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On William James's "The Will to Believe" and continuing our discussion from Episode 20 on James's conception of truth as described in his books Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth, again including Dylan Casey.
Does pragmatism give ground for religious belief, like if I say it feels good for me to believe in God, is that in any sense a legitimate grounds for that belief? Is belief in science or rationality itself a form of faith? Is religious belief a "forced choice," or does it just not matter what you believe?
Also, we sort further through James on truth: truth is created by us, but what does that mean? That only statements actually verified or otherwise useful are true, or can have a truth value (true of false) at all? In saying that we create truth, does that make James a relativist, and if so, is that bad?
Read "The Will to Believe," Pragmatism, and The Meaning of Truth (the most useful chapters for our purposes are 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, and 15).
You can alternately "The Will to Believe" here
End song: "Who Cares What You Believe?" by Madison Lint (2001).
Great podcast! I really like the meat that’s finally sliced up at the end (post mustache tangent). Right around that same time in the cast someone seems to mention that we (Westerners?) are culturally pre-disposed to something… could u help me understand that better? Were you saying we are culturally predisposed to belief in some kind of God-being? Predisposed to religious practice (or non-practice)? I think that’s a really interesting idea.
If someone raised themselves on an island apart from culture, is there a biological predisposition to faith based ‘truths’ (even if they’re superstitous, etc.)?
If you have a minute, I’d really like to better understand what you were getting at there.
Thanks!
The reference takes place around the 1:07 mark in regards to God, or Faith, or Spirituality being a ‘live’ option… there are a lot of really significant comments around that time in the cast that suggest that God or religion (are these two confused?) are inherent either because we exist in a culture, or because of human biological make-up. Are these just generally accepted philosophical concepts? That the notion of God is inherent? Or am I misunderstanding anything about that? If you have a chance to add any additional thoughts on that I’d appreciate it. Thanks again!
Hey, Dan,
This was kind of a throw-away comment I made speculating about the relation of what we were talking about to a sentiment I’ve seen in numerous places: “If there was no God, Man would have to invent one.”
Yes, in this context, I was referring fairly generically to the spiritual, which, e.g. Karen Armstrong (see my recent post here about her) thinks is extremely common and goes very far back historically. However, in the Kant knowledge episode, Wes I think had specifically (in discussing the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” argument from Dawkins often quoted on the web) said that the concept of God in particular was not arbitrary, but had something like a natural place in logic, where I take the definition to be a being that is infinite in every way. Personally, I don’t think that definition is even coherent, but it’s the one that Descartes and Spinoza and all of them run with. It’s certainly not a sufficient concept to give us God as conceived of by some particular religious tradition.
I have some problems with this work. I like his live option and forced option, good distinctions, but it seems that we can use these to justify dishonesty. For instance if I am in love with your wife and I think you might be cheating on your wife. If you are then I must tell her. It seems a live hypothesis, as I am willing to act on it, so I must choose between options. It seems both are live you could be cheating on your wife or not, I am willing to accept both. It seems to be a forced option, if I do not choose then I am effectively letting you cheat on your wife. It certainly is momentous, it matters greatly both for my own bad intentions and for the woman I am in love with. So this seems to be a genuine option. By this reasoning I would be justified in telling your wife you are cheating on her, and the real reason is because I am dishonestly trying to separate you from your wife. If cheating is too easily verifiable, then I could replace that with you are in love with your secretary. Am I misrepresenting or poorly understanding the implications of this reconciliation of faith?
I like your connection. We generally think of the choices James gives us in this context as ones that will not hurt others, so it ultimately matters only to us, but like in your example, the actions and motives involved with choosing some (to us) live religious position may be less than pure.
It is not even that the faith of religious people is less than pure, but that if we accept this method of James than it seems we must accept dishonest circumstances like what was written above. It seems we might wish to insert some honesty clause, but that would go against one of the ideas James has about taking a leap of faith and a sort of fake belief until you believe mentality.
Ultimately I think this defense of faith is flawed and there is a much easier way of describing faith where the believer is justified in believing. Faith is the response to a experience that cannot be adequately tested or verified. This version of faith describes my faith that my fiance loves me or the theists faith in their God. The downside is that they are all equally justified in faith as well as the UFO abductee and the experiences of the insane.
Want to be clear I am not making a positivist type claim where all things that are not verifiable is metaphysical. I meant faith is the response to a experience that cannot be adequately tested or verified or has been justified with reason. That is something that is personally moving yet cannot hope to convince others.
I believe one day you guys will cover Richard Rorty but I guess Dewey would have to come first.
What work by Dewey? Any idea?
In relation to Rorty, I would have thought a good place to start for understanding Dewey’s influence could be the collection of lectures published as ‘The Quest fo Certainty’. Also, given that Rorty is a wide-ranging philosopher, a good place to start there would be the matter of ‘epistemological behaviourism’ from the ‘Mirror of Nature’ which sort of follows on from Quine’s ‘Two Dogmas’ in an indirect kind of way (if my memory seves me well – it has been a few years since I read this stuff!).
All the best.
yes good and perhaps some Art as Experience, I’m still hoping for a discussion of Mirror leading into the Contingency book, another short read that would in some ways show where Rorty and Dewey differ would be A Common Faith.
http://www.wou.edu/~girodm/Dewey.pdf
Yes, it was my impression now that we were done with Quine and had already had the whole discussion of truth in relation to James that we were OK to just read Mind and the Mirror of Nature at some point in 2013 without further preparation. However, I am separately interested in Dewey, and have Art as Experience sitting on my shelf.
Dewey is well worth reading on his own and in some significant ways Rorty (as he often did) just dropped much of what the dewey-orthodox consider as what is central, like “experience”, to Dewey’s project and foregrounded what he wanted instead.
http://www.davidhildebrand.org/research/book-dewey-beginners-guide/
Experience and Nature, Chps. 1-3 and 5-8
Best episode yet. This is true for me. Lots of cash-value.
And it was most unexpected since all I’d ever heard about William James was how he made belief in God once again a valid rational option or philosophically respectable. This made me assume I was going to hate him. Instead Pierce and James are my new American heroes! So much clearing of the cobwebs here after all those systems builders. Similar to Mark’s comment to the effect of not being able to make himself believe in God even if he tried, that live option loop-hole makes James totally effable.
I am still rejoicing inside and will have to listen to these two episodes again, and add some of their writings to my meager book collection. My pantheon finally includes somebody besides Nietzsche and the Existentialists. Pragmatism, yay.
“Religion is like being in love with a twelve year old girl.” In context this was freaking hilarious. Here’s your predicted hate mail: I’d hate to live in a world without you guys.