a few thoughts…

In opposition to WK Clifford, William James finds it impossible to believe that people should never make a decision based on any insufficient evidence. While he agrees that no one wants to be fooled into believing the wrong thing, James also perceives this as a natural part of human thinking.

James’ beliefs on options include these types:

1. living or dead
   • both hypotheses make an appeal to a person’s belief if the option is live
     • ex. “Eat an apple or eat those chips”
   • dead options are those that aren’t relevant to the individual because they wouldn’t be willing to do either
     • ex. “Do your homework or do the dishes”
2. forced or avoidable
   • when there is no room to choose a hypothesis outside of the options given (“either or” positions), it’s a forced option
     • ex. “Either believe me or don’t believe me at all”
   • when there one can evade a choice or an issue, the option’s avoidable
     • ex. “You can either agree with me or you can disagree, if you choose”
3. momentous or trivial
   • options that are momentous include an opportunity that is personally significant to a certain individual and can be a once in a lifetime chance
     • ex. “Come travel Europe with me for a month all expenses paid”
   • trivial options don’t have much effect on a person or the world and may present itself later in the future
     • ex. A person may have the chance to go on a road trip to the beach one day, but they have the opportunity to go later on in life.

Options that are living, forced, and momentous are genuine options, according to James’ argument.

For Clifford, he basically says that it’s better not to believe anything than to believe a lie, and James’ feels that this suggestion is ridiculous. James writes in response, “It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound” (The Will to Believe), and goes on to say that mistakes, like believing lies, aren’t as crazy as Clifford makes it out to be. James sees this way of living as if it’s like thinking it’s better risking the truth rather than possibly making an error. Misbeliefs are apart of life and one’s learning experience. People should be trying to make decisions based on good morals and evidence, but if you do make a mistake, for James, there are worse things in life than to be deceived by another person or insufficient evidence.

James gives religion as an example of a hypothesis that may or may not be true, and that is a forced option. While there isn’t “sufficient evidence” to say that religion is true, saying the belief isn’t true would be based on the same evidence. He believes that accepting religion as false would be the loss of something good, so the question of religion being real or not remains unanswered, but to completely dismiss the idea would be nonsensical.

I like James’ outlook on the different options that hypotheses provide, and the idea that it isn’t horrible to make a mistake when believing something that might not be true. Clifford’s perspective on beliefs is a little too intense in my opinion. Just as James believes, I also believe that it’s ridiculous to have such a drastic way of living when Clifford implies that it’s better to not believe anything than to believe something that might not be true. In order to learn, we might have to make a few mistakes, but in agreement with Clifford, it is important to do our best in evaluating beliefs and coming together to make this decision.

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reference- http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/philosophy/misc/james.html