The will to believe

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1. guerrillaJul 2023
   You're looking for pragmatism. Look up William James' Will to Believe.
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2. filoelevenJun 2022
   The essay to read is “The Will To Believe” from William James.

   This is where the term “leap of faith” was coined. That illustration shows that, at least where self-confidence is concerned, belief in one’s own capabilities can greatly influence the outcome. Do not read this as a rebuttal to your last point; it’s a nuance, and may be limited to one’s own self-conception.

   That essay also discusses the circumstances where it makes sense to respect non-rational[1] beliefs:

   > Genuine option – "we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind"[0]

   All of those terms are precisely defined in the essay, and the Wikipedia article has a decent lightning summary. The point is, when you are faced with coming up with a personal philosophy or set of guiding principles, you are forced to figure it out, and science is not (yet or possibly ever) capable of providing answers to those questions for most people.

   [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Believe#Sections...

   [1] I prefer the term “non-rational” here because “irrational” has connotations of “going against rational thought” whereas “non-rational” implies “areas which are not covered by rational thought.”

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3. filoelevenJun 2021
   I think anyone interested in religion (whether following one, debating them, or studying them) will find William James’s lecture The Will To Believe worthwhile. Here’s an excerpt from a synopsis[0], the full text is also freely available[1].

   > James argues that we may be justified in adopting a belief even if we don't have enough prior evidence in support of it, and in some cases, 1) we may only have access to supporting evidence only after we have adopted the belief, or 2) our adoption of the belief may make the belief true. For James, religious beliefs are paradigm examples of such beliefs.

   This essay is responsible for the term “leap of faith,” where one’s ability to follow through with something depends upon their belief that they are able to. This is applicable to part of the scientific process as well: following an insight is what gives rise to hypotheses.

   [0] https://godandgoodlife.nd.edu/digital-essays/the-will-to-bel...

   [1] https://arquivo.pt/wayback/20090714151749/http://falcon.jmu....

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4. bradezoneAug 2015
   The Will to Believe, by William James
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5. svntOct 2026
   I can’t seem to reply to your comment deeper in the chain.

   Starbuck collected data and William James turned the data into a compelling book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. Varieties draws on Starbuck's questionnaire data and names him dozens of times. Some of James’ main arguments were:

   1) Against "medical materialism": a belief's origins don't settle its value. If Paul's vision is discredited by its physiology, so is the materialist's own conviction.

   2) Mystical states: they carry authority for those who have them but don't bind others. Still, they break ordinary rational consciousness's claim to be the only authoritative kind. The sheer numbers of these, and the intact they have on healthy peoples’ lives, make it hard to argue rationally on an empirical basis that there is nothing there.

   3) Structurally the conscious self is continuous with a "wider self" through which religious experiences come, which James calls the "more."

   4) "The Will to Believe" (1896): Clifford's rule against believing on insufficient evidence is itself a personal preference, choosing to avoid error over gaining truth.

   Following on that: your desire to be a reliable producer of material goods outweighs your desire to understand things that require you to take risks in assuming potentially false viewpoints. This is not common sense (whatever that means), it is an epistemological choice that seems common to you because of your educational and professional environment.

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6. keyboredApr 2024
   The most value I’ve gotten from philosophy is the discovery of “anti-philosophy”. Or rather analytically countering thoughts and ideas that are not fruitful. Maybe Quietism?

   The mind constantly makes philosophy. Kind of. Or mine does. Why this, why that. What if this and that. Sometimes it is useful to just let the thoughts be. Sometimes to more analytically counter it: this is not worth neither worrying about nor philosophizing about because A, B, C.

   See for example William James and his counter-arguments to philosophers (according to him) who worries about “Angels balancing on a needle’s pin” (Pragmatism).

   I’ve also incorporated William James thoughts on religion to reconcile my atheism with my spiritual/religious beliefs (The Will to Believe). He says something like: if you believe, what are the upsides, what are the downsides? You might not be able to prove it scientifically, but is that necessary? How I’ve applied it: if I believe in religion X and I find out before I die that it was not true, have I wasted my time? (This is more about praxis than theory.) This is counter to a lot of theists and atheists who mix religion too much with identity. I.e. I am rational therefore I ought to not believe. To be concrete: if I practiced Buddhist meditation for five years and found out that Buddhism is not true,[1] will it have been for nothing? Probably not because the benefits of meditation are well-documented at this point.

   ---

   The most fascinating philosophy is the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy that rigorously analyzes things in order to ultimately arrive at conclusion that sort of says that most of metaphysics are ineffable to the analytic mind. Because you might need the process of analysis in order to arrive at that non-answer. Maybe that was something that Wittgenstein did in his first book?

   [1] https://www.amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlighte...

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