1 / 13

William James

William James. The Will to Believe. A justification of faith. An address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities, 1896

oro
Télécharger la présentation

William James

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. William James The Will to Believe

  2. A justification of faith • An address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities, 1896 • “A defense of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced.”

  3. I • Hypothesis—anything which may be proposed to our belief • Live or dead—is it a real possibility? • Option—choice between two hypotheses • Living or dead • Forced or avoidable • Momentous or trivial • A genuine option is living, forced, and momentous.

  4. II • Psychology of belief • Talk of believing by volition is simply silly, or perhaps vile (Pascal). • “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every time, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

  5. III • But, our passional tendencies do influence our convictions. • “The state of things is evidently far from simple; and pure insight and logic, whatever they might do ideally, are not the only things that really do produce our creeds.”

  6. IV Thesis • “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; 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 risk of loosing truth.”

  7. V • We are on dogmatic ground—truth exists • Empiricist way—We can attain the truth but cannot infallibly know when. • Absolutist way—We can know the truth and can know when we know it.

  8. VI • An argument for the empiricist way • The dogmatic absolutist faces the origin (terminus a quo) to provide strength for the outcome (terminus ad quem). • The dogmatic empiricist will take an hypothesis from anywhere.

  9. VII • Two ways to look at our duty in the matter of opinion • Seek to know truth • Avoid error • “Our errors are not such awfully solemn things”

  10. VIII • Who seeks truth best? • Not the disinterested seeker • One with eager interest, balanced by a concern not to be deceived • Can we always wait for all the evidence before deciding?

  11. IX • Moral questions cannot always wait for sensible proof. • Faith in a fact sometimes helps create the fact.

  12. X • Religion says: • The best things are the more eternal. • We are better off even now, if we believe this to be true. • This can be a living, forced, momentous option. • Add to that the personal form of religion (I-Thou)

  13. A Conclusion • We need not keep our willing nature out of the decision. • We cannot prove either option and so each must act as he or she thinks best. • We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of a blizzard—we must act for the best. • Act and hope for the best and take what comes—this is a good way to meet death.

More Related