What do we mean by “experience”? The best way to find an answer is to ask: What is the difference between an event which is not experienced and one which is? Rain seen or felt to be falling is experienced, but rain falling in the desert where there is no living thing is not experienced. Thus we arrive at our first point: there is no experience except where there is life. But experience is not coextensive with life. Many things happen to me which I do not notice; these I can
-813-
hardly be said to experience. Clearly I experience whatever I remember, but some things which I do not explicitly remember may have set up habits which still persist. The burnt child fears the fire, even if he has no recollection of the occasion on which he was burnt. I think we may say that an event is “experienced” when it sets up a habit. (Memory is one kind of habit.) It is obvious that habits are only set up in living organisms. A burnt poker does not fear the fire, however often it is made red-hot. On common-sense grounds, therefore, we shall say that “experience” is not coextensive with the “stuff” of the world. I do not myself see any valid reason for departing from common sense on this point.
Except in this matter of “experience,” I find myself in agreement with James’s radical empiricism.
It is otherwise with his pragmatism and “will to believe.” The latter, especially, seems to me to be designed to afford a specious but sophistical defence of certain religious dogmas–a defence, moreover, which no whole-hearted believer could accept.
The Will to Believe was published in 1896; Pragmatism, a New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking was published in 1907. The doctrine of the latter is an amplification of that of the former.
The Will to Believe argues that we are often compelled, in practice, to take decisions where no adequate theoretical grounds for a decision exist, for even to do nothing is still a decision. Religious matters, James says, come under this head; we have, he maintains, a right to adopt a believing attitude although “our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced.” This is essentially the attitude of Rousseau’s Savoyard vicar, but James’s development is novel.
The moral duty of veracity, we are told, consists of two coequal precepts: “believe truth,” and “shun error.” The sceptic wrongly attends only to the second, and thus fails to believe various truths which a less cautious man will believe. If believing truth and avoiding error are of equal importance, I may do well, when presented with an alternative, to believe one of the possibilities at will, for then I have an even chance of believing truth, whereas I have none if I suspend judgement.
The ethic that would result if this doctrine were taken seriously is a very odd one. Suppose I meet a stranger in the-train, and I ask myself: “Is his name Ebenezer Wilkes Smith?” If I admit that I do
-814-
not know, I am certainly not believing truly about his none; whereas, if I decide to believe that that is his name, there is a chance that I may be believing truly. The sceptic, says James, is afraid of being duped, and through his fear may lose important truth; “what proof is there,” he adds, “that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?” It would seem to follow that, if I have been hoping for years to meet a man called Ebenezer Wilkes Smith, positive as opposed to negative veracity should prompt me to believe that this is the name of every stranger I meet, until I acquire conclusive evidence to the contrary.
“But,” you will say, “the instance is absurd, for, though you do not know the stranger’s name, you do know that a very small percentage of mankind are called Ebenezer Wilkes Smith. You are therefore not in that state of complete ignorance that is presupposed in your freedom of choice.” Now strange to say, James, throughout his essay, never mentions probability, and yet there is almost always some discoverable consideration of probability in regard to any question. Let it be conceded (though no orthodox believer would concede it) that there is no evidence either for or against any of the religions of the world. Suppose you are a Chinese, brought into contact with Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity. You are precluded by the laws of logic from supposing that each of the three is true. Let us suppose that Buddhism and Christianity each has an even chance, then, given that both cannot be true, one of them must be, and therefore Confucianism must be false. If all three are to have equal chances, each must be more likely to be false than true. In this sort of way James’s principle collapses as soon as we are allowed to bring in considerations of probability.
It is curious that, in spite of being an eminent phychologist, James allowed himself at this point a singular crudity. He spoke as if the only alternatives were complete belief or complete disbelief, ignoring all shades of doubt. Suppose, for instance, I am looking for a book in my shelves. I think, “It may be in this shelf,” and I proceed to look; but I do not think, “It is in this shelf” until I see it. We habitually act upon hypotheses, but not precisely as we act upon what we consider certainties; for when we act upon an hypothesis we keep our eyes open for fresh evidence.
The precept of veracity, it seems to me, is not such as James thinks.
-815-
It is, I should say: “Give to any hypothesis which is worth your while to consider just that degree of credence which the evidence warrants.” And if the hypothesis is sufficiently important there is the additional duty of seeking further evidence. This is plain common sense, and in harmony with the procedure in the law courts, but it is quite different from the procedure recommended by James.
It would be unfair to James to consider his will to believe in isolation; it was a transitional doctrine, leading by a natural development to pragmatism. Pragmatism, as it appears in James, is primarily a new definition of “truth.” There were two other protagonists of pragmatism, F.C.S. Schiller and Dr. John Dewey. I shall consider Dr. Dewey in the next chapter; Schiller was of less importance than the other two. Between James and Dr. Dewey there is a difference of emphasis. Dr. Dewey’s outlook is scientific, and his arguments are largely derived from an examination of scientific method, but James is concerned primarily with religion and morals. Roughly speaking, he is prepared to advocate any doctrine which tends to make people virtuous and happy; if it does so, it is “true” in the sense in which he uses that word.
The principle of pragmatism, according to James, was first enunciated by C. S. Peirce, who maintained that, in order to attain clearness in our thoughts of an object, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve. James, in elucidation, says that the function of philosophy is to find out what difference it makes to you or me if this or that world-formula is true. In this way theories become instruments, not answers to enigmas.
Ideas, we are told by James, become true in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience: “An idea is ‘true’ so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives.” Truth is one species of good, not a separate category. Truth happens to an idea; it is made true by events. It is correct to say, with the interectualists, that a true idea must agree with reality, but “agreeing” does not mean “copying.” “To ‘agree’ in the widest sense with a reality can only mean to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it better than if we disagreed.” He adds that “the ‘true’ is only the expedient in the way of our thinking . . . in the long run and on the whole of course.”
-816-
In other words, “our obligation to seek truth is part of our general obligation to do what pays.”
In a chapter on pragmatism and religion he reaps the harvest. “We cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it.” “If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.” “We may well believe, on the proofs that religious experience affords, that higher powers exist and are at work to save the world on ideal lines similar to our own.”
I find great intellectual difficulties in this doctrine. It assumes that a belief is “true” when its effects are good. If this definition is to be useful–and
