Introduction to Philosophy Part 6 God

Part 6: God

Ernest Nagel addresses one of the classic questions: does God Exist?



Does God Exist? 4 New Arguments, 5:39



Science tells us that the universe came into being via The Big Bang.


But how do you get from energy and matter to a self-aware human being?


That takes three additional Big Bangs that science can't explain. Noted theologian, Frank Pastore, unravels this compelling mystery and, in the process, poses the ultimate question that every thinking person must face.

What are the four big bangs that have to be accounted for?

Why is there something rather than nothing?

How does life come from non-life?

How did evolution begin?

How can a mechanistic animal brain become a self-reflective human mind?

https://youtu.be/gIorXcloIac




Human beings alone are introspective and appreciate art and beauty. We search for meaning, significance, and purpose. We alone search for the true, the good, and the beautiful.

1st Big Bang: the cosmological, 2nd, biological, 3rd, anthropological, and the 4th, psychological.

Does God Exist?

Ernest Nagel

Ernest Nagel (November 16, 1901 – September 20, 1985) was an American philosopher of science. Along with Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel, he is sometimes seen as one of the major figures of the logical positivist movement.



Logical positivism and logical empiricism, which together formed neopositivism, was a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was verificationism, a theory of knowledge which asserted that only statements verifiable through empirical observation are cognitively meaningful. The movement flourished in the 1920s and 1930s in several European centers.



Efforts to convert philosophy to this new "scientific philosophy", shared with empirical sciences' best examples, such as Einstein's general theory of relativity, sought to prevent confusion rooted in unclear language and unverifiable claims.



The Berlin Circle and Vienna Circle—groups of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians in Berlin and Vienna—propounded logical positivism, starting in the late 1920s.

Why God Allows Evil
Richard Swinburne

Richard G. Swinburne (born 26 December 1934) is a British philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been an influential proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God. His philosophical contributions are primarily in the philosophy of religion and philosophy of science. He aroused much discussion with his early work in the philosophy of religion, a trilogy of books consisting of The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason.



Swinburne on Natural Evil, 7:41



In this video, I discuss Richard Swinburne's interesting argument from a need for knowledge which claims that the need for knowledge of the consequences of our moral actions necessitates some natural evils.

What is moral evil?

What is natural evil?

How does the theist deal with natural evil?

What are the nine premises of Swinburne's argument?

https://youtu.be/3baSHKTI0Xs



Moral evil: instances of evil caused in whole or in part by moral agents.

Natural evil: instances of evil which result from natural processes not involving the free choices of moral agents in such a way as to render them even partially responsible.

Premise: If an agent acts freely (or responsibly) to bring about a good or evil state of affairs, S must know how to bring about this state of affairs.

2nd: An agent S cannot know how to bring about a good or evil state of affairs without knowing what consequences would follow from her actions.

In order for some person to freely do an act--good or evil--for which they could be properly held morally responsible, we must be able to say that that person knew that their act would likely lead to the good or evil consequences.

Premise 3: The only way for S to know the consequences of her actions is through induction from past experience.

The only way we can know about the relevant causal connections in the world such that we can perform actions with their consequences in mind is through induction.

Premise 4: For any evil one person intentionally inflicts on another (or, more generally, for any token of moral evil), there must have been a first time in history when this was done.

There must have been: ". . . a first murder, a first murder by cyanide poisoning, a first deliberate humiliation and so on . . . "

Premise 5: The person committing the moral evil on that first occasion can only learn about the evil consequences of her intended action by induction from past experience.

Premise 6: However, the acquisition of the requisite knowledge by means of option (a) is not possible, since ex hypothesis the moral evil in question has never been actualized in the past.

Premise 7: Therefore, the only way for the requisite knowledge to be acquired is by means of option (b), that is to day, by observation of some natural evil.

"His knowledge that cyanide poison causes death must come from his having seen or others having told him on other accasions that taking cyanide accidently led to death."

Premise 8: Therefore, an agent S cannot know how to bring about a good or evil state of affairs without the existence of natural evil.

Premise 9: Therefore, the freedom to bring about a good or evil state of affairs cannot be had by an agent unless there exists some natural evil.

The Desires of the Heart
Eleonore Stump

Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, where she has taught since 1992. She received a B.A. in classical languages from Grinnell College (1969), where she was valedictorian and received the Archibald Prize for scholarship; she has an M.A. in Biblical Studies (New Testament) from Harvard University (1971), and an M.A. and Ph.D in Medieval Studies (Medieval Philosophy) from Cornell University (1975). Before coming to Saint Louis University, she taught at Oberlin College, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and University of Notre Dame. Currently, she also holds secondary or honorary appointments at Wuhan University and Australian Catholic University.



Eleonore Stump: Our Heart's Desire, 6:57



Eleonore Stump, Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, answers questions during the Kilns College Kickoff Lecture Series 2012.



https://youtu.be/sq9f5K6VXMc

Pascal’s Wager
Simon Blackburn

Simon Blackburn, FBA (born 12 July 1944) is a British academic philosopher known for his work in metaethics, where he defends quasi-realism, and in the philosophy of language; more recently, he has gained a large general audience from his efforts to popularise philosophy. He retired as the professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2011, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching every fall semester. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society, having served the 2009–2010 term. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002 and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008.



PHILOSOPHY - Religion: Pascal's Wager, 6:50



In this Wireless Philosophy video, Susanna Rinard (Harvard University) explains Pascal's Wager, Blaise Pascal's famous argument for belief in God. Lifting an approach from the gambling hall, Pascal argued that, given the odds and the potential payoff, belief in God is a really good deal. Even if the chance that God exists is low, rationality, he claimed, compels us to wager for God.



https://youtu.be/2F_LUFIeUk0

Pascal’s Wager: An Assessment
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (born 1946) is an American philosopher. She is George Lynn Cross Research Professor, and Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at the University of Oklahoma. She writes in the areas of epistemology, philosophy of religion, and virtue theory. She was (2015-2016) president of the American Philosophical Association Central Division, and gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Saint Andrews in the fall of 2015. She is past president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers. She was a 2011-2012 Guggenheim Fellow.



Zagzebski does not directly dispute Pascal's wager in her assessment however we should consider an argument against Pascal as well.



Christopher Hitchens: Pascal's wager = religious hucksterism, 2:54



Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an Anglo-American author, columnist, essayist, orator, religious and literary critic, social critic, and journalist. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays, on politics, literature and religion. A staple of public discourse, his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded intellectual and a controversial public figure. He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, Free Inquiry and Vanity Fair.



Having long described himself as a social democrat, a Marxist, and an anti-totalitarian, he began to break with the established political left after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Satanic Verses controversy, followed by the left's embrace of Bill Clinton and the antiwar movement's opposition to NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. His support of the Iraq War separated him further. While he came to reject socialism, he still identified as a Marxist and believed in both the dialectic and the materialist conception of history. His writings include critiques of public figures such as Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa and Diana, Princess of Wales. He was the elder brother of the conservative journalist and author Peter Hitchens. He advocated the separation of church and state.



As an antitheist he regarded the concept of a god or supreme being as a totalitarian belief that impedes individual freedom. He argued that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of informing ethics and defining codes of conduct for human civilization. The dictum "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" has become known as Hitchens's razor.



Christopher Hitchens discusses Pascal's wager. This is during the LBJ Future Forum on May 14, 2007, at the LBJ Library and Museum in Austin, Texas.



https://youtu.be/X94YffpUryo

The Problem of Hell
Marilyn McCord Adams

Marilyn McCord Adams (October 12, 1943 – March 22, 2017) was an American philosopher and priest of the Episcopal Church. She specialised in philosophy of religion, philosophical theology and medieval philosophy.



Marilyn McCord Adams - What can Christian Theology say to the problem of evil? 5:14



This playlist contains all video interviews with Marilyn McCord Adams which were recorded at Schloss Fürstenried in Munich, June 2014.



https://youtu.be/iwMdWx5yysY

Faith and Reason
Michael Scriven

Michael John Scriven (born 1928) is a British-born Australian polymath and academic philosopher, best known for his contributions to the theory and practice of evaluation.

SAM HARRIS FAITH VS REASON, PAX TV - Full Version Part 1 of 2, 6:49

https://youtu.be/GjGcmfiGjL8

The Hiddenness of God
Robert McKim

Robert McKim (born December 29, 1952) is an American philosopher of religion. He has degrees in philosophy from Trinity College Dublin and from the University of Calgary, and a Ph.D. in religious studies and philosophy from Yale University. He is Professor of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

McKim has written extensively on the implications of religious diversity. In Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity (Oxford, 2001) McKim appeals to the twin realities of religious ambiguity and religious diversity in making a case for a self-critical, open, and tentative approach to religious belief. In On Religious Diversity (Oxford, 2011) he tackles the controversial issue of how religious traditions, and their members, ought to look on outsiders, their views, and their salvific prospects.

Michael Tooley On The Divine Hiddenness Of God, 3:47

Michael Tooley is an American philosopher at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has a BA from the University of Toronto and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University in 1968. He taught at Stanford University and the Australian National University and, since 1992, at the University of Colorado Boulder.

He has worked on philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, causality and metaphysical naturalism, and has debated the existence of God with William Lane Craig.^[4][5] His paper "Abortion and Infanticide" has elicited much comment.

Informal Statement of the Argument There are many people who don't believe in God but who wish that some sort of a theistic God did exist. Now the Apostle Paul, in Romans 1:19-21, implies that the existence of God is just obvious to everyone, even atheists and agnostics. But just think about that for a second. How do you prove that something is obvious to another person? Lots of nonbelievers claim that the existence of God is not obvious to them. Indeed, many nonbelievers claim that it is just obvious that it is not obvious that theism is true! Why is this evidence for atheism over theism? Because if theism is true, we would expect nonbelief in God to be unreasonable. What possible reason could God, if He existed, have for not revealing Himself? God is not shy, God is not busy, and so forth. But if atheism is true, there is no God and we would expect nonbelief to be reasonable. Therefore, reasonable nonbelief is more likely on atheism than on theism.

An argument from nonbelief is a philosophical argument that asserts an inconsistency between the existence of God and a world in which people fail to recognize him. It is similar to the classic argument from evil in affirming an inconsistency between the world that exists and the world that would exist if God had certain desires combined with the power to see them through.

There are two key varieties of the argument. The argument from reasonable nonbelief (or the argument from divine hiddenness) was first elaborated in J. L. Schellenberg's 1993 book Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. This argument says that if God existed (and was perfectly good and loving) every reasonable person would have been brought to belief in God; however, there are reasonable nonbelievers; therefore, God does not exist.

Theodore Drange subsequently developed the argument from nonbelief, based on the mere existence of nonbelief in God. Drange considers the distinction between reasonable (by which Schellenberg means inculpable) and unreasonable (culpable) nonbelief to be irrelevant and confusing. Nevertheless, most academic discussion is concerned with Schellenberg's formulation.



https://youtu.be/jzygUxnGkEc

God and Forgiveness
Anne C. Minas

An animation story about GOD Forgiveness, 1:50

https://youtu.be/WXwQ0RTszBg

God and Morality
Steven M. Cahn

PHILOSOPHY - Religion: God and Morality, Part 1, 4:41

Part 1 of a pair. Stephen Darwall (Yale University) considers the relationship between morality and God. Specifically, he asks: is morality the same thing as the commands of God? Is there no morality if there is no God? Ultimately, Stephen will argue that morality and God's commands are distinct, even if there is a God and she commands moral things. However, in this first video, Steve considers why you might like the view that morality just is God's commands.

https://youtu.be/lmhiibdwznQ

The Ontological Argument
Anselm and Gaunilo

An ontological argument is a philosophical argument for the existence of God that uses ontology. Many arguments fall under the category of the ontological, and they tend to involve arguments about the state of being or existing. More specifically, ontological arguments tend to start with an a priori theory about the organization of the universe. If that organizational structure is true, the argument will provide reasons why God must exist.

The first ontological argument in the Western Christian tradition was proposed by Anselm of Canterbury in his 1078 work Proslogion. Anselm defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be thought", and argued that this being must exist in the mind, even in the mind of the person who denies the existence of God. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, then an even greater being must be possible—one which exists both in the mind and in reality. Therefore, this greatest possible being must exist in reality. Seventeenth century French philosopher René Descartes deployed a similar argument. Descartes published several variations of his argument, each of which centred on the idea that God's existence is immediately inferable from a "clear and distinct" idea of a supremely perfect being. In the early eighteenth century, Gottfried Leibniz augmented Descartes' ideas in an attempt to prove that a "supremely perfect" being is a coherent concept. A more recent ontological argument came from Kurt Gödel, who proposed a formal argument for God's existence. Norman Malcolm revived the ontological argument in 1960 when he located a second, stronger ontological argument in Anselm's work; Alvin Plantinga challenged this argument and proposed an alternative, based on modal logic. Attempts have also been made to validate Anselm's proof using an automated theorem prover. Other arguments have been categorised as ontological, including those made by Islamic philosophers Mulla Sadra and Allama Tabatabai.

Since its proposal, few philosophical ideas have generated as much interest and discussion as the ontological argument. Nearly all of the great minds of Western philosophy have found the argument worthy of their attention, and a number of criticisms and objections have been mounted. The first critic of the ontological argument was Anselm's contemporary, Gaunilo of Marmoutiers. He used the analogy of a perfect island, suggesting that the ontological argument could be used to prove the existence of anything. This was the first of many parodies, all of which attempted to show that the argument has absurd consequences. Later, Thomas Aquinas rejected the argument on the basis that humans cannot know God's nature. Also, David Hume offered an empirical objection, criticising its lack of evidential reasoning and rejecting the idea that anything can exist necessarily. Immanuel Kant's critique was based on what he saw as the false premise that existence is a predicate. He argued that "existing" adds nothing (including perfection) to the essence of a being, and thus a "supremely perfect" being can be conceived not to exist. Finally, philosophers including C. D. Broad dismissed the coherence of a maximally great being, proposing that some attributes of greatness are incompatible with others, rendering "maximally great being" incoherent.

2 The Ontological Argument. Criticisms from Gaunilo, 3:42

https://youtu.be/ihj_-zCxekk

Summa Theologiae
Thomas Aquinas

Saint Thomas Aquinas OP (Italian: Tommaso d'Aquino, lit. 'Thomas of Aquino'; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian[4][5] Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. He was an immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, within which he is also known as the Doctor Angelicus and the Doctor Communis. The name Aquinas identifies his ancestral origins in the county of Aquino in present-day Lazio.


He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology and the father of Thomism; of which he argued that reason is found in God. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy developed or opposed his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law, metaphysics, and political theory. Unlike many currents in the Church of the time, Thomas embraced several ideas put forward by Aristotle—whom he called "the Philosopher"—and attempted to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the principles of Christianity. His best-known works are the Summa Theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles. His commentaries on Scripture and on Aristotle also form an important part of his body of work. Furthermore, Thomas is distinguished for his eucharistic hymns, which form a part of the Church's liturgy.


The Catholic Church honors Thomas Aquinas as a saint and regards him as the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood, and indeed the highest expression of both natural reason and speculative theology. In modern times, under papal directives, the study of his works was long used as a core of the required program of study for those seeking ordination as priests or deacons, as well as for those in religious formation and for other students of the sacred disciplines (philosophy, Catholic theology, church history, liturgy, and canon law).


Thomas Aquinas is considered one of the Catholic Church's greatest theologians and philosophers. Pope Benedict XV declared: "This (Dominican) Order ... acquired new luster when the Church declared the teaching of Thomas to be her own and that Doctor, honored with the special praises of the Pontiffs, the master and patron of Catholic schools." The English philosopher Anthony Kenny considers Thomas to be 'one of the dozen greatest philosophers of the western world'.

S.T.

The Summa Theologiæ (written 1265–1274 and also known as the Summa Theologica or simply the Summa) is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274). Although unfinished, the Summa is "one of the classics of the history of philosophy and one of the most influential works of Western literature." It was intended as an instructional guide for theology students, including seminarians and the literate laity. It was a compendium of all of the main theological teachings of the Catholic Church. It presents the reasoning for almost all points of Christian theology in the West. The Summa's topics follow a cycle: the existence of God; Creation, Man; Man's purpose; Christ; the Sacraments; and back to God.


The Summa is Aquinas' "most perfect work, the fruit of his mature years, in which the thought of his whole life is condensed". Among non-scholars, the Summa is perhaps most famous for its five arguments for the existence of God, which are known as the "five ways" (Latin: quinque viae). The five ways, however, occupy under two pages of the Summa's approximately 3,500 pages.


Throughout the Summa, Aquinas cites Christian, Muslim, Hebrew, and Pagan sources including but not limited to Christian Sacred Scripture, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Avicenna, Averroes, Al-Ghazali, Boethius, John of Damascus, Paul the Apostle, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maimonides, Anselm, Plato, Cicero, and Eriugena.


The Summa is a more structured and expanded version of Aquinas's earlier Summa contra Gentiles, though these works were written for different purposes, the Summa Theologiae to explain the Christian faith to beginning theology students, and the Summa contra Gentiles to explain the Christian faith and defend it in hostile situations, with arguments adapted to the intended circumstances of its use, each article refuting a certain belief or a specific heresy.


Aquinas conceived the Summa specifically as a work suited to beginning students: "Because a doctor of catholic truth ought not only to teach the proficient, but to him pertains also to instruct beginners. As the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 3: 1–2, as to infants in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not meat, our proposed intention in this work is to convey those things that pertain to the Christian religion, in a way that is fitting to the instruction of beginners."


It was while teaching at the Santa Sabina studium provinciale, the forerunner of the Santa Maria sopra Minerva studium generale and College of Saint Thomas, which in the 20th century would become the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum, that Aquinas began to compose the Summa. He completed the Prima Pars (first part) in its entirety and circulated it in Italy before departing to take up his second regency as professor at the University of Paris (1269–1272).


Even today, both in Western and Eastern Catholic Churches, Orthodoxy, and the mainstream original Protestant denominations (Anglicanism and Episcopalianism, Lutheranism, Methodism, and Presbyterianism), it is very common for the Summa Theologica to be required or strongly urged reading, in whole or in part, for all those seeking ordination to the diaconate or priesthood, or to professed male or female religious life, or for laypersons studying philosophy and theology at the collegiate level.

PHILOSOPHY - Thomas Aquinas, 6:15

Thomas Aquinas deserves to be remembered for reconciling faith with reason, thereby saving Western civilisation from turning its back on science and Greek and Roman wisdom.

https://youtu.be/GJvoFf2wCBU

Natural Theology
William Paley

William Paley (July 1743 – 25 May 1805) was an English clergyman, Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, which made use of the watchmaker analogy.

The Watch Argument (Deductive Teleological Arguments), 5:34

An explication of the deductive teleological argument for the existence of God featuring William Paley's famous Watch analogy. Information for this series obtained from the SEP http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tel....

Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more! Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more!

https://youtu.be/arWyrC-FIgE

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
David Hume

David Hume (born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism.

Hume Dialogues 1, 4:57

https://youtu.be/RW2lwvk4Kdw

The Wager
Blaise Pascal

1. You should believe in God.



2. The chance that God exists is positive and finite.



3. If you believe in God and he exists, you’ll get an infinite reward. If you believe in God and he doesn’t exist, you’ll have only a finite loss.



4. Believing in God has an infinite expected utility.



5. If you don’t believe in God and he exists, you’ll either win nothing or else you’ll lose something. If you don’t believe in God and he doesn’t exist, you’ll win only a finite gain.



6. Not believing in God has a finite gain or negative expected utility.



7. Believing in God has a much higher expected utility than not believing in God.



8. You should do that which has the higher expected utility.

The Will to Believe
William James

Introductory comments. James indicates the situation in his university --namely, that free-thinking students do not believe one should have religious faith since it cannot be rationally demonstrated. James believes differently, namely that faith is sensible, though not rationally demanded. He indicates his hope that the Brown and Yale students will be more open than his Harvard students.Introductory comments.



Definitions. James will talk about a "genuine" choice. Any choice which merits this name for James must meet three criteria:
be live
be forced
be momentuous



He defines a live choice in opposition to a dead choice.
A live choice has some emotive appeal to the chooser. This is an internal and subjective appeal, not a rational or forced appeal.
A dead option or choice is one which has no appeal to the chooser in question.



He defines an option as forced or non-forced.
An option is forced when there is an either or situation. Nearly all such options are of the sort: Either do this or do not do this.
An avoidable option is when we ask you to choose A or B. You can evade the issue by not choosing at all, or choosing C or D.
He defines an option as momentuous or trivial.
An option is momentuous when it is a matter of some import, life and death, or an important once in a life time situation.
Opposed to this are trivial options--options which don't really make much difference in the world, or ones where you have the option all over again in the near future.
Note that there is great ambiguity here as to who and hope one defines what is momentuous and what is trivial.



Can one choose to believe some claim? James argues that one does not choose one's beliefs, but one just has them.

He defends this claim with a series of examples, focussing on how we could not choose to believe things which we know to be false, such as that Abraham Lincoln did not live or that you are not sick when you are.



James claims that we look to leaders and authority figures, and model our beliefs after theirs. We believe and don't know why; we accept what we've been told.

He discusses the value of free will, but he isn't too clear on this point.

The thesis of this section is that pure logic doesn't dictate our beliefs. There are passional tendencies and volitions which can come before and or after belief.



Thesis: When we have a genuine option that cannot be decided solely on intellectual grounds, our passional nature must be allowed to rule.



Empiricists don't know when they have found truth while the absolutist do.



Although we're born with absolutist attitudes, we should overcome this weakness and strive for the empiricist attitude of continually searching for the truth.



You have more to lose by fearing error in the matter of genuine option than you have to gain.



Our will is bound to play a part in the formation of our opinions.



Moral opinions are based on a personal proof of what one wants to believe, and not necessarily willed.



James is asking what we mean by religious hypotheses. He supports one choosing religious hypotheses and gives reasons.



Scepticism, he argues, is not an avoidance of an option. It is an option of a certain particular kind of option.



James does not believe that agnosticism works either. He says they would not be able to consider other truths, which would make the position irrational.



James proposes an abstract and concrete manner of thinking.



Abstract: We have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will.



Concrete: The freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider.



Conclusion.



James concludes that whether we choose to believe or not to believe, or wait to believe, we choose our own peril, our own fate.


PHILOSOPHY - Epistemology: The Will to Believe [HD], 6:39


Thomas Donaldson (Stanford University) asks whether it is moral to believe something even when you have no evidence that it is true. He discusses a classic debate on that subject, between philosophers William James and William Clifford.

https://youtu.be/uzmLXIuAspQ