Post 5

Of all the pieces we've covered so far, James' "The Will to Believe", has two considerable (and interesting) surprises to offer.  The first of which, this essay appears to be written a nod towards the noble goal of clarity, something notably lacking in some of the previous essays we've tackled.  This is only surprising because the subject matter is, as one might ascertain from the title, faith.  If this is surprising, it is only because a significant amount of the material offered by the discipline of philosophy on the subject of God, tends to be well concealed in haze of poor analogies and circular arguments.  For proof, re-examine Meditation Three (which I did last night, in an attempt to explain the argument to a non-philosophy-student), a experience the agony of attempting definition all over again.

The second surprise in this essay is that James' openly acknowledges that a student of logic is less apt to admit or argue their faith, once they realize the near impossibility in the task.  This immediately reminded me of a statement Dr. Smaw made to a class of freshman philosophy students I witnessed last year.  He told them that, as newly minted logicians, they should avoid engaging in God arguments.  At any point, when the God card was put on the table, they should simply let it go.  From that point, it's impossible to continue logically.  This is surprising simply because it lacks the smattering of philosophical arrogance that usually accompanies a God/faith-related essay.  But then, James isn't really a philosopher, is he?

Those two things aside, James' actual essay approaches the subject from a, yes, truly pragmatic perspective (and one that perhaps only a psychologist could so casually execute).  He establishes the language of the essay, that is, the token words he's going to redefine for the purposes of his discussion.  Then he proceeds to declare an argument made by Pascal to be "dead", or Jamespeak, for one which has no sufficient grounding to appeal to us.  These distinctions are pleasantly practical ones, for they seem to examine faith much like a cultural anthropologist might, rather than a philosopher.  James' resurrects the Pascal argument moments later, however, to introduce the central thesis of his essay.

 

In the end, James' discussion here is really less about God and more about reconciliation.  The attempt to reconcile the absolutist nature of man with the empiricist tendency he may espouse.  James' spends an enormous amount of his time here, more or less setting up a practical, dare we say pragmatic, argument for the empiricist perspective.  Frankly, this essay might serve as an excellent primer for the argument, if only because it's so perfectly clear.  But James' real question, and the real purpose of the essay, is how to cope with the fact that man (by nature) seems to long for the absolute, even when he acknowledges the virtues of empiricism.  This essay seems to be more or less James' vehicle for attempting to explain how he might still consider himself an empiricist and yet a man of faith.  And, one must admit, the argument is good.  Perhaps it is only good because it is mercifully clear and lacks any sort of tricky absolutes (often hidden under the veil of empiricism).  James' simple argues that for man, faith can be quite pragmatic, because it offers for us a number of unrevealed benefits.  If we believe we may someday reap those benefits, we have acknowledged a pleasant possibility that may ultimately yield an enormous amount of good.  If the benefits of faith prove never to materialize, we've lost nothing from it except the possibility of having been mislead.  James' more or less bases his discussion on resolving the odds of belief.  In the end, he determines that there is no harm, and it is in fact practical, to believe.  The odds are positively split, but the alternative of pure disbelief will never yield any real good.  

It seems, in the end, a critique on the schools of empiricism that may reject faith based on a lack of immediately or conclusive evidence.  James' pleads with the empiricists to understand that a school of thought that would prevent an individual from acknowledging certain truths, should those truths appear evident, lacks the sort of freedom that should define it.  It's a good argument, despite the fact that some that there are some obvious flaws to that kind of reasoning.  But it's not really meant to be the sort of argument one is intended to critique or attempt to tear down to the best of the philosophic knowledges.  It's more of an internal justification.  Or at least I'm electing to view it as such.  The crux of his argument, that there is a practical purpose to weighing the odds on belief, has an odd sort of appealing practicality to it that I find fits extremely well within the pragmatist frame.