On Jamesian ‘Passionally Caused Atheistic Belief’: a Reply to Cockayne and Warman

Sophia 60 (2):481-485 (2021)
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Abstract

Cockayne and Warman recently argued that William James’s argument as stated in his lecture ‘The Will to Believe’ can be reconstructed so as to justify a ‘passionately caused atheism.’ I will argue that this reading misses the important point of James’s argument, which is the attempt to show that our initial atheistic passional tendencies become untenable once we are aware of the beneficial consequences we might obtain from forming the belief that God exists.

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Alberto Oya
Universidade Nova de Lisboa

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References found in this work

The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy.William James - 1979 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers & Ignas K. Skrupskelis.
The varieties of religious experience. A Study in human Nature.William James - 1902 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 54:516-527.
The Will Not to Believe.Joshua Cockayne & Jack Warman - 2019 - Sophia 58 (3):511-523.

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