One might object that James has at best shown only that theistic belief is momentous if
God exists. If God does not exist, and, as a consequence, the vital good of eternal life
does not obtain, then no vital good is at stake. To answer this objection a Jamesian might
focus on what James calls the second affirmation of religion—we are better off even now
if we believe—and take that affirmation to include positive benefits that are available, via
pro-belief, even if God does not exist. In the context of the Western religious tradition,
the second affirmation is expressed, in part, by propositions (8) and (10).
Given that theism is intellectually open and that it's part of a genuine option, and given
that there are vital goods attached to theistic belief, James says, the hope that it is true is a
sufficient reason to believe.
A common complaint about James's argument is that it presupposes doxastic voluntarism.
Doxastic voluntarism is the thesis that persons can acquire beliefs at will, that persons
have direct control over their beliefs. Perhaps the most prominent objection along these
lines is due to Bernard Williams (1972), who argues, in effect, that it's not possible to
both believe that p and to know that p is false. But if doxastic voluntarism were true, that
would be possible. Williams's argument may present a problem for doxastic voluntarism,
but it does not present one for James. For one thing, James's proposal is operative only
when the evidence is inconclusive, and is not operative in the face of conclusive adverse
evidence. James
end p.182
does not countenance believing when the evidence is clear that the hypothesis is less
likely than not. For another thing, James's talk of believing this or that hypothesis can be
replaced with talk of accepting this or that hypothesis. And whether belief is under our
control or not, acceptance surely is.
Another objection commonly leveled against James's argument is that “it constitutes an
unrestricted license for wishful thinkingif our aim is to believe what is true, and not
necessarily what we like, James's universal permissiveness will not help us” (Hick 1990,
60). That is, hoping that a proposition is true is no reason to think that it is. This objection
is false and unfair. As we have noted, James does not hold that the falsity of Clifford's
rule implies that anything goes. Restricting the relevant permissibility class to
propositions that are intellectually open and part of a genuine option provides ample
protection against wishful thinking. Moreover, why think that believing what's true and
believing what we like are necessarily mutually exclusive? Some philosophers have
suggested that James thought that passional reasoning was, under certain circumstances, a
reliable means of acquiring true beliefs.^11 If certain uses of the passions are a reliable
means of acquiring true belief, then the wishful thinking charge is irrelevant.
A more interesting objection contends that James's argument fails “to show that one can
have a sufficient moral reason for self-inducing an epistemically unsupported belief”
(Gale 1991, 383). This objection contends that there is a weighty moral duty to
proportion one's beliefs to the evidence, and that this duty flows from moral personhood:
to be a morally responsible person requires that one have good reasons for each of one's
beliefs. But to believe an epistemically unsupported proposition is to violate this duty and
is thus, in effect, a denial of one's own personhood.^12 Or think of it another way: as
intellectual beings, we have the dual goal of maximizing our stock of true beliefs and