In Andrew Brown's opinion, "there is one passage in William James's The Will to Believe which simply annihilates the evidence daleks". The talk of annihilation is premature.
In his essay, James attacked WK Clifford, the English mathematician and philosopher, who had argued in the late 1870s that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence". Some will no doubt jump to the conclusion that Clifford's views are the same as the views proclaimed by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion. They both say that over-believing relative to the available evidence has bad consequences.
But Clifford was far better at doing philosophy than Dawkins is. Dawkins ignores the possibility that we can make sure that there will be no bad consequences before we believe and the possibility that the good consequences of over-believing outweigh the bad ones. Clifford did not.
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