James's Will-To-Believe Doctrine: A Heretical View

141 Pages·1987·6.267 MB·English

by  James C. S. Wernham

James's Will-to-Believe Doctrine:
A Heretical View
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James's Will-to-
Believe Doctrine
A Heretical View
JAMES C.S. WERNHAM
Kingston and Montreal
McGill-Queen's University Press
McGill-Queen's University Press 1987
ISBN 0-7735-0567-9
Legal deposit ist quarter 1987
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada
Printed on acid-free paper
This book has been published with the help of a grant
from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities,
using funds provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Wernham, James C.S.
James's will-to-believe doctrine
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7735-0567-9
i. James, William, 1842-1910. 2. Belief and doubt.
I. Title.
8945.123^53 1987 i2i'.6 087-093275-6
Parts of chapters 5 and 11 have been published in a
different form in "Ayer's James," Religious Studies
(Cambridge University Press), September 1976;
"Alexander Bain on Belief," Philosophy (Cambridge
University Press), April 1986; and "Bain's Recantation,'
Journal of the History of Philosophy, January 1986.
To Rosemary
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Pascal's argument, then, comes to this: If there
be a chance that hell exists, I should act as
though it existed; for I must not run a needless
risk of eternal suffering, any more than incur
a certainty of eternal suffering. That may be
granted. But when he proceeds to say that to
act as if a thing existed is the same as to believe
that it exists, and that therefore I must believe
in hell absolutely, the fallacy is obvious.
Leslie Stephen
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Contents
Introduction 3
BEGINNINGS
1 The Nation Affair 11
2 Message from the Mountains 17
3 From Mountaineering to Metaphysics 24
THE WILL TO BELIEVE
4 Forced Options 33
5 Momentous and Intellectually Undecidable
Options 40
6 The Religious Hypothesis 47
7 Belief and Other Things 54
8 Belief and Faith 60
JAMES AND SOME OTHERS
9 Clifford 69
10 Pascal 75
11 Bain 81
12 Renouvier and Pragmatism 87
13 Two Critics 93
Conclusion 101
Notes 107
Bibliography 121
Index 125