William James; The will to believe

[SFG75]

Personally, I gravitate to the pragmatist line of thinking, but mostly along the lines of Pierce and Dewey. James has been an oddball to me, though I do enjoy reading his various works. The Varieties of Religious Experience is tendentious for my liking, but is rewarding in some parts in my estimation. I downloaded The will to believe(for free!) on my ancient kindle and I have to say it was well worth it. For a dedicated theist, his argument is unique and refreshing.


Online translation (http://educ.jmu.edu/~omearawm/ph101willtobelieve.html)

Anyone else read his works?

:Angel_anim:

[YesNo]

I read an essay on free will some time back. It may have been "The Dilemma of Determinism" in The Will to Believe. He wrote the essay prior to 1900 and he was arguing for "chance" against "determinism" which seemed strange to me. Currently randomness or chance is now included with determinism with the goal being to not need any conscious input outside of our own consciousness.

If one puts determinism and randomness together what we are left with on the other side is choice and orderly uncertainty. I think that is what he was referring to by chance anyway. It was not randomness, but uncertainty. At least that is how I see it at the moment.

James provides a perspective that is over 100 years old during a time when science was very different than today. I find his perspective valuable.

[cafolini]

I studied W. James and concluded he is the best pragmatist among the many. He corresponded with Macedonio Fernandez, an Argentine fiscal who was a friend to J.L. Borges father. He left some stories and a lot of notes which were compiled by his son. He markedly influenced young J.L. Borges and quite a few Argentineans.
William James was a pragmatist, but he didn't think it appropriate to use an atomic bomb to kill a fly, although that could be very pragmatic and it definitely works.
He was a post-structuralist before Foucault came into de picture. He would have agreed with people like Malinowsky about clanless societies.
And he probably understood the need for religion much better than a lot of his contemporaries.

[AuntShecky]

Just over two years ago, there was a thread on this topic posted by a fellow Lit-Nutter, yours fooly:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?57272-William-James-Redux-quot-The-New-Atheists-quot-v-quot-The-Will-to-Believe-quot