In “The Will To Believe”, William James is interested in three attributes of options: options can that are “living”, “forced” and “momentous”. The conception of “living” options is perhaps the most enigmatic of the three. On the surface, it seems to just be a criterion for options generally, not just “living” options. In other words, a “dead” hypothesis is not part of any option. If the choice is between A, B and C and C is a “dead” hypothesis, then the choice is between A and B. In this sense, all options are “living”, not just “genuine” options. But WJ is saying more than this. I contend that there are two criteria for “living” hypotheses (an “option” is between at least two “hypotheses”). One, the ideas must move you, they have some appeal, they must occupy your life and/or thought. And two, the ideas must be intellectually irresolvable -there are no “intellectual grounds” to justify upholding skepticism over faith, and vice-versa. Together, these are an accurate representation of what WJ has in mind.
WJ doesn’t give us a variety of examples of “living” options from which to devise a pattern. His most frequent example is religion and he also makes a few comments about the “living” status of scientific hypotheses. I would like to present another example that will fill out WJ’s picture. As late as the time of Galileo, there was no incontrovertible evidence for the Copernican theory over the Ptolemaic theory of the heavens and there was enough evidence to the contrary. These were two incompatible theories with no observational evidence, no “intellectual grounds”, to settle between the two. If you were a young astronomer looking for a team to join, both are legitimate and lawful options — they are both “living” options. In fact, WJ says such options between scientific paradigms are “not living for us spectators”. For those of us that aren’t cosmologists and other physicists, the theory of gravity is not a “living” option. I completely take gravity for granted and never think about it. But WJ also says “A chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent.” An idea or theory is “living” to the extent that your lived experience and action (including thoughts and feelings) is concerned with it. WJ’s paradigmatic case is the question of religious faith. Does God or even the thought of God shape your life? If yes, then it is a “living” option at the very least.
WJ says a “living” hypothesis is “a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed” (2). WJ doesn’t explicitly identify this as a definition, but I think this can be considered an adequate definition. A “real” possibility is different from a theoretical or statistical possibility. It is possible that oncoming cars may suddenly swerve in front of me, but I don’t worry about that when I’m walking down the street. And “living” hypotheses depend on whom to which it is proposed. What is “living” for you need not be “living” for me and anyone else. WJ says, “deadness and liveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the individual thinker”. But TWTB is not just a long-winded statement of his preference for religious faith and the option is up to each individual; he also argues that religious faith should be a “living” option for everyone else too. WJ is not explicit about this second point, but it is logically necessary for his argument. One part of this subtextual argument is his response to the charges William Kingdon Clifford and atheists, agnostics and skeptics general. Their charge is that the faithful violate a principle that I call the Clifford Principle (CP): One should never believe something without sufficient evidence/reason. Thus WJ describes his presentation as a “defense” and the prosecution is the Cliffords.
