A central criticism of William James’s “The Will to Believe” is that it gives individuals a license for wishful thinking. There may be insufficient evidence with respect to the existence of God, but our willing to believe that God exists does not make it the case. Simply put, wanting something to be true does not make it true. Accordingly, some of James’s early critics proposed that the essay would have been more accurately titled “The Will to Deceive” or “The Will (...) to Make Believe.” More recently, a number of scholars have defended James’s essay from these charges of wishful thinking. According... (shrink)

Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Ahead of Print.

A longstanding assumption within higher education is that there is a clear link between argumentative writing and critical thinking. In this paper, I challenge this assumption. I argue that argumen...