The will to believe (From The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy).
@inproceedings{James2000TheWT, title={The will to believe (From The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy).}, author={William Closson James}, year={2000} }
Preface 1. The will to believe 2. Is life worth living 3. The sentiment of rationality 4. Reflex action and theism 5. The dilemma of determinism 6. The moral philosopher and the moral life 7. Great men and their environment 8. The importance of individuals 9. On some Hegelisms 10. What psychical research has accomplished Index.
404 Citations
The Passional Nature and the Will to Believe
- Philosophy
- 2016
A number of philosophers have called into question the wishful thinking reading of “The Will to Believe.” According to them, William James is not encouraging us to will what we want to believe;…
Practical considerations and evidence in James's permission to believe
- PhilosophyReligious Studies
- 2014
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…
A moral reason to be a mere theist: improving the practical argument
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- 2016
This paper is an attempt to improve the practical argument for beliefs in God. Some theists, most famously Kant and William James, called our attention to a particular set of beliefs, the…
On A Reductionist Analysis of William James's Philosophy of Religion
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- 2000
William James undertook to steer his way between a rationalistic system that was not empirical enough and an empirical system so materialistic that it could not account for the value commitments on…
The Rationality of Belief and Some Other Propositional Attitudes
- Philosophy
- 2002
In this paper, I explore the question of whether the expectedconsequences of holding a belief can affect the rationality ofdoing so. Special attention is given to various ways in whichone might…
William James and the Will to Alieve
- Philosophy, Art
- 2020
William James’ “The Will to Believe” (1896/1979) continues to attract scholarly attention. This might seem surprising since James’ central claim—that one may justifiably believe p despite having…
Determinism, Possibility, and Ethics
- PsychologyJournal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
- 1986
This essay reexamines the age-old “determinism-free will” problem from a psychoanalytic perspective. The first section recapitulates the author's (1985) earlier argument on the nature of causation in…
Philosophy, Interpretation and The Golden Bowl
- ArtRoyal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series
- 1983
In the first part of this lecture I aim to characterize the moral dimensions of Henry James's novel The Golden Bowl; in the second part, and for the purposes of comparison with my interpretation as…
William James's "The Will to Believe" and the Ethics of Self-experimentation
- Philosophy, Psychology
- 2006
William James's "The Will to Believe" has been criticized for offering untenable arguments in support of belief in unvalidated hypotheses. Although James is no longer accused of suggesting we can…
Epistemic Sensitivity and the Alogical: William James, Psychical Research, and the Radical Empiricist Attitude
- Art
- 2014
in his masterful introduction to Essays in Psychical Research, Robert McDermott observes that 1896 was a significant year for William James. He writes of James as a “weaver of intellectual and…