In James’ paper on “The Will to Believe”, he characterizes a belief as being alive, forced, and momentous. James explains that being alive means to actually be a genuine option. One example of this for me personally could be that if I were personally asked if I believed in aliens or fairies, it wouldn’t be actual, genuine options considering how I don’t even have concepts of either one; these would be considered dead. On the other hand, if someone were to ask me if I personally believed in God or Muhammed this would be more understandable. For these ideas or beliefs that are more understandable, these are alive.
When James describes forced he is saying that there is either you believe in God (or some form of a higher power) or not. There is no other option other than the two. One is forced to make a decision when asked a question like, “do you believe in God?”
The word “momentous” that James uses in his paper, he uses to describe something that one wouldn’t want to turn down, and if they did it would be of great disappointment. In the paper he uses the example of someone being invited to go to North Pole. “if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North Pole expedition, your option would be momentous; for this would probably be your only similar opportunity, and your choice now would either exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at
least the chance of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed.” If Dr. Nansen turned down the opportunity to go to the North Pole, it would be momentous.
I believe that James’ ideas of belief kind of skew away from Clifford’s arguments on validity a little. In all of James’ paper, you don’t hear anything of validity or the argument of belief being based on validity and soundness. James’s view of belief is more on feelings and how that belief will make your life better by just believing in something.
Word Count: 359
Barista's approach 