uh this is video 5g and in this video i want to take up uh william james pragmatic justification of theism now in the last video we went through william clifford's famous ship owners case and remember clifford very strong claim it's always wrong no exceptions to believe something upon insufficient evidence you don't have sufficient evidence for your belief then it's wrong to hold that belief whether it's a significant belief or a trivial belief we went through that now james's pragmatic justification of theism could be seen as a reaction or a response to clifford's position now on your pr two notes on page two first thing i wanna mention is something rose says that's very very important a row says this according to james there are two and only two things that determine your belief he calls them determinants of our beliefs what are these two things that can determine your belief well first thing is reason okay the second thing is the passions now see james thought that there were two sides to human nature there was an intellectual side and that's the side where reason determines your belief but on the other hand there's a non-intellectual side and that's where the passions can determine your belief the passions are all those non-intellectual elements such as your wants your needs your desires your volitions by volitions i mean your your your acts of the will acts of the will so rose says reason ways of belief in terms of the evidence for the belief or against the belief and directs us to believe in accordance with the with the evidence the passions on the other hand are all the factors other than intellectual because remember the passions are on the non-intellectual side of human nature the patients are all the factors other than intellectual that lead us to accept or to reject a hypothesis the passions would include our wants needs desires and volitions okay so keep that in your mind there are two and only two things that ultimately determine your belief reason on the one hand and passions on the other hand now that said what does roe point out on page 97 he says we can divide clifford's view he's going back to clifford we can divide clifford's view or clifford's position into two rules governing our beliefs and what's see what's interesting about this is that james will agree with clifford's first rule but he will profoundly disagree with clifford's second rule well what does roe think clifford's first rule is take a look at it number one if an individual is aware of evidence against a hypothesis in other words evidence that does not support a hypothesis and an individual is aware of no good reason in support of the hypothesis and nevertheless allows himself to believe it because of some prior satisfaction he has done a wrong now that's kind of an abstract statement so i think if i plug in an example it might help you to understand what uh row is saying clifford's first rule is what would be an example well um take a person who is a is extremely loyal to their team and let's say it's a basketball team and in the last three years this basketball team has lost 90 games they have won no games so there are zero and 90 for the last three years each year they went zero and 30. okay no wins 30 losses so um what does this individual believe let's say this individual believes but hey you know next year they're going 30-0 they're going to win 30 games and lose no games and someone says do they have the same players yes they have the same players are they going to be playing the same teams yes are the have those other teams gotten better yes okay and this guy still what believes that his team is going to go 30-0 next year so here's an individual he's aware of evidence against this hypoth what's his hypothesis that his team is going to win 30 games next year having lost 90 games the last three years with the same players and the other teams have gotten better and his team has the same players let's plug that in as an assumption also so he's aware of evidence against his belief against this hypothesis and he's not aware of any good reasons reason to support it and yet he allows himself to believe it believe what that his team's going to win 30 games next year because of some prior satisfaction some prior satisfaction i think real means something having to do with the passions this guy you know he just i i like all those players i want them to win i need them to win see wants and needs that's those are the passions working or operating there so what's clifford's first rule if that individual is aware of all that evidence against his belief and he has no good reason to believe that his belief is true and yet he allows himself to believe it because of some prior satisfaction some prior satisfaction meaning he needs to believe he wants to believe he loves the players etc he has done it wrong would william james agree with clifford's assessment in that example that i gave absolutely so he agrees with clifford's first rule it's clifford's second rule that james takes issue with what is clifford's second rule number two if an individual has no evidence for belief i think by no evidence he means has no sufficient evidence for a belief and no sufficient evidence against the belief so you're in a situation where rosa's reason is neutral by neutral it means you have no sufficient evidence to support the belief and no sufficient evidence against the belief okay so your reason is neutral it's kind of in a limbo state it's not tilting towards the truth of the belief or tilting towards the falsity of the belief so if an individual has no sufficient evidence for a belief and no sufficient evidence against the belief it's wrong for him to accept or reject a belief in other words he should remain neutral his reason should remain neutral okay his duty is to suspend judgment on the matter and wait for the evidence you know wait for to use an expression that james uses to wait for more light more light when he's you'll see a quote where he says that uh more light means more evidence right now um what's the next point that rose says clifford's rule one covers the case in which reason says no to a belief but we allow our passions to overrule our reason the guy wanted to believe that his team was going to go 30-0 next year but rule two covers a case in which reason is neutral but instead of suspending judgment we allow our passions to direct our belief in both cases reason has been sacrificed to the passions and such sacrifice according to clifford is wrong in other words in that rule two in rule two if you have no sufficient evidence in favor of your belief and no sufficient evidence against your belief you're supposed to remain neutral well can i let my passions take up no clifford says no you can't you have to remain agnostic with regards to the belief i mean you don't know if it's true and you don't know what's full and you you you have to remain in that limbo state and that's where james comes in and says whoa back up i don't agree with you clifford on your second rule so um what does rose say james agrees with clifford on the first case but disagrees profoundly on the second rather he holds there are special cases and see religion is going to be this special case there are special cases in which reason is neutral and yet it is not wrong for us to believe as our passions direct by reason being neutral as i said james means there's no sufficient evidence for a belief no sufficient evidence against the belief rowe notes that according to james religious belief is a special case where the passions will rightly direct us to believe the pack okay so remember what what what kind of a case is james calling a special case where reason cannot decide whether the hypothesis is true or false because reason does not have sufficient evidence in favor of the belief and reason does not have sufficient evidence against the belief so where reason is neutral am i allowed to let my passions determine my belief and james is going to say yes but there's one further condition we have to be talking about what he calls a genuine option or a genuine decision so look at that quotation from page 98 when and only when a hypothesis meets two conditions what are the two conditions it has to be intellectually undecidable intellectually undecidable means reason is neutral no sufficient evidence for the belief no sufficient evidence against a belief reason cannot decide so it has to be has to be a situation uh where the belief or the hypothesis is intellectually undecidable and secondly such that it presents us with a genuine option so reason has to be neutral and we have to be confronted with a genuine option we're going to define what a genuine option is in a minute when you have those two conditions met it is not wrong to believe as we wish okay concerning the hypothesis it's not wrong to let our passions decide at this point you know clifford's ready to choke himself right he just doesn't buy this all right you never you're never allowed to believe anything upon insufficient evidence and james is saying hey look there are some special cases where reason is neutral where the issue is intellectually undecidable and we're confronted with a genuine option in a situation like that when those two conditions are met passions can take over and determine your belief that's james's position so i say when these two conditions are met we can permit or allow our passional nature to decide the issue of god's existence or non-existence so for james it will turn out this is an important point i can believe in god and i'm perfectly justified in believing god if i really want or will myself to believe the the title of james's famous essay is the will to believe right willing yourself to believe are you allowed to do that when you have those two conditions met yes you're allowed to do that so for james it will turn out that i can believe in god and i'm perfectly justified in doing so if i really want or will myself to believe in that case my belief in god would be rooted in my passional nature in my wants needs desires and volitions okay i hope everybody see how james and clifford differ here james agrees with clifford's first rule but profoundly disagrees with his second rule now um next as regards the first condition of the first condition means the issue has to be until the belief has to be intellectually undecidable reason has to be neutral roe thinks that for many theists the existence of god is not intellectually undecidable they think there are not only good arguments for the existence of god but the facts of religious experiences also provide adequate or sufficient evidence for god's existence on the other hand there are atheists who think that the fact of evil in the world we're going to take up the problem of evil in weak sex provide adequate evidence for the view that the theistic god uh does not exist so remember james is is is talking only about a situation where the belief is intellectually undecidable right so roe thinks that james's position is not implausible or are there people out there for whom the existence of god is something that reason cannot decide sure there are people out there like that i mean i've met them okay we call them agnostics right the truth of the matter may well be that our rational intellects are incapable of deciding the issue of god's uh question of the existence of the theistic god either because there's no good evidence on either side of the question or because what evidence there is is on one side is equally balanced by equally good evidence on the other side okay so he doesn't row thinks that james is stating a pretty plausible position are there people for whom on the god question that reason is neutral they they've looked over all the arguments for and against god's existence and they basically say hey there's good evidence on both sides and their reason doesn't tilt in one way or the other and for those agnostics i mean james has a has a solution for them let your passionate nature take over if you want to believe in god go ahead and believe in god if you need to believe in god go ahead to believe in god if you want to believe in god you need to believe in god you will yourself to believe in god you have a perfect right to believe in god you're perfectly justified that's the essence of james's position so if rational inquiry cannot decide the issue of god's existence or non-existence clifford thinks it's our duty to be agnostic james disagrees he thinks we can decide the issue of god's existence as long as we're confronted with or presented with a genuine option now this is real important what does james mean by a genuine option an option for him is like you have to make a choice you have to make a decision and the the option has to have three characteristics it has to be living it has to be forced and it has to be momentous now i'm going to give you an analysis of james's position here that's based on my little book but you want to continue to read what row says okay because uh some of his examples are not the same as mine and he you know he goes into matters in a bit more detail but i'm trying to give you here maybe a shorter succinct account of james's position and i say it's first necessary to define our terms he talks about a passionate nature deciding an issue for us when our theoretical intellect when reason has failed let's say by insufficient evidence and such a decision is concerned only with a genuine option now now what's an option for james terminology here is important an option is simply a decision between two hypotheses i mean keeps using the word hypotheses if it's easier for you to just say the decision between two alternatives right you know plug in alternatives for hypotheses and it's it's going to probably ring easier in your mind okay genuine option as we said is one that's living force and momentous now what do we mean by a live hypothesis a live alternative right he says it's one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed and i said well you mean by real possibility by real possibility james means that the hypothesis in question has some appeal or interest to the person who's considering it so a live hypothesis has to be something you that you find interesting interesting or appealing so live means interesting or appealing has to be interesting or appealing to you and so a live option would be a decision between two live hypotheses in other words both alternatives that you're trying to decide between have to interest you have to have some appeal to you and this is important he says what's a a live option for you might be a dead option for me okay um these are james's examples if i ask you to believe in muhammad uh such a hypothesis may generate little or no interest unless you were from the muslim world unless you're brought up in muslim culture on the other hand if i ask you to believe in christ and you've been reared in western culture right you may find this hypothesis very appealing so james thus believes that for most persons reared in the west in other words you're brought up in the western culture be a theosophist or be a is a dead option a theosophist just means someone who has like like a mystical uh some kind of mystical wisdom about god right so be a theosophist or be a muhammad it might be a dead option if you're reared in the west whereas being agnostic or be a christian would be a live option if you were reared in the west so what is a live option for one person could be a dead option for another now uh you know uh well i'll get to the point i was gonna make it next time the question's gonna be is the decision to believe in god or not believe in god uh is that is that a live option is that a living option uh but we'll get i'll get to that on the next page how about a forced option remember a genuine option has to be living forced and momentous now forced option i say refers to a decision between two hypotheses where the very decision is is unavoidable you can't avoid the decision so here's a example if i have the choice between using a a pen with a red ink and and using a pen with blue ink could you avoid that choice well if you had a bunch of other multi pens of different colors you could avoid that choice so i say i can clearly avoid the choice by using a pen with black ink so the choice between using a pen with red ink and using a pen with blue ink could be avoided by choosing a pen with black ink right so that's not a forced decision there that's one that's avoidable okay or if you have the choice between loving somebody or hating them that's not a forced choice you can avoid that choice just be indifferent to them you know indifference isn't loving them and indifferences and hating them it's just being indifferent to them right so the choice between loving and hating somebody that's that's not a forced option either okay but what would be a forced option i hope this example helps if i'm told that i have cancer i've got a life-threatening tumor you know and hey look man the only way you're going to survive is by having surgery to remove the tumor if you don't have surgery to remove the tumor you're a dead man right suppose i'm confronted with so what's the choice the choices between surgery or no surgery surgery got a good chance of living no surgery you're going to die well there's no third alternative there right that's a forced decision so i say if i'm told that i have a life-threatening tumor and then my choice is either to have surgery or not then i cannot escape i cannot avoid deciding between these two alternatives such a decision is forced or unavoidable okay we got two of them there now a genuine option has to be living and it has to be forced and thirdly james says it has to be momentous how do we define a momentous option well it's a decision between two alternatives both of which have important consequences uh for your life so i mean you know it could could it be could it be forced and momentous at the same time sure but momentous brings out the aspect of having important consequences for your your life suppose you've been invited to be part of a team of individuals who will explore the moon a second time the decision to set to accept such an invitation would indeed be momentous why because here's an opportunity to prove your worth as an astronaut right being part of a space flight to the moon could have important consequences for your career and then let's say you say well no i don't want to be in it i don't want to go to the moon i don't want to accept the infantry well that could have important consequences for your life i mean my negative consequences from from a career standpoint all right so a decision is momentous if it yields important consequences for your life so what's a genuine option one that's living forced and momentous now the the big question is going to be is a decision to believe in the religious hypothesis a genuine option if it's a case where the matter is intellectually undecidable all right remember that we're talking here about a case where reason is neutral so we first have to know what james how james talks about the religious hypothesis he says that the religious hypothesis has two parts or two branches and unfortunately he uses what's the first part of the first branch i mean the language here is not real clear he says the best things are the more eternal things and you say to yourself my god what does that mean secondly he says we're better off even now he seems to be saying we're better off now and even later right so why would he say even now unless he meant we're better off now and later if we believe the first affirmation to be true in other words if you believe that the best things are the eternal things now most philosophers commentators on james think that by the first part of the religious hypothesis he's just trying to say god exists the second part he's trying to say we're better off even now if we believe that god exists right so the first part of the hype take the first half part of the hypothesis as simply the affirmative statement that god exists and the second part of the religious hypothesis we're better off even now if we believe that god exists now i would have to say that there is a a difference between my interpretation and rose interpretation of the second part of the religious hypothesis right and i think you know by now i have enormous respect for dr rowe and it's not exactly that i'm totally disagreeing with him i just think that the emphasis he he puts too much emphasis on on something uh but let me explain what i'm saying here in this next paragraph i say it's important to note that there's a difference between rose interpretation of the second branch of the religious hypothesis and my own roe thinks that by better off you know you're better off if you believe that god exists by better off james is thinking of the vital good james talks about james says if you believe in god there are certain vital goods that come about because of your belief in god roe thinks that by being better off james is thinking of the vital good he says we acquire if we believe that the first part of the religious hypothesis is true on rose interpretation the vital good would refer to things like eternal life divine grace and other blessings well so he puts the vital good is made up of those things right for roe so if you believe in god you know there's at least the potential for eternal life a divine grace and other blessings from god yeah okay my own interpretation of vital good is somewhat different james was a psychologist remember as well as a philosopher okay i would place the primary emphasis on the psychological benefits that are secured if we believe that god exists in other words you're going to be better off psychologically if you believe in the first part of the religious hypothesis if you believe in god you're going to be better off psychologically that's what he's trying to say in my view so i would place the primary emphasis upon psychological benefits that come about if you believe in god and there's this philosopher down at delaware jeff jordan and he has an entry in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy same for an encyclopedia of philosophy tries to analyze every single concept or term that philosophers ever use and don't think it's like an ordinary dictionary because it isn't i mean an entry in the stanford encyclopedia of velocity could go 15 or 20 pages more like a huge essay okay a huge essay right but in his entry in the sep scp stanford encyclopedia philosophy entitled pragmatic arguments and belief in god jeff points out that in james's other work the varieties of religious experience he suggests that religious belief produces certain psychological benefits and what are they an assurance of safety and a temper of peace and in relation to others a preponderance of loving affections so how do i put that what are the psychological benefits that james is referring to there in short believing in god will yield the vital goods of feeling psychologically secure you feel psychologically safe if you believe in god you're at peace with yourself all right and you have a greater tendency to love what love other people those are psychological benefits that come about if you believe in god so on the one hand roe thinks the vital goods are things like eternal life uh divine blessings excuse me uh divine grace and other blessings so he he puts the emphasis on that i would say i would want to place the primary emphasis on the psychological benefits that come from believing in god and i would appeal to passages like the one that jeff jordan states in james's work the varieties of religious experience so i'm not categorically rejecting rose interpretation of vital good i'm simply saying that the primary emphasis should be on the psychological benefits that are secured if you believe in the first part of the religious hypothesis okay all right now so there's that point now why is the decision to believe or not believe in the religious hypothesis a genuine option why is it living forced and momentous now this is really where the rubber meets the road this is really important i say in my little book the decision to believe or not believe in the religious hypothesis is a genuine option one that is living forced and momentous it's a living option because the issue of god's existence or non-existence has some appeal or interest now you want to stop there and you guys when you're doing it you got to think about this is the decision really is it really does it interest everybody and my own view would be it interests a lot of people i don't believe it interests everyone i have known agnostics who you know say i don't have sufficient evidence for god's existence i don't have sufficient evidence for god's non-existence is the god question something that really affects my life one way or the other no i'm not really interested you're going to meet people who are simply uninterested in the question of whether or not god exists so i don't know if what james is so saying is universally true or whether it applies to all people that's that's the point i'm trying to make there now why does he think it's a forced option you know unavoidable like the surgery no surgery decision that we mentioned earlier um well this is a very very famous line i quoted from james it's a forced option since we cannot escape the issue of remaining skeptical and waiting for more light waiting for more light means waiting for more evidence see you were talking about a case where that's intellectually undecidable and reason can't decide right so he says we can't escape the issue of remaining skeptical agnostic let's say and waiting for more light waiting for more evidence because although we avoid error in that way if religion is untrue if religion is untrue you do avoid error but we lose the good if religion is true if religion is true we lose the good the good means the vital good right just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve so he's putting atheists and agnostics in the same boat if religion is true they miss out on what they miss out on the benefits they miss out on the on the peace of mind the psychological security the tendency to love other people they miss out on those benefits okay if they're just remaining agnostic or and the atheist is in the same boat because the atheist positively chooses to disbelieve in god well he loses that on the benefits too so what are the atheists and the agnostics have in common they lose that on the benefits right if religion is true james presumably thinks that by believing in god we attain a certain happiness or peace in this life we which we would not obtain if we remain atheistic or agnostic thus the religious option is also momentous in other words it has important consequences for your life you gain a certain good or goods if you believe you lose those goods if you don't believe just like you would gain an opportunity to advance your career if you accept the invitation to be an astronaut and go to mars and you would lose that opportunity you would lose that benefit right if you decided no i don't want to i don't want to accept the invitation i don't want to go to the moon i could have a negative impact on your career we said that before so we gain a certain good if we believe we lose this good if we refrain from believing note this is an important note roe claims that james does not prove that the option between believing that god exists and believing he does not exist is either momentous or forced i had an issue with whether it was a living option right because i i said i don't think it universally interests everyone uh but now roe doesn't think that james has shown that the religious option is either forced or momentous all the that he succeeds in proving is that it is momentous or forced if it's true that god exists if religion is true okay so that that's one of rose criticism and you want to read uh rose criticisms uh especially on what he says on page 102 right just don't limit the discussion uh to why i say okay but at any rate james thinks that the decision to believe in god's existence or not believe in god's existence is a genuine option uh and an option that is living force and momentous right there are problems there but you know that that's his position why then decide in favor of the religious hypothesis even if you're agnostic for this it just goes back to the benefits for the simple reason that it offers more psychological benefits even now than any alternative hypothesis better to be at peace with oneself right now have that psychological security in short we gain a certain good by believing that you forfeit by not believing okay um that's the essence of james's position but read dr rose analysis his critical analysis also right i've tried to give you a more succinct account than he does so that you could see kind of the big picture in an easier way now are there other criticisms of james position that we should mention yeah i mentioned two in my book one of the most popular criticisms is that people think that his pragmatic theory of just a pragmatic justification of theism is based upon a theory of truth and they think that james's theory of truth um is false okay so i'd say a more popular criticism of james's pragmatic justification of theism consists in the attempt to undermine his theory of truth so if his definition of truth is problematic then so is his justification of belief in god now what does he say a true belief or a true idea is he said it's one that works okay james believes that a true idea or belief is one that is useful namely one that works or has satisfactory consequences for your life so truth is defined in terms of utility usefulness of the belief and a useful belief is one that works where that has satisfactory consequences for your life if you believe it okay many of our ideas and beliefs are useful however without being true all right see that's the criticism you can't equate useful beliefs with true beliefs that's the problem with this theory of truth that's the popular criticism what's a simple example here james has claimed that because the religious hypothesis works satisfactory satisfactorily in the sense that by believing we gain a certain vital good it must be true is open to the charge that a hypothesis can work satisfactorily can be useful and yet it can be false and i bring up the this is kind of an old chestnut example but for centuries people believed that the earth was the center of the universe did that belief work for people yeah it was useful it had satisfactory consequences for their life but it was false okay so useful beliefs are not necessarily useful beliefs are not necessarily true beliefs that's the most popular criticism that his pragmatic justification of theory of theism is based upon his definition of truth and his definition of truth is problematic okay now a second uh and related criticism is one that you find in philosophers like bertrand russell bertrand russell you know is commonly thought to be possibly great britain's greatest philosopher of the 20th century okay um and uh in a in different of many of his writings especially in her writing one of his books i think it was published in 1909 i believe or 1912 somewhere around there a simple a little book called the problems of philosophy he has an entire chapter on truth which is which is marvelous if you ever get a chance to read that okay and in that chapter he advocates a theory of truth which is commonly referred to as the correspondence theory of truth and many many people believe in the correspondence theory of truth i cannot think of a philosopher in the 20th century more critical of james's concept of truth than bertrand russell bertrand russell just could not stomach the idea that a true idea or belief was a useful belief one that had satisfactory consequences for your life he thought that was a terrible definition of truth so i say bertrand russell himself advocates the correspondence theory of truth according to which a belief is true iff if and only if the belief corresponds to some fact external to the belief gives two examples in the problems of philosophy which i quoted in my book so i say to use two of russell's examples the belief that charles the first died on the scaffold that belief why is it true it's true because it happened it's true because of the corresponding historical fact it's the historical fact that makes that belief true not the fact that it may be useful or okay it's a historical fact that makes it true or the belief in shakespeare's otello that desdemona loves cassio is a false belief because she really loves othello according to russell then if the belief in god is a true belief then it cannot be because it works for us or is useful or produces some kind of psychological benefits all right but because there is a corresponding fact namely the actual existence of god see according to the correspondence theory facts external to beliefs make beliefs true facts are the truth-makers of beliefs okay russell himself believes there is no evidence when he says no i say no it means no sufficient evidence that demonstrates the fact of god's existence so russell was not a theist there's some debate about whether he was agnostic or atheist some people put him in one camp some people put him in another camp i tend to put him in more in the agnostic camp but his basic position on this what we're talking about here is that a true belief is not true because it is useful or has satisfactory consequences for your life or that it yields certain psychological benefits okay a belief is true if and only if it corresponds to of some fact that's external to the belief facts make beliefs true not the usefulness of the belief last point william clifford would no doubt side with bertrand russell i think that's abundantly clear i have really gone way over on this video but i really wanted this was parts of this were not easy so i wanted to spend more time on it so take care see you later