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Is belief in God when faced with a lack of evidence improper? Evidentialism answers yes. According to Evidentialism, it is impermissible to believe any proposition lacking adequate evidence. Presenting a direct challenge to Evidentialism are pragmatic arguments for theism, which are designed to support belief in the absence of adequate evidence. Interestingly, although overlooked by philosophers, there is a version of Evidentialism compatible with a principled use of pragmatic arguments. In addition to Evidentialism, several moral objections to Pascal's Wager are surveyed and found flawed.

This chapter argues that reflective believers' concern is ultimately not just for the epistemic, but for the moral justifiability of their taking faith-beliefs to be true. In response to the doxastic voluntarism this seems to imply, it is argued that control in relation to beliefs is exercised at two ‘loci’: indirect control over what we hold to be true, and direct control over what we take to be true in our practical reasoning. This latter is open to moral evaluation whenever the actions to which such reasoning can lead are morally significant. This condition is met in the case of theistic faith-beliefs, which pervasively influence how people live. We therefore need an ethics of belief, or better, of faith-commitment that specifies the conditions under which it is morally permissible to commit oneself practically to the truth of a theistic (or any other) faith-belief.

This chapter presents a comparative reading of W. K. Clifford's 1877 treatise, “The Ethics of Belief,” and William James' 1897 essay, “The Will to Believe.” It provides an interpretation of each in the distinctive contexts of England in the 1870s and New England in the 1890s. It argues that Clifford displayed more sensitivity than James did to the consequences of belief. This is an ironic reversal of roles in the story of a great pragmatist who insisted that “the whole defense of religious faith hinges upon” the action that faith requires or inspires. James' “The Will to Believe” should be understood not only as an artifact of its author's agony about the fate of Christianity in the age of science, but also as a product of his political complacency. Clifford had a much more modern understanding than James did of the function of belief systems in society and politics.

This concluding chapter points out some of the negative consequences of scriptural fundamentalisms such as homophobia, gender inequality; religious intolerance; self‐righteousness; intellectual dishonesty; deprivation of children from important scientific knowledge, and in some cases, advocacy of violence against ‘non‐believers.’ It also discusses positive aspects of fundamentalist communities, and their legitimate criticism of and disdain for certain vapid or decadent aspects of American and Western culture, values, and behaviors. The chapter discusses the ethics of undermining the religious beliefs of scriptural fundamentalists. When, why, and where is it appropriate or even obligatory to attempt to do so, and when is it wrong to do so? It concludes that there are times when combating fundamentalism and defending freedom of speech and of thought is essential for the good and welfare of American society and notes his intention to develop a detailed plan for how to ‘defundamentalize fundamentalists.’

Discusses the merits of versions of doxastic voluntarism, the thesis that we form beliefs voluntarily. It criticizes some forms of doxastic voluntarism, but concedes that we do have a kind of indirect control over our beliefs. The chapter also examines various theses about the attitudes that we epistemically ought to have. An evidentialist thesis about the attitudes we epistemically ought to have is supported.

This chapter documents unexplored parallels between the pluralistic, “unfinished” universe heralded by James, and the contingent, linguistically mediated landscape open to endless redescription embraced by Rorty. Both are philosophers of agency who evoke a conception of knowledge in which humans are active participants in the construction of what is right and true. They reject an ethics that appeals to fixed principles, yet nonetheless combine their fallibilism and pluralism with an account of commitment and responsibility that manifests in an acute attentiveness to what James called the “cries of the wounded” and to the obligations that the claims of concrete others place on us. Read alongside James, Rortyan irony emerges as an ethical form of antiauthoritarian fallibilism. The combination of epistemic modesty and willingness to listen and learn from others with an account of ethical responsiveness is a signal contribution of their pragmatisms.

Evidentialism is the thesis that evidence or, more generally, epistemic reasons, exhausts the considerations relevant to whether one ought or ought not to believe. In this chapter Adler and Hicks defend conceptual evidentialism, the claim that this fact derives from the very concept of belief, from two strategies for showing that this is impossible. They consider and reply to two anti-evidentialist strategies. The first attempts to show that evidentialism is unduly conservative, since it ignores pragmatic considerations that can sometimes justify a more liberal, or risky, doxastic strategy. The second aims to show that in the absence of pragmatic considerations, evidence alone underdetermines belief. After arguing that both strategies fail, they conclude that the pragmatic considerations highlighted by the anti-evidentialist are directed not at belief, but at related notions such as commitment.

This chapter examines the right and duty to will to believe, with particular emphasis on William James's work to show how a more robust ethics of belief is possible. At various points in the development of James's ethics of belief, we encounter such expressions as “duty to believe,” “will to believe,” and “right to believe.” Many commentators have suggested that the expressions “duty to believe” and “will to believe” were retracted by James, under the critical assault of his contemporaries. This chapter rejects that notion and suggests that there are in fact good Jamesian arguments for the retention of the expressions “duty to believe” and “will to believe.” It also discusses the implications of keeping the notions named by these expressions for overbelief. Finally, it proposes a terminology for use in future considerations both of James's ethics of belief and of the ethics of belief more generally.

This chapter examines problems and prospects in William James's ethics of belief. It argues for the relevance of so-called overbeliefs for modern views of epistemology. It argues that the development of such an ethics of belief will require collaboration between diverse philosophical traditions and between philosophy and science. More specifically, it calls for cooperation between those working in the tradition of pragmatist metaphysics, those working in analytic epistemology, and those working in cognitive science. To emphasize the need for such cooperation, it provides an overview of the relevant aspects of the current philosophical scene. It also discusses the notion of positive illusion and the consequences of applying moral terms to belief as opposed to terms of prudence only.

This chapter considers how the proposed account of the epistemology of mental action, and the proposed account of the self-knowledge involved in conscious thinking, bear on an account of one's knowledge of what one believes. The chapter also explores some of the ways in which the ethics of belief, and accounts of the suspension of judgement and belief revision, may be affected by the fact that we are, as self-conscious subjects, capable of engaging in agential epistemic conscious mental activity, including self-critical reflection.

The thesis is that the hypothesis that assertion is answerable to an epistemic norm can be used to establish two claims in the domain of ethics: first, that there is such a thing as an “ethics of assertion,” and second, that, given the connection between assertion and belief, the “ethics of assertion” can be used to provide motivation for some (interpersonal) constraints bearing on what might go under the label “the ethics of belief.” The argument that is developed explores both what speakers owe to their audience, and what an audience owes to the speaker. What speakers owe to their audience is explored through the ethics of helping those in need; and what an audience owes to the speaker is explored through development of ideas first developed in Fricker (2007).

This chapter defends a conception of belief and action that accommodates their similarities without assimilating the former to the latter. Both are commonly grounded in reasons and sensitive to environmental changes, and this can make belief seem (sometimes) voluntary. The chapter describes our control over our beliefs. This may be direct or indirect, depending on whether we can, at will, bring about our believing something. The chapter distinguishes forming a belief, which invites an actional construal, and a belief’s forming, which does not. A major concern is how the reasons-responsiveness of beliefs is like and unlike that of actions. We believe for reasons somewhat as we act for them, and both beliefs and actions may be based on reasoning. But the chapter cites important differences; and on the basis of these distinctions, it outlines major elements of an ethics of belief.

Chapter 1 explores Vernon Lee’s argument for an ethics of unbelief and her struggle to practice this ethics in literature which, she feared, had an inbuilt tendency to comforting falsehoods. The first part of the chapter outlines Lee’s case against William James and Friedrich Nietzsche whose work, she felt, offered inducements to belief in spite of their protestations to the contrary. Lee shared the view of prominent Rationalists in thinking that James made it possible for his readers to believe in almost anything, except, that is, the arguments of unbelievers. Lee offered ‘responsible unbelief’—belief in the believable—as an altogether more rational, proportionate, and humble alternative to the immoderate and masculinist versions she found in her peers. The final section of this chapter explores Lee’s experimental fiction, Satan the Waster (1918), a genre-defying ‘novel’ in which Lee tests the extent to which imaginative literature can be made to serve a Rationalist agenda. The questions that Lee raises in Satan set the agenda for this book as a whole: given the ease with which language flows into necessary fictions, can literature ever accommodate or encourage unbelief in the strong ethical sense of belief only in the believable? What forms of representation, if any, might be adequate to the expression of a ‘responsible’ unbelief?

This introduction explores Peter Hare's creative appropriation of William James's doctrines of natural realism and heuristic pluralism. Hare was drawn to James not only because of the latter's literary gifts but also because of his philosophical insights. Throughout his life, Hare was appreciative of James's efforts to articulate an ethics of belief, but he was not willing to grant so readily to James and his followers the right to believe in the context of religion. Even so, the ethics of belief outlined and partly filled in by James provided Hare with the insights, and indeed inspiration, to develop a distinctive form of what in contemporary analytic philosophy is called epistemic responsibilism. In this introduction, James's misgivings about the orientation toward the universe and Hare's orientation toward naturalism are discussed, along with a naturalistic account of human knowing in relation to James's account of knowledge, meaning, and truth.

This chapter examines possible disagreement with an epistemic peer, roughly, a person who (a) is as rational and as thoughtful as oneself (in the relevant matter), (b) has considered the same relevant evidence—which need not be all the relevant evidence—and (c) has done so equally conscientiously. Does this possibility support skepticism? The chapter clarifies this threefold conception of parity, shows its complexity, and indicates how non-evidential variables may come into or even produce disagreements [I think this is ok] even between rational disputants who are peers and in good communication. What plausible principles might guide our responses in such disputes? Several guiding principles are proposed. Understanding these and other standards for the self-critical cultivation of belief and—in some cases—for revision in one’s belief system are offered. The result is a contribution toward an overall ethics of belief that makes it possible to steer a rational course between skepticism and credulity.

This chapter examines the views of Dickinson Miller and C. J. Ducasse on William James's ethics of belief. In American philosophy, few papers have generated as much discussion as James's essay “The Will to Believe.” After reading the title of the essay The Will to Believe as separately published in 1896, Miller engaged in extensive correspondence with James. In one of these letters, James refers to Miller as his “most penetrating critic and intimate enemy.” The ideas developed by Miller in this correspondence he brought together in an 1899 paper published in Ethics. Miller continued to develop his criticism of the Jamesian doctrine of the will to believe for more than half a century. This chapter also considers Miller's correspondence with Ducasse in the 1940s and 1950s regarding the topic of the right to believe.

This chapter begins the exposition of Part Three of the System of Ethics: the “scientific” account of the content of the moral law, discussing why material freedom and absolute self-sufficiency are not to be thought of in consequentialist terms from the philosophical point of view; the final end as the recursive projection of finite ends; the antinomy of self-sufficiency and I-hood, and how its resolution grounds a doctrine of duties; and duties regarding the body. Fichte’s “rigorism” is understood in Kierkegaardian existentialist terms. In every situation, our freedom requires some action. The ethical pervades human life. Grounded in the value of freedom, it represents our true selfhood rather than being a set of external constraints on it. Also discussed are duties regarding cognition, Fichte’s ethics of belief; duties regarding our relation to other I’s; the transformation of the end of the I’s self-sufficiency into the self-sufficiency of reason; and moral truth constituted by universal rational agreement.

This chapter introduces the core themes of the volume, Truth and Evidence. First, it asks about the value of continuing to talk about truth, briefly addressing the correspondence theory of truth, the history of pragmatism, and approaches to inquiry. The chapter then takes up the nature of evidence and how it should properly bear on belief, before turning to the assignment of credences, or degrees of belief. Finally, it addresses the ethics of belief, and the social and political character of knowledge, particularly through the lens of democracy. The chapter also provides brief summaries of the chapters to follow.