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Practical considerations and evidence in James's permission to believe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2014

DAVID M. HOLLEY
DAVID M. HOLLEY*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Religion, The University of Southern Mississippi, 118 College Drive # 5015, Hattiesburg, Mississippi 39406, USA e-mail: d.holley@usm.edu
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Abstract

Philosophers often read ‘The will to believe’ as defending the substitution of non-epistemic reasons for inadequate epistemic reasons. I contend that a more charitable reading of James's argument is to understand him as proposing a contextualist account of the kind of evidence needed for responsible believing. On my reading, James claims that evidential support that might be insufficient in a purely theoretical context may be good enough when there is a pressing need to decide on a course of action.

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Type
Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 21 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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