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Discussing William James’s “The Will to Believe” and continuing our discussion from Episode 20 on James’s conception of truth as described in his books Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth, again featuring guest podcaster Dylan Casey.
Does pragmatism give ground for religious belief, like if I say it feels good for me to believe in God, is that in any sense a legitimate grounds for that belief? Is belief in science or rationality itself a form of faith? Is religious belief a “forced choice,” or does it just not matter what you believe?
Also, we sort further through James on truth: truth is created by us, but what does that mean? That only statements actually verified or otherwise useful are true, or can have a truth value (true of false) at all? In saying that we create truth, does that make James a relativist, and if so, is that bad?
Read “The Will to Believe,” Pragmatism, and The Meaning of Truth (the most useful chapters for our purposes are 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, and 15).
End song: “Who Cares What You Believe?” by Madison Lint (2001).
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#1 by Dan on July 22, 2010 - 4:50 pm
Great podcast! I really like the meat that’s finally sliced up at the end (post mustache tangent). Right around that same time in the cast someone seems to mention that we (Westerners?) are culturally pre-disposed to something… could u help me understand that better? Were you saying we are culturally predisposed to belief in some kind of God-being? Predisposed to religious practice (or non-practice)? I think that’s a really interesting idea.
If someone raised themselves on an island apart from culture, is there a biological predisposition to faith based ‘truths’ (even if they’re superstitous, etc.)?
If you have a minute, I’d really like to better understand what you were getting at there.
Thanks!
#2 by Dan on July 23, 2010 - 1:27 pm
The reference takes place around the 1:07 mark in regards to God, or Faith, or Spirituality being a ‘live’ option… there are a lot of really significant comments around that time in the cast that suggest that God or religion (are these two confused?) are inherent either because we exist in a culture, or because of human biological make-up. Are these just generally accepted philosophical concepts? That the notion of God is inherent? Or am I misunderstanding anything about that? If you have a chance to add any additional thoughts on that I’d appreciate it. Thanks again!
#3 by Mark Linsenmayer on July 23, 2010 - 1:33 pm
Hey, Dan,
This was kind of a throw-away comment I made speculating about the relation of what we were talking about to a sentiment I’ve seen in numerous places: “If there was no God, Man would have to invent one.”
Yes, in this context, I was referring fairly generically to the spiritual, which, e.g. Karen Armstrong (see my recent post here about her) thinks is extremely common and goes very far back historically. However, in the Kant knowledge episode, Wes I think had specifically (in discussing the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” argument from Dawkins often quoted on the web) said that the concept of God in particular was not arbitrary, but had something like a natural place in logic, where I take the definition to be a being that is infinite in every way. Personally, I don’t think that definition is even coherent, but it’s the one that Descartes and Spinoza and all of them run with. It’s certainly not a sufficient concept to give us God as conceived of by some particular religious tradition.