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William James and his influences.
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William James and his influences.
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William James in his article, “The Will to Believe” criticized Clifford’s views that suggested that when forming an opinion, one should never go beyond his or her logic. James believes that human reasoning sometimes have to utilize other considerations apart from the available evidence. If our main goal is to have beliefs that are true as opposed to merely avoiding errors, then people should be able to believe without necessarily having to follow the evidence. James applies this to some areas in life, and he comes to discuss his alleged relevance of his view on religious belief in the last section of the article ( 'William James In Focus: Willing To Believe ').
The main thesis of James revolves in his argument that sometimes it is not ethical
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The choice of utilizing any of the two intellectual maxima, if it is not decided in regard to intellectual grounds, it becomes more pronounced ethically. As much as we may constantly take risks in personal lives, a belief that lacks evidence always has a lot of uncertainties some of which may harbor negative consequences in our lives. James does not fully address the question whether the belief should at any time be voluntary. It has always been considered dubious that we may opt to have some beliefs willingly and make the whole conception of James’s will to believe mistaken. However, the pragmatist conception of James seems to create a room for such adoption of beliefs at will. If there exist no contradicting scenarios in our lives, in cases where there is insufficient evidence to the contrary, it is expected that we follow a certain rule of action even if we are unsure of the consequences that may befall us and without the certainty of our course of action. Doubting welcomes experimentation with a hope that our actions will be able to yield the expected and best results in cases where we choose to act without regard to the evidence ( 'William James In Focus: Willing To Believe …show more content…
By pragmatic definition, if people follow the rule of conduct in all cases and circumstances, they would be accepting the will to believe. Consequently, we should all believe that our current conduct and actions have a direct translation to what we expect in future depending on the current situation. In James’s most sustained and longest discussions, he does not fully contest evidence. The truth that is harbored by the religious hypothesis is only a matter of time to decide. Unless a religious belief postulates to yield something different about the world, they all amount to the same belief about actual situations that people encounter in their daily
Clifford’s claims. Clifford believes that everything must be believed only on the basis of sufficient evidence, including belief in God (Feinberg 139). Clark’s issue with this statement, is that Clifford emphasises that adequate evidence is necessary for all beliefs and in every circumstance (Feinberg 139). Personally, I do not think it is necessary to hold every belief to the same standard of evidence because of the existence of faith and the fact that not everything has to be seen to exist. In John 20:29 it says, “Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’” (NIV Bible). In this passage, Jesus is saying that believing without the visual evidence is particularly harder than having the evidence, but more importantly, it is possible and blessed. Additionally, in 2 Corinthians 5:7 it reads, “For we live by faith, not by sight” (NIV Bible). It is important to notice that in this verse it does not say that we only live by faith and not by sight when it comes to belief in God, but instead we can in every area of life. One reason why we live by faith and not by sight or complete evidence is because it is more practical because as humans we have limited knowledge about the vastness of the universe and every individual thing. Furthermore, in conjunction with Clark’s example against Clifford, it would not
It is crucial that every belief must be thoroughly explored and justified to avoid any future repercussions. Clifford provides two examples in which, regardless of the outcome, the party that creates a belief without comprehensive justification ends up at fault. It is possible to apply the situations in The Ethics of Belief to any cases of belief and end up with the conclusion that justification is of utmost importance. Justifying beliefs is so important because even the smallest beliefs affect others in the community, add to the global belief system, and alter the believer moral compass in future decisions.
Unknown, to James at this point he did not realize that he was having a problem with a psychological theory called behaviorism. Now this theory is one that is saying human behavior is developed through learning experiences which in this case would apply to James. His behavior as an adult was reflected by the way he was treated as a kid by his father and mother because they fought all the time. They never truly paid any attention to him, which in terms taught him how to stay out of their way and learn how to steal and burglarize places without getting caught. Therefore, within the psychological theory of behaviorism Behaviorists saw crime as something that is a learned response to life’s situations such as James situation which led him to a life of crime because of his parents. Although, he was never truly mistreated, he did not receive his father attention due to the fact of the way his father was treated as a child growing up an abusive household. Therefore, he did not want to place his son in the same situation. There is also the fact that James could be suffering from the psychodynamic theory which says that a person’s personality can be controlled by their unconscious mental process and that is grounded in them in early childhood. These entire things such as the id, ego, and superego
Rachel Held Evans in “Faith Unraveled” questions every part of her religion, and is not sure how she should be living her life. Evans struggles to fully believe in faith that Christians are supposed to. She has all these questions and doubts, and is looking for answers but struggles to find the answers. Other Christians think what she is doing is unfaithful and she is not a real Christian. She is curious how people who profess Gods’ holy name, but then do not act in a holy way will be judged. Skeptics exist in almost every aspect of life, but when it comes to religion there seems to be a lot more. She struggles to handle some of the questions the skeptics ask and makes her question her religion. Evans also struggles to understand how this
C. Stephen Evans is stating there is a problem with the philosophy of religion having a neutral stance. Evans rejects both fideism as well as neutralism, and believes that by trying to have a, “neutral, disinterested posture,” a person could, “cut themselves off from the possibility of even understanding what religion is all about,” (Evans, 1985 p. 115). Evans notes that the view of faith and reason, by some religious believers think it is an impossibility to have “rational reflection” on religion. After his arguments that disprove many ideas in both fideism and neutralism, he proposes an alternative solution which he has named, “critical dialog”, that he hopes will, “preserve the strengths and eliminate the weaknesses of the initial theories,” (p. 115). “Correct thinking about religion is rather a genuine faith, a personal commitment,” (p. 116).
In Fixation of Belief Charles Sanders Pierce discusses logic, knowledge, reason, and how we come about to believe what is true and others may decide to believe it is not true. According to the question of Peirce wants everybody to understand and to wade their thought and express their feelings that to give them an idea which methods of fixing the people use to make them to beliefs. Peirce also addresses in four methods of fixating belief which is tenacity, authority, a priori and science.
A piece of evidence that he gives is that reason cannot be the motive to moral action; if reason doesn't have the ability to motivate any sort of action, it ultimately cannot motivate moral
In this essay I will consider the objections to Virtue Ethics (VE) raised by Robert Louden in his article entitled On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics which was published in 1984. It is important to note at the outset of this essay that it was not until 1991 that the v-rules came up in literature. So Louden is assuming throughout his article that the only action guidance that VE can give is “Do what the virtuous agent would do in the circumstances.” I will be addressing Louden’s objections with the benefit of knowing about the v-rules. First of all, let us discuss what VE is. VE is a normative ethical theory that emphasises the virtues or moral character, thus it focuses on the moral agent. It differs from Deontology which emphasises duties or rules, and Utilitarianism which emphasises the consequences of our actions.
William Clifford author of the “Ethics of Belief” creates the argument that it is always wrong for anyone to believe anything upon ‘insufficient evidence’. What does Clifford define evidence as and what is sufficient? Clifford’s argument is more scientific. Basing our beliefs off methodical approaches. If we base all our decisions off sufficient and what we declare to be reliable then what do we stand for? We have our own credentials to believe things even if we do not know why. These beliefs could be innate and
William James, a philosopher in the late 18th and early 19th century shared his view on the common misconceptions of pragmatists account for the truth. Although I am only going to reinforce James views on a couple of these, there were in fact eight misunderstandings in his eyes. There is a passage written by James on his thoughts of what he called an automatic sweetheart.
Our belief states are determined by the external factors, for example, perceived complexity and priming ethics is an interesting subject and everyone lives by their thoughts and their ways. Everyone lives by a different code. The difference between morality and ethics is that morality is about primary making the right choices and ethics is proper reasoning. In the essay “The ethics of belief” by W. K. Clifford, he argues that if anything on insufficient evidence, then it’s unethical. In this essay I will remain undecided with what Clifford is trying to say. I agree and disagree with some of his viewpoints. Some I do have to say are unethical and some are reasonable. What Clifford is trying to portray is interesting. Especially since he comes from a religious background. And reading about his new discovery, is quite interesting.
This essay attempts to capitalize on Goldman 's “What is justified belief?” to form an opinion about his ideas. Goldman makes a break from traditional views of knowledge to form a theory of externalism. He gives the reader a new point of view for observing the relationship between knowledge and justification. The following passage will weed out some important aspects of his theory and how they relate to his theory as a whole.
For William James, his perspective on religious experience was skeptical. He divided religion between institutional religion and personal religion. For institutional religion he made reference to the religious group or organization that plays a critical part in the culture of a society. Personal religion he defined as when an individual has a mystical experience which can occur regardless of the culture. James was more focused on the personal religious experience, “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine” (Varieties, 31), and had a sort of distain for organized and institutional religion.
Religion is a fundamental aspect of human life that cannot be ignored even with the advances in science as noted by James stating that “Through prayer, religion insists, things which cannot be realized in any other manner come about: energy which but for prayer would be bound is by prayer set free and operates in some part, be it objective or subjective, of the world of facts” . It is a control mechanism, a defining factor and guide to humans despite the many differences that exist. This is seen in the works of James and Kierkegaard who acknowledge that religion plays an important role in shaping the life people live. The works of William James’ "Varieties of Religious Experience" and that of Soren Kierkegaard "The Sickness Unto Death" are
James was an authoritarian parent. He was controlling, in-charge and no one questioned him. He would play the role of the doting father. When his children made mistakes, he made a point to criticize them. He often compared them to other kids that he felt were “more perfect.” When his often unspoken expectations were not met he would yell and scream striking fear into his entire family. “He’s not a warm, fuzzy kind of guy, and he’s not going to inspire feelings of intimacy. But when his system works, he can boast about one thing: His recruits tend to obey” (Dewar).