45-nospam@hotmail.com), March 27, 2004.

the problem, bill, is that when you get into advanced physics 2+2 no longer necessarily equals 4. Instead 2+2 equals any number or decimal between 0 and 4. However, you are correct in saying that 2+2 could not equal five no matter how hard you believe (although the higher i get in physics, the more possible it becomes to me that you could possibly bend phase space and make 2 + 2 = any number).

-- paul h (dontSendMeMail@notAnAddress.com), March 27, 2004.

Paul, One might say that quantum physics *is* belief (e.g., Schroder's Cat).

In Christ, Bill

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45-nospam@hotmail.com), March 27, 2004.

Look! Outline!

OK, this is way to long for a 20-page essay. But it's easier to start with too much material than too little.

William James is right to say that our "passional natures" play an important and rightful role in forming our beliefs, but he is unclear about exactly what these passions are or the variety of ways they affect our belief. I will catalogue in my paper the differences in kinds of passions based upon James' own examples and analogies, whereby I will show that:

Thesis: "The connection between our passions and our beliefs depends largely both upon the complex relatedness of our passions to reality (Wainwright and others), and upon our actions insofar as they gain us access to new realities (or closes them off)."

The implications that arise from James's varied uses of examples and details result in our inability to accept certain elements of his argument, but which nevertheless strengthen rather than challenge his overall case. Importantly, they obviate certain readings of "The Will to Believe" as a mere "tender minded" piece, or an expression of mere fideism or prudentialism.

I. Introduction
    A. The 'debate' between Clifford and James; essential features of Clifford
    B. Focus on James and how "The Will to Believe" fulfills and opens up the "Ethics"
        1. James's primary concern: truth
        2. Transition from a "rule of thought" to an epistemology of approximation
    C. What can be fruitfully contributed to James' "Will to Believe"
        1. A closer examination of the different kinds of passions and their explicit and implicit roles in forming our beliefs.
        2. A closer look at "evidence"--a key category in the linking of our passional investigations to truth.
        3. A critical distinction, overlooked, between belief and action; their relation, and the role of "acting as-if" (Swineburne)
    D. James' method as applied here: empiricist fallibilism

II. Our 'Passional Natures'
    A. What James says explicitly
    B. A catalogue of distinctions: kinds of passions (whether "passions" is an adequate term [possible suggestions of better terms])
    C. Clifford, and the illegitimate roles of our passions
    D. James, and the legitimate roles of our passions
    E. From foundational passional nature to explicit affirmation: a series of brief descriptions
        1. Belief in truth, and that the senses, math, and reason help us find it
        2. Scientific discovery
        3. Moral truths
        4. Social truths
        5. Faith
    F. (Ethical interjection) The rightness of our passage from passion to affirmation depends on the intervention of some kind of evidence, even if it is only "a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticized;" and that affirmation must be in some way receptive to development upon further evidence. III. What is Evidence?
    A. Clifford's understanding of evidence (I want to use Ayer's verifiability principle as a model)
    B. James's understanding of evidence
        1. Not wholly consistent
        2. That our passional natures are in some way "evidential"
        3. That our passional natures are not and do not need to be.
    C. Terminus A Quo vs. Terminus Ad Quem
        1. Clifford's "Evidence" - conformity to the verifiability principle
        2. James' "Evidence" - whatever and anything that unites our minds with truth, whether it conforms or not.
    D. Evidences that are not in conformity with Clifford's/Ayer's verifiability
        1. In James' thought - the relatedness between passions and truth
        2. Newman's description of pre-rational rationality
        3. The "cumulative case" for rational religion (Mitchell)

IV. Action versus Belief
    A. Beliefs-held and affirmations-made are actions, which is why an ethics of belief is possible.
    B. Actions always imply beliefs at least very minimal beliefs, but very little about these beliefs can be directly inferred
    C. Where in 'The Will to Believe' this distinction brings greater clarity
    D. Three actions and their attendant minimal beliefs
        1. Voluntary acts - imply at least a momentary belief in their being, at least, not bad. (I snap my fingers once)
        2. Ventures - imply a least an extended temporary belief in their being, at least, not bad. (I write a research paper)
        3. Customs (excluding addictions) - imply a continuous belief in their being, at least, not bad. (I eat a doner kebab every Wednesday)
        4. Ventures and customs are alike in their being composed of any sum of voluntary acts, and this sum may be either or both of these at once. However, only ventures are alike to voluntary acts in their both having at least one end which is more approximated toward their completion than at their start. A custom that is not a venture cannot be said to be "complete" or "incomplete", even if we say that a past custom had a beginning and an end.
    C. Application of these principles to James' concept of the Faith-that-helps-create-the-fact.

IV. Applying the thesis
    A. The triple role of our passional natures
        1. The enlivening or deadening of our hypotheses
        2. The motivation of our real actions that open or close select worlds of experience
        3. The informing and formatting of, and inclusion in, our over-determinate evidences (of the kind outlined in III-D)
    B. The liveness and deadness of our hypotheses
        1. What James says: that they are static, or at least mostly personal and inaccessible to other subjects.
        2. That a subject's hypotheses can be enlivened or deadened by circumstances variably subject to his own decisions and actions.
        3. That these decisions and actions may happen for an infinite number of motivations, even trivial ones, that are themselves highly accessible to other subjects.
    C. The Religious Hypothesis
        1. It is almost impossible to enliven the religious hypothesis for a subject, by means of conventional evidences alone, who has closed the world of experience for himself.
        2. "Meeting the hypothesis halfway": re-cast as a venture-towards-experience and access to new kinds of over-determinate evidences.
        a. The agnostic/atheist subject may be motivated (for any number of reasons) for a venture, long or short, of opening the world of experience of a religious tradition, even if the religious hypothesis is dead.
        b. The venture leading to access to this world can come in any number of ways
             i. Through actual participation in a tradition or community without belief; "acting-as-if" (Swineburne)
             ii. Through dialogue without participation
             iii. Through encounters with individual believers
        c. A subject who makes such a venture with a dead religious hypothesis will have some motive (which is NOT the 'will to believe') without which his venture will lose meaning. If he loses the motive, the venture may thus stop, or if it had a secondary customary element, continue as a custom.

V. Conclusion
A little about the historical James, about how my thesis would apply to certain real-world frictions between the causes of inter- religious dialogue and evanglization, and thanks to the promoter. :)

-- anon (ymous@God.bless), March 27, 2004.