Category: James
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The Pragmatic and the Evidential: Is It Ever Rational to Believe Beyond the Evidence?
Is it ever rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence? If it is never rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence, then presumably it is also never rational to act upon such a belief. For example, if it irrational to believe in God and post-mortem survival, then presumably it…
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The Great Use of a Life
"The great use of a life is to spend it for something that outlasts it." (William James)
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Freud or James? Wish-Fulfillment or Inducement to Strenuous Living?
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), The Future of an Illusion: It would indeed be very nice if there were a God, who was both creator of the world and a benevolent providence, if there were a moral world order and a future life. But at the same time it isvery odd that this is all just as…
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William James on Self-Denial
No one preaches self-denial anymore. We have become a nation of moral wimps. We need a taste of the strenuosity of yesteryear, and who better to serve it up than our very own William James, he of the Golden Age of American philosophy: Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous…
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Against William Alston Against Doxastic Voluntarism
The following remarks are based on the first two sections of Chapter Four, "Deontological Desiderata," of William P. Alston's Beyond "Justification": Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation (Cornell UP, 2005), pp. 58-67. 1. It makes sense to apply deontological predicates to actions. Thus it makes sense to say of a voluntary action that it is obligatory or…
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Locke, James, Doxastic Voluntarism and Two Bases of Toleration
The topic of doxastic voluntarism is proving to be fascinating indeed. It is interestingly related to the topic of toleration about which I have something to say in On Toleration: With a Little Help from Kolakowski, in The Danger of Appeasing the Intolerant, and in Toleration and its Limits. Let us begin today's meditation with…