Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The Will to Believe
In genuine options that cannot be settled on intellectual grounds, our passional and volitional nature must decide — and may legitimately decide for religious belief
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Will to Believe (Mid (between Principles of Psychology and Varieties of Religious Experience)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The Will to Believe
Personal-experiential time as the medium of belief-formation; truth is still in the making in the temporal unfolding of human experience.
Space
The Will to Believe
Ordinary embodied space; the social space of philosophical conversation as the setting of the essay's arguments.
Matter
The Will to Believe
Embodied human life as the substrate of belief, will, and experience.
Observer
The Will to Believe
The believing-deciding human — embodied, plural, both active in decision and passive in receiving evidence. Open to personal-providential framework.
Energy
The Will to Believe
The passional energies — desire, fear, hope, love — as legitimate factors in the formation of belief.
Information
The Will to Believe
Belief as the personal-evaluative integration of evidence and passional response; preserved through the conduct of life.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Will to Believe has been criticised since its first publication as licensing wishful thinking — C. S. Peirce, Bertrand Russell, and many contemporary epistemologists have raised the charge. James himself later regretted the title and said he should have called it "The Right to Believe." The relation between James's defence of faith in live options and the strict-evidentialist tradition (Clifford, Russell, Mackie, contemporary "new atheist" thought) remains a continuing dispute in philosophy of religion.