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William James and Embodied Religious Belief contemporary pragmatism 15 (2018) 366-386 brill.com/copr William James and Embodied Religious Belief Tobias Tan Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, West Road, Cambridge cb3 9bs, UK [email protected] Abstract Scholars have recently identified resemblances between pragmatist thought and con- temporary trends in cognitive science in the area of ‘embodied cognition’ or ‘4E cog- nition.’ In this article I explore these resemblances in the account of religious belief provided by the classical pragmatist philosopher William James. Although James’s psychology does not always parallel the commitments of embodied cognition, his in- sights concerning the role of emotion and socio-cultural context in shaping religious belief, as well as the action-oriented nature of such beliefs, resonate with embodied and embedded accounts of religious belief. James’s insights are readily extended in light of contemporary embodied cognition research to highlight the interdependency between religious belief of individuals and the cognitive scaffolding provided by em- bodied religious practices. Keywords William James – embodied cognition – religious belief – cognitive science of religion (csr) – ritual 1 William James on the Nature of Religious Belief In his essay ‘The Will to Believe’, William James sets out a case for religious belief.1 His primary antagonist, William Kingdon Clifford, argues that religious 1 William James, “The Will to Believe”, in The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Phi- losophy (New York: Dover, 1956), pp. 1–31. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/18758185-01503006Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 05:46:25PM via free access <UN> William James And Embodied Religious Belief 367 belief ought to be shunned in the face of insufficient evidence. Although James agrees that definitive evidence may not be forthcoming in the case of religious belief, in contrast to Clifford he contends that it may nevertheless be permis- sible and indeed beneficial to hold religious beliefs. In a pragmatist vein, he observes that to opt for agnosticism on religious matters is itself a decision which may have practical consequences. James’s position should not be characterised as an anti-intellectualist one. He readily asserts that where a belief can be decided upon on intellec- tual grounds it ought to be accepted or rejected accordingly.2 Where he dif- fers from Clifford is on the correct course of action to take when decisions for (or against) a belief cannot be made on intellectual grounds based on the available evidence. James argues that there is a certain class of hypothesis— namely ones which are ‘live’, ‘forced’, and ‘momentous’ as opposed to ‘dead’, ‘avoidable’, or ‘trivial’—for which deferring a decision until sufficient evidence is amassed is not possible. To remain agnostic in such cases is, when viewed in terms of its practical outcomes, for all intents and purposes the same as to decide against belief. While such a strategy can certainly guarantee the avoid- ance of error (a false positive), it also risks failing to adopt a true belief (a false negative). James contends that certain religious hypotheses fall into the category of a live, forced, and momentous hypothesis, and cannot be conclusively decided on extant evidence (and may be by their nature evidentially underdetermined). Where the intellect reaches its limits, James argues that human ‘passional’ and ‘volitional’ natures can legitimately (and perhaps do inevitably) come into play. Although we cannot simply will ourselves to believe something we know to be patently false, such as the proposition that Abraham Lincoln’s existence is a myth,3 when the evidence is inconclusive James defends the right to allow our passional nature to will one belief over another. James’s defence of religious belief, thus summarised, bears many of the hallmarks of his wider pragmatist philosophy. As Hilary Putnam identifies, the marrying of fallibilism and anti-skepticism is one of the basic insights of American pragmatism.4 This description certainly holds true for James’s treatment of religious belief: James argues that religious belief is eviden- tially underdetermined (and decisions to accept it are therefore fallible) and yet one is justified in adopting an anti-skeptical position in the case of such 2 Ibid., p. 11. 3 Ibid., p. 4. 4 Hilary Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), p. 21. contemporary pragmatism 15 (2018) 366-386 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 05:46:25PM via free access <UN> 368 Tan beliefs. Moreover, in keeping with the pragmatist maxim, James attends to the practical effects of religious belief.5 James’s treatment of religious belief thus fits squarely within his pragmatist philosophy; indeed, Graham Bird suggests that James’s philosophical position is not simply applied to the case of religion, but rather that ‘it is not too much to say that [James’s] epistemology was in part constructed for these issues [of religion and morality].’6 James’s overarching argument in ‘The Will to Believe’ is thus a normative one: he seeks to demonstrate that holding religious belief is justifiable because it is epistemologically permissible and potentially beneficial. However, in the process of making this normative case, he also implicitly deploys some descrip- tive insights about the psychology of belief to support his case. The remainder of this article focuses on these descriptive claims (and I shall leave to one side an evaluation of James’s broader normative argument against agnosticism and in favour of religious belief).7 In particular, James’s description includes three factors which contribute to the formation of religious beliefs. First, James describes the role of the ‘passional nature’ in religious belief: ‘our non-intellectual nature does influence our convictions. There are pas- sional tendencies and volitions which run before and others which come af- ter belief…’8 Hence affective states are a cause, and not merely a symptom, of religious beliefs. He also goes further by declaring ‘a pox on all your houses’ when it comes to the utilisation of emotion in deciding upon religious hypoth- eses (although James would not characterise the role of emotion pejorative- ly): emotion plays a role not only in deciding for religious belief, but also in deciding against it. The exercise of emotion in these decisions is, for James, inevitable: ‘Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circum- stances, “Do not decide, but leave the question open,” is itself a passional decision,—just like deciding yes or no,—and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.’9 Those who adopt Clifford’s view that religious belief ought to be rejected on account of insufficient evidence are themselves, James argues, 5 E.g., James, “The Will to Believe”, pp. 29–30; James, “Reflex Action and Theism”, p. 123. 6 Graham Bird, William James (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 144. 7 For a discussion on how James’s ‘Will to Believe’ doctrine might be evaluated for the phi- losophy of religion, see Michael R. Slater, William James on Ethics and Faith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 8 James, “The Will to Believe”, p. 11. 9 Ibid. contemporary pragmatismDownloaded from 15 Brill.com09/30/2021(2018) 366-386 05:46:25PM via free access <UN> William James And Embodied Religious Belief 369 motived by a ‘fear of being duped’.10 Such fearfulness, according to James’s diagnosis, drives Clifford to the timid position of avoiding error at all costs, even if this timidity risks failing to adopt a true belief.11 Second, James is sensitive to the way in which an individual’s context shapes her belief. In his distinction between ‘live’ and ‘dead’ candidates for belief he observes that options considered ‘live’ in one culture may be ‘dead’ in anoth- er.12 Contextual, socio-historical factors thus shape the pool of religious beliefs which may be considered plausible. Together these two factors contribute to what James terms the ‘willing na- ture’, from which the title of his essay is drawn. By ‘willing nature’ he intends more than simply an exercise of the will: ‘When I say “willing nature,” I do not mean only such deliberate volitions as may have set up habits of belief that we cannot now escape from,—I mean all such factors of belief as fear and hope, prejudice and passion, imitation and partisanship, the circumpressure of our caste and set.’13 James is thus sensitive to the way in which religious beliefs are formed by a wide array of ‘non-intellectual’ factors, including a whole host of affective and contextual factors. Third, James’s account of religious belief is action-oriented. As mentioned above, in keeping with the pragmatist concern about the practical effects of a particular stance, James observes in a revealing footnote that religious belief is significant because of the behavioural differences it entails: Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole defense of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity, better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an ex- pression which specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief.14 10 Ibid.
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