William James The Will To Believe Summary

In the essay “The Will to Believe” by William James, the main problem that he is questioning is determinism. The questions and problems he addresses are related to Religion and Epistemology. The questions and problems are related to religion because he ties religion in with his arguments and related to epistemology because he talks about justifying belief. The questions and problems are also related to Epistemology because the arguments are about belief and knowledge. William James used perspectives of reality in this selection by perception of truth and religion. First, William James has preliminaries that puts any option, “the decision between two hypotheses”, into three different categories. The first category is the living or dead category. The living option is when both hypotheses are are appealing or “alive”. The dead option is when neither hypothesis appeals to you. The next category is the forced or avoidable options. A forced option is when your choice isn't avoidable, you have to choose an option. However, the avoidable option is you can avoid the choice. For example, you can go outside to play with your friends or you can go outside and play by yourself. You …show more content…
He explains that our “non-intellectual nature does influence our convictions” (James 4). Passional tendencies and power's of using free will run before and after belief. Pascal's argument isn't wrong but is the last argument we need to believe in things like church masses and holy water. William James states his thesis which is “Our Passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds” (James 4). This means whenever we have an option that is genuine that can't be decided on intelligent grounds, our passional nature has to make a