Sources: The two lectures on James in the syllabus, this one and Lecture on William James's essay What is Pragmatism and the reading in The Continuing Quest, Pragmatism and Truth [Text 11], and the essay The Will to Believe avaialable as a a link in this lecture.

Your paper should have a clear thesis about the assigned material, with an organized, coherent, and well-reasoned defense of the thesis, along with a consideration of and response to relevant objections to your thesis and its argumentation, and a clear conclusion with a good summary of key argumentation which supports your conclusion and thesis.

In striving to write a reasonable paper for a philosophy essay, a student should avoid the following fallacies:

(1) the fallacy of appealing to emotions in which a student claims that one emotionally needs something or claims that one feels something in one's heart;

(2) the fallacy of appealing to tradition whether it be one's traditional religious belief or sacred scripture as a way of resolving a discussion; (this way of arguing is acceptable within your tradition of belief and sacred scripture, but not in a philosophy course based on shared human experiences and reasoned analysis and argument).

(3) the fallacy of appealing to authority such as God's almighty power that can do anything possible or God's infallible revelation or one's own conscience which is claimed to assure one that one's grasp of the truth is certain and without error; it is especially not a good argument to say that it is possible that God exists and therefore that it is reasonable to believe that God exists. When we are examining the argument in The Will to Believe, we are examining an inductive argument which attempts to establish with probability that its conclusion is true. In evaluating the logic of an inductive argument, seek to identify whether or not the conclusion would follow with proibability from the assumed truth of the premises. But do not argue that something is reasonably true because it might be possible. It is possible that I will win the lotto if I buy one ticket, but it is not reasonable either deductively or inductively to conclude that therefore I will win.

(4) the fallacy of appealing to threat of force such as God's power to damn non-believers; while such an argument might be given in some religious traditions, it is not appropriate in a philosophy course which is based on reasonable standards of fairness, justice, and reasonableness. There is something contradictory in claiming that the God of the Greatest Love would demand love from people under penalty of terrible harm. How can love threaten harm? Such a claimed love relationship on a human level would be recognized as abusive and as worthy of rejection.

(5) the fallacy of appealing to ignorance whereby a student claims that it is reasonable to believe in God or anything else because no one can prove that the student is wrong to believe so; one could just as well argue that leprechauns exist because no one can prove that leprechauns do not exist.

(6) the fallacy of accident whereby a student takes a good general principle but misapplies it accidentally to a case to which it should not be applied. For example, it is a good general principle to return things which one has borrowed when the owner asks for their return. However, it would be fallacious to argue that therefore,when one's friend is crazed with anger, one should return a borrowed automatic rifle. So also, it is a good general principle to have freedom of religious worship for all citizens as a first amendment right. However, it is fallacious to argue the political right to freedom of conscience in religon is itself a good reason philosophically to accept that God exists. Wheter or not God exists is a question for the examined way of life which is not to be settled as if it were a question of believing whatever people feel that they want to believe. the question is what is it reasonable to believe.

1. Define the following: hypothesis, live, option, living or dead, forced or avoidable, momentous or trivial, genuine?

2. Does James accept Pascal's wager argument? What is the wager argument?

3. Why does believing by volition seem vile?

4. What is the last sentence in section 2 which summarizes Clifford's viewpoint? What concept of rationality does Clifford assume?

5. How does James evaluate Clifford's position?

6. How is belief in truth itself something volitional?

7. What is James's thesis in section 4?

8. How does James reject skepticism in beginning of section 5? Go on to distinguish the empiricist way and the absolutist way of believing in truth.

9. Justify the distinction between "we must know the truth" and "we must avoid error." It may be necessary to develop examples.

10. In scientific questions and human affairs in general, why is the stronger commandment "we must avoid error"?

11. Why do moral questions present themselves such that the stronger commandment is "we must know the truth"?

12. What is the moral question about? (Section 9) How is the question of having moral beliefs decided?

13. What is the point of the example "Do you like me or not?" What do this and other examples similar to it prove for James?

14. What do science, morality, and religion say? (Section 10) Why is James wise to state the religious perspective in such a general manner?

15. How does James evaluate the religious hypothesis as an option? Discuss whether or not you agree with James's evaluation.

16. Why does religion appeal more than the abstract command of science to avoid error?

17. In concreto, what does freedom to believe cover?

1. Explain why James uses the phrase the right to believe. (That is, what is the purpose of the essay the Will to Believe?) -

2. What objection is raised against James in the second paragraph below based on the practice of scientific method? How would James respond?

3. In fact, how does the very adoption and success of scientific method support James's thesis of the right to believe?

4. So how does James treat religious belief?

5. Explain the two ways in which we approach the truth. In what kinds of cases are they each appropriate?

6. The question of religious truth is what kind of case for James? Why?

7. Explain whether the situation of religious faith vs. rejection of religious faith by those who limit themselves to what science can discover is the emotion of the believer vs. the reason of the scientist or whether there arte both reason and emotion on both sides of the issue.

8. For the material added from Varieties of Religious Experience: how does James evaluate mystical experiences?

9. Can you develop examples of the five characteristics of religion?

10. What is James' statement of the religious hypothesis in Varieties of Religious Experience? Is this psychologically real? See link below to find out why James believes that there is more than psychogical tuth to this religious hypothesis.

11. How does the will to believe fit into the overall conversion process?

Perhaps James's most famous essay is "The Will to Believe.: Critics of the essay ridiculed it as the will to deceive and the will to make-believe. In response, James wrote that he should have entitled it The Right to Believe. For it is "an essay in justification of faith, a defense of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical or scientific intellect may not have been coerced." By faith, James means belief (strong enough to determine action) in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible."

Some philosophers would say that the model to be imitated in philosophy is the scientific method, a method in which the scientist does not introduce subjectivity and personal prejudices. For the scientist impartially observes and records all the details that occur. The scientific knower in observation is claimed to be like a spectator at a movie, passively recording only the facts. The scientist brings no value judgments to the description of the world and does not explain things as better or worse. Rather the scientist accurately describes the sensible data and tries to explain how they happen by developing a hypothesis from which those data can be predicted as well as other data. This hypothesis is tested experimentally under controlled conditions that any trained scientist can replicate.

But James would argue that the scientist is not an impartial oberver of the world. The scientist makes observations with the assumption that they show orderly patterns of behavior. The scientist assumes that natural events follow laws of nature. Not all cultures have made this assumption. Early cultures explained events in nature by saying that some events were caused by supernatural good spirits and other events by bad spirits. And the spirits could fight at whim among themselves. Such cultures did not believe that there was one order to nature, namely, that all natural events follow the same laws of nature.

Hence, when the scientist makes observations trying to find the laws of nature, the scientist is not being impartial but is observing from a particular point of view., namely the scientific point of view. This view assumes that there are general laws of nature and that they are best investigated by searching for observable, quantifiable results. This scientific point of view has had tremendous success. Laws of nature have been discovered. It is the basis of the industrial, technological age for practically every culture. But does science exhaust all that there is to be found in the world?

In reflecting on the scientist's procedure, James would point out that the early scientists such as Aristotle in biology and Galileo in physics deliberately adopted the scientific point of view and then gradually had success in discovering that the world responded to that point of view and revealed some of its secrets. If the earliest scientists had not chosen to try out their view of the world, then the sciences would not exist today. Hence, the willingness to believe in an idea, a view of the world, is part of the process of discovering whether the world responds to that idea, whether that idea is true.

So James argues that this understanding of how assumptions about the world guide our study of the world can be used to support the individual's right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters even though the evidence is not clear and forceful to our strictly scientific and deductive modes of thought. For the deductive mode of thought and the experimental mode of thought neglect our moral mode of thought.

What James does is to treat religious belief as an hypothesis in order to discover if it has experiential consequences for our moral lives. Just as we verify the scientific hypothesis, that the world is a natural order, by discovering laws of nature in our experiments and observations, so also James attempts to verify the religious hypothesis by discovering experientially the practical effects of this hypothesis in our moral life.

Before James gets to the testing of the religious hypotheses, he considers the two basic ways in which we approach truth. He writes:

We must know the truth: and we must avoid error-these are our first and great commandments as would be knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are two separate laws. Although it may indeed happen that when we believe the truth A we escape as an incidental consequence from believing falsehood B, it hardly ever happens that by merely disbelieving B we necessarily believe A.

When the opportunity between losing truth and gaining truth is able to be repeated, when the chance is not momentous, we should follow the commandment of avoiding believing in falsehood. Most opportunities in life and most scientific questions are not momentous. We do not have to take risks to gain truths. We can wait for more evidence; we can perform the experiment again and make more observations. If our first choice of college does not work out, then we can choose another college. If our first job doesn't work out, then we can choose another job. In general, avoiding falsehood is more important in our lives than taking risks for truth. But there are some opportunities in life that are momentous. In such cases, if we fail to take a risk for truth, then we may never find that truth. Friendship opportunities, marriage opportunities may be momentous. Unless we take the risk of believing that others will be our friends or that the person we are dating will fall in love with us, then we may never achieve friendship with others and never marry that person. In contrast, the scientific attitude emphasizes avoiding falsehood since it can always wait for more evidence.

However, the religious question, James claims, is one in which the primary commandment is to seek the truth since it is a momentous occasion. Some people would object that the religious question is not momentous since it can be postponed. But James believes that inevitably the question will become momentous since we cannot live on this earth forever. Perhaps the crucial time comes at one's own death or that of a loved one; perhaps the crucial time comes when one's world is falling apart or when one's world is coming to a joyous summation. But some time will come and the individual will have to decide.

"The freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve."

"To preach scepticism to us as a duty until 'sufficient evidence' for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in the presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to hope that it may be true."

This situation is not the cold reason of the scientific attitude versus the emotional nature of the religious believer. Rather, it is one of the emotion of hope that the human individual is better off without belief in God with some reasoning supporting that view versus the hope that one is better off to believe in God with reasoning supporting that view. I have stated the two positions as one hope versus another hope. James himself states the two positions as one of fear of believing falsehood versus one of hope of gaining truth by taking risks. Perhaps different people have to describe their opinions in the religious question in terms of one hope versus another or in terms of fear versus hope. How each person understand the alternatives in terms of reason and emotion has a significant effect upon one's decision to believe or not to believe in the religious hypothesis.

James attempts to state the religious hypothesis in Varieties of Religious Experience, in a way which states the essential matter of religion. By doing so, James attempts to avoid an ethnocentric religious belief. In his famous book, James studies the varieties of mystical and religious experiences of many individuals with a view towards distilling a general hypothesis about mystical experience and also one about religious belief.

In regard to mystical experiences, James concludes:

1. Mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the right to be absolutely authoritative over individuals to whom they come. [For such experiences appear to be direct awareness of 'the mystical object'. The experience is not like a dream in being disorderly and unable to relate to normal experience but rather stays with the experiencer when he confronts everyday reality, helping to make sense out of one's total life experience. Also such an experience withstands thorough questioning in the example James refers to.]

2. No authority emanates from mystical experiences which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically. [For mystics do not have the same experiences, nor do they interpret them the same even if some of their experience is the same. Also, drug-related experience is similar to religious experience, and James wonders if religious experience is just subjective.]

[3. Although mystical experiences are similar to drug-induced experiences and to hallucinations, James yet argues that mystical experiences break down the strict scientific view of knowledge which limits knowledge claims to the experimental method and facts observed through the five senses. James argues that mystical experiences suggest the possibility of a truth different from the scientific. Mystical states do not deny the ordinary evidences that we experience--they do not deny the usual scientific explanations. What they do is add another dimension to facts and theories already known. Mystical states are like the emotion of love which places ordinary things and persons in an extraordinary relationship to the lover. Therefore, the scientific view cannot simply ignore or deny what the mystics claim to experience. The true scientific spirit is to treat mystical claims as hypotheses which can be tested in relation to all our experience both sensible, aesthetic and moral, and to our knowledge of human nature in the social sciences (psychology especially) and of nature in the physical sciences.] See Mysticism in Varities of Religious Experience

Mystical experiences are rare, and James makes this summary of five characteristics which would apply to the religious life of most religious believers:

1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance.

2. That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end.

3. That prayer of inner communion with the spirit thereof--be that spirit God or law--is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.

4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism.

5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and in relation to others a preponderance of loving affections. See Summary of Religious Characteristics from Varieties of Religious Experience

With these five characteristics in mind, James states the religious hypothesis in the following way:

1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand. (moral wrongness)

2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.

The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticizes it, is to that extent consciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a most helpless germ. With which part he should identify his real being is by no means obvious at this stage; but when stage 2 arrives the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself and he does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is coterminous with and continuous with a more of the same quality which is operative in the universe outside of him and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck.

All this is psychology; it really happens. The question arises as to whether this move is objectively there or only subjectively needed, imagined. See Its simplest terms are an uneasiness and a deliverance; description of the deliverances

Now there are two forms of mental occurrence in human beings, which lead to a striking difference in the conversion process, a difference to which Professor Starbuck has called attention. You know how it is~when you try to recollect a forgotten name. Usually you help the recall by working for it, by mentally running over the places, persons, and things with which the word was connected. But sometimes this effort fails: you feel then as if the harder you tried the less hope there would be, as though the name were iammed, and pressure in its direction only kept it all the more from rising. And then the opposite expedient often succeeds. Give up the effort entirely; think of something altogether different and in half an hour the lost name comes sauntering into your mind, as Emerson says, as carelessly as if it had never been invited. Some hidden process was started in you by the effort, which went on after the effort ceased, and made the result come as if it came spontaneously. A certain music teacher, says Dr. Starbuck, says to her pupils after the thing to be done has been clearly pointed out, and unsucessfully attempted: "Stop trying and it will do itself!"

There is thus a conscious and voluntary way and an involuntary and unconscious way in which mental results may get accomplished; and we find both ways exemplified in the history of conversion, giving us two types, which Starbuck calls the volitional type and the type bv self-surrender respectively.

In the volitional type the regenerative change is usually gradual, and consists in the building up, piece by piece, of a new set of moral and spiritual habits. But there are always critical points here at which the movement forward seems much more rapid. This psychological fact is abundantly illustrated by Dr. Starbuck. Our education in any practical accomplishment proceeds apparently by jerks and starts, just as the growth of our physical bodies does.

"An athlete...sometimes awakens suddenly to an understanding of the fine points of the game and to a real enjoyment of it, just as the convert awakens to an appreciation of religion. If he keeps on engaging in the sport, there may come a day when all at once the game plays itself through him--when he loses himself in some great contest. In the same way, a musician may suddenly reach a point at which pleasure in the technique of the art entirely falls away, and in some moment of inspiration he becomes the instrument through which music flows. The writer has chanced to hear two different married persons, both of whose wedded lives had been beautiful from the beginning, relate that not until a year or more after marriage did they awake to the full blessedness of married life. So it is with the religious experience of these persons we are studying."

Of the volitional type of conversion it would be easy to give examples, but they are as a rule less interesting than those of self-surrender type, in which the subconscious effects are more abundant and often startling. I will therefore hurry to the latter, the more so because the difference between the two types is after all not radical. Even in the most voluntarily built-up sort of regeneration there are passages of partial self-surrender inteposed; and in the great majority of all cases, when the will had done its uttermost towards bringing one close to the complete unification aspired after, it seems that the very last step must be left to other forces and performed without the help of its activity. In other words, self-surrender becomes then indispensable. "The personal will," says Dr. Starbuck, must be given up. In many cases relief persistently refuses to come until the person ceases to resist, or to make an effort in the direction he desires to go.

• "I had said I would not give up; but when my will was broken, it was all over," writes one of Starbuck's correspondents.
• Another says: "I simply said: 'Lord, I have done all I can; I leave the whole matter with Thee;' and immediately there came to me a great peace."
• Another: "All at once it occurred to me that I might be saved, too, if I would stop trying to do it all myself, and follow Jesus: somehow I lost my load."
• Another: "I finally ceased to resist, and gave myself up, though it was a hard struggle. Gradually the feeling came over me that I had done my part, and God was willing to do his."
• "Lord, Thy will be done; damn or save!"cries John Nelson, exhausted with the anxious struggle to escape damnation; and at that moment his soul was filled with peace.

Dr. Starbuck gives an interesting, and it seems to me a true, account--so far as conceptions so schematic can claim truth at all--of the reasons why self-surrender at the last moment should be so indispensable. To begin with, there are two things in the mind of the candidate for conversion: first, the present incompleteness or wrongness, the "sin" which he is eager to escape from; and, second, the positive ideal which he longs to compass. Now with most of us the sense of our present wrongness is a far more distinct piece of our consciousness than is the imagination of any positive ideal we can aim at. In a majority of cases, indeed, the "sin" almost exclusively engrosses the attention, so that conversion is "a process of struggling away from sin rather than of striving towards riqhteousness." A man's conscious wit and will, so far as they strain towards the ideal, are aiming at something only dimly and inaccurately imagined. Yet all the while the forces of mere organic ripening within him are going, on towards their own prefigured result, and his conscious strainings are letting loose subconscious allies behind the scenes, which in their way work towards rearrangement; and the rearrangement towards which all these deeper forces tend is pretty surely definite, and definitely different from what he consciously conceives and determines. It may consequently be actually interfered with jammed, as it were, like the lost word when we seek too energetically to recall it), by his voluntary efforts slanting from the true direction.

Starbuck seems to put his finger on the root of the matter when he says that to exercise the personal will is still to live in the region where the imperfect self is the thing most emphasized. Where, on the contrary, the subconscious forces take the lead, it is more probably the better self tn posse [in potential] which directs the operation. Instead of being clumsily and vaguely aimed at from without, it is then itself the organizing centre. What then must the person do? "He must relax," says Dr. Starbuck, "That is, he must fall back on the larger Power that makes for righteousness, which has been welling up in his own being, and let it finish in its own way the work it has begun...The act of yielding, in this point of view, is giving one's self over to the new life, making it the centre of a new personality, and living, from within the truth of it which has before been viewed objectively."

"Man's extremity is God's opportunity" is the theological way of putting this fact of the need of self-surrender; whilst the physiological way of stating it would be, "Let one do all in one's power, and one's nervous system will do the rest." Both statements acknowledge the same fact.

To state it in terms of our own symbolism: When the new centre of personal energy has been subconsciously incubated so long as to be just ready to open into flower, "hands off" is the only word for us, it must burst forth unaided!

We have used the vague and abstract language of psychology. But since, in any terms, the crisis described is the throwing of our conscious selves upon the mercy of powers which, whatever they may be, are more ideal than we are actually, and make for our redemption, you see why self-surrender has been and always must be regarded as the vital turning-point of the religious life, so far as the religious life is spiritual and no affair of outer works and ritual and sacraments. One may say that the whole development of Christianity in inwardness has consisted in little more than the greater and greater emphasis attached to this crisis of self-surrender. From Catholicism to Lutheranism, and then to Calvinism; from that to Wesleyanism; and from this, outside of technical Christianity altogether, to pure "liberalism" or transcendental idealism, whether or not of the mind-cure type, taking in the medieval mystics, the quietists, the pietists, and quakers by the way, we can trace the stages of progress towards the idea of an immediate spiritual help, experienced by the individual in his forlorness and standing in no essential need of doctrinal apparatus or propitiatory machinery.

Psychology and religion are thus in perfect harmony up to this point, since both admit that there are forces seemingly outside of the conscious individual that bring redemption to his life. Nevertheless psychology, defining these forces as "subconscious," and speaking of their effects, as due to "incubation," or "cerebration," implies that they do not transcend the individual's personality, and herein she diverges from Christian theology, which insists that they are direct supernatural operations of the Deity. I propose to you that we do not yet consider this divergence final, but leave the question for a while in abeyance; continued inquiry may enable us to get rid of some of the apparent discord.

Revert, then, for a moment more to the psychology of self-surrender.

When you find a man living on the ragged edge of his consciousness, pent in to his sin and want and incompleteness, and consequently inconsolable, and then simply tell him that all is well with him, that he must stop his worry, break with his discontent, and give up his anxiety, you seem to him to come with pure absurdities. The only positive consciousness he has tells him that all is not well, and the better way you offer sounds simply as if you proposed to him to assert coldblooded falsehoods. "The will to believe" cannot be stretched as far as that. We can make ourselves more faithful to a belief of which we have the rudiments, but we cannot create a belief out of whole cloth when our perception actively assures us of its opposite. The better mind proposed to us comes in that case in the form of a pure negation of the only mind we have, and we cannot actively will a pure negation.

There are only two ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or other undesirable affections. One is that an opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, and the other is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop--so we drop down, give up, and don't care any longer. Our emotional brain-centres strike work, and we lapse into a temporary apathy. Now there is documentary proof that this state of temporary exhaustion not infrequently forms part of the conversion crisis. So long as the egoistic worry of the sick soul guards the door, the expansive confidence of the soul of faith gains no presence. But let the former faint away, even but for a moment, and the latter can profit by the opportunity, and, having once acquired possession may retain it. Carlyle's Teufelsdrockh passes from the everlasting No to the everlasting Yes through a "Centre of Indifference."

Let me give you a good illustration of this feature in the conversion process. That genuine saint, David Brainerd, describes his own crisis in the following words:

One morning while I was walking in a solitary place as usual, I at once saw that all my contrivances and projects to effect or procure deliverance and salvation for myself were utterly in vain; I was brought quite to a stand, as finding myself totally lost. I saw that it was forever impossible for me to do anything towards helping or delivering myself, that I had made all the pleas I ever could have made to all eternity, and that all my pleas were vain, for I saw that self-interest had led me to pray, and that I had never once prayed from any respect to the glory of God. I saw that there was no necessary connection between my prayers and the bestowal of divine mercy; that they laid not the least obligation upon God to bestow his grace upon me; and that there was no more virtue or goodness in them than there would be in my paddling with my hand in the water. . . . When I saw evidently that I had regard to nothing but self-interest, then my duties appeared a vile mockery and a continual course of lies, for the whole was nothing but self-worship, and an horrid abuse of God.

I continued, as I remember, in this state of mind, from Friday morning till the Sabbath evening following, when I was walking again in the same solitary place. Here, in a mournful melancholy state I was attempting to pray; but found no heart to engaqe in that or any other duty; mv former concern, exercise, and religious affections were now gone. I thouqht that the Spirit of God had quite left me; but still was not distressed; vet disconsolate, as if there was nothing in heaven or earth could make me happy. Having been thus endeavorina to pray -- though as I thought, very stupid and senseless -- for near half an hour; then, as I was walking in a think grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the apprehension of my soul. I do not mean any external brightness, nor any imagination of a body of light, but it was a new inward apprehension or view that I had of God, such as I never had before, nor anything which had the least resemblance to it. . . . My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency of God that I was even swallowed up in him; at least to that degree that I had no thought about my own salvation. . . . If I could have been saved by my own duties or any other way that I had formerly contrived, my whole soul would now have refused it. I wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of salvation, entirely by the righteousness of Christ.

I have italicized the passage which records the exhaustion of the anxious emotion hitherto habitual. In a large proportion, perhaps the majority, of reports, the writers speak as if the exhaustion of the lower and the entrance of the higher emotion were simultaneous, yet often again they speak as if the higher actively drove the lower out. This is undoubtedly true.

Describing the whole phenomenon as a change of equilibrium, we might say that the movement of new psychic energies towards the personal centre and the recession of old ones towards the personal centre and the recession of old ones towards the margin . . . were only two ways of describing an indivisible event. Doubtless this is often absolutely true, and Starbuck is right when he says that "self-surrender" and "new determination," though seeming at first sight to be such different experiences, are "really the same thing. Self-surrender sees the change in terms of the old self; determination sees it in terms of the new." LECTURE IX: CONVERSION from The Varieties of Religious Experience

LINKS

• William James The Varieties of Religious Experience
• Marc Fonda's Notes on William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
• Links to Religion Sites (Excellent General Links to all World Religions and Psychology of Religion Links such Jung, Adler)
• HUSTON SMITH, Ph.D. The Psychology of Religious Experience
• Psychology of Religion Page with Links to the Followling Items
• Notable People in Psychology of Religion. [What a few influential psychologists have had to say about religion.]
• Resources in Psychology of Religion. [Books, journals and organizations that will help your study psychology and religion.]
• William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience . [The classic text, in its entirety, with links to topics in each chapter.]
• Psychology and religion course syllabi. [A growing collection of psychology and religion course syllabi, from several colleges and universities.]
• Journal Index. [The Table of Contents from selected journals devoted to psychology and religion.]
• Graduate Study in Psychology of Religion. [How to study psychology of religion in grad school. Also contains a list of psychologists with whom you might study religion.]
• Psychology of Religion's Future. [Four well-respected psychologists describe their thoughts on the future of the discipline.]
• Links to Related Sites. [Connections to sites related to psychology and religion, and a list of related email discussion groups ... but I do hope you look around here a while before leaving!]
• New Religious Movements
• A copy of the Heaven's Gate website. [A copy of their website, with a few comments from me.]
• The SSSR Statement on NRMs. [Read the official view of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion regarding brainwashing and coercion in new religious movements.]
• Claims of Child Abuse in a New Religious Movement. [An interesting story about child abuse in a religious group.
• A verdict in a "cult deprogramming" kidnapping case. [The results of a trial of people who tried to rescue someone from a religious group.]
• Science and Religion
• Methods of Research in Psychology of Religion. [Read this to find out how psychologists use science to study people's religiousness.]
• Psychologists discuss their views on science and religion. [A transcript of an email discussion about religion and science.
• William James Biography
• William James, "Pluralism, Pragmatism, and Instrumental Truth"
• William James, Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy
• John Dewey. Democracy and Education. 1916. Chapter Twenty-five: Theories of Knowledge
• William James Writ Large: Excellent commentary by Jonathan Schull
• William O'Meara's World of Philosophy & Religion

If you have comments or suggestions, email me at omearawm@jmu.edu