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The Obligation to Believe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Alan Brinton
Alan Brinton
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Boise State University
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Extract

Do we ever have an obligation to choose to hold beliefs, religious or otherwise? The relations between belief, volition and moral responsibility are the subject of William James' widely discussed essay ‘The Will to Believe’. James first takes up the relationship between volition and belief: Does it make sense to speak of choosing to believe a proposition? His answer is that it does, in the sense that we can choose to act in ways which encourage the production of a believing attitude in ourself. For example, we can be selective in attending to evidence, and we can incline ourselves toward belief by acting as though we already believe. By avoiding certain influences and subjecting ourself to others, we can encourage the development of belief. In so doing, we in effect treat ourself as a third person, and our behaviour is analogous to what we might engage in when encouraging others toward favourable evidence. The question of moral responsibility then becomes appropriate in our own case in a way analogous to that in which it does with respect to our belief-producing actions toward others. Just as the deception of others raises moral questions, so does the deception of ourselves.

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Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 01 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

page 1 note 1 James, William, ‘The Will to Believe’, Essays in Pragmatism, ed. Castell, Alburey (New York: Hafner Press, 1948).Google Scholar The doctrine appears frequently in James' other works. See, for example, ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’, ‘The Dilemma of Determinism’, ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life’, and the ‘Conclusions’ and ‘Postscript’ from Varieties of Religious Experience, all anthologized in Essays in Pragmatism; also see A Pluralistic Universe (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1967), pp. 328–31Google Scholar; The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1950), vol. 1, pp. 311–22Google Scholar; Some Problems of Philosophy (New York: Longman's Green, 1948)Google Scholar, Appendix. For recent helpful discussions of James' doctrine, see Dooley, Patrick K., ‘The Nature of Belief: the Proper Context for James' “The Will to Believe”,’ Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society 8, no. 3 (Summer 1972), 141–51Google Scholar; Johanson, Arnold E., ‘“The Will to Believe” and the Ethics of Belief’, Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society 11, no. 2 (Spring 1975), 110–27Google Scholar; Kauber, Peter and Hare, Peter H., ‘The Right and Duty to Will to Believe’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4, no. 2 (December 1974), 327–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Macleod, William, ‘James’ “Will to Believe” Revisited', Personalist 48, no. 2 (April 1967), 149–66.Google Scholar Kauber and Hare consider the question of obligation and offer a general line of argument which involves considerations of the same sort as appealed to in arguments (3) and (4) in part III of this paper.

page 1 note 2 The notion of self-deception raises certain conceptual problems which are relevant to this discussion but will not be taken up in this essay. There is a significant by of literature dealing with these difficulties; see, for example, Daniels, Charles B., ‘Self-Deception and Interpersonal Deception’, Personalist 55, no. 3 (Summer 1974), 244–52Google Scholar; Fingarette, Herbert, Self-Deception (New York: Basic Books, 1969)Google Scholar; Szabados, Bela, ‘Self-Deception’, Canadian journal of Philosophy 4, no. 1 (September 1974), 44–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 2 note 1 Clifford, W. K., Lectures and Essays (London: Macmillan, 1879), vol. 2, p. 186.Google Scholar

page 2 note 2 ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’, p. 35.Google Scholar

page 3 note 1 Augustine, , Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, trans. Shaw, J. F., ed. Henry Paolucci (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961), chap. 20; see also chaps. 9–59 and 21–3.Google Scholar

page 3 note 2 Hick, John, Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed., rev. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 55–6.Google Scholar

page 4 note 1 Rom. I: 18–20, New English Bible.Google Scholar

page 4 note 2 Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Battles, Ford Lewis, ed. John T. McNeill, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), vol. I, bk. I, chaps. 3–5.Google Scholar

page 5 note 1 Institutes, chap. 8; Aquinas, , On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, trans. Pegis, Anton C. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Image Books, 1955), chap. 6.Google Scholar

page 6 note 1 ‘The Will to Believe’, pp. 105–6.Google Scholar

page 6 note 2 ‘What Pragmatism Means’, Essays in Pragmatism, p. 144.Google Scholar

page 6 note 3 See section I of ‘The Will to Believe’.

page 8 note 1 ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’, p. 27.Google Scholar

page 9 note 1 On the value issue see ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life’, ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’, pp. 31–6 and ‘The Will to Believe’, pp. 103–4. On the question of free will see ‘The Dilemma of Determinism’.Google Scholar