Seven Years Ago Today: A funny from Bertrand Russell

By Moristotle

[Originally published on October 25, 2010, not one word different, but a better photo of Mr. Russell has been substituted.]

My wife didn’t laugh when I read her the following excerpt from Bertrand Russell’s 1909 essay, “Pragmatism,” but I did, and I hope you might too:

A funny from Bertrand Russell

My wife didn't laugh when I read her the following excerpt from Bertrand Russell's 1909 essay, "Pragmatism," but I did, and I hope you might too:

The legitimate conclusion from [William James's] argument [that if we don't have the necessary information for deciding between, for example, "God exists" and "God doesn't exist," we ought to choose one anyway in order to have a 50% chance of being right] would be that, in such cases as William James has in mind, we ought to believe both alternatives; for in that case we are sure [emphasis mine] of "knowing" the truth in the matter. If it were said that to believe both is a psychological impossibility, we would rejoin that, on the contrary, it is often done, and that those who cannot yet do it need only to practice the "will to believe" until they have learnt to believe that the law of contradiction is false—a feat which is by no means as difficult as it is often supposed to be.

Who said philosophy couldn't be a barrel of laughs?
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Another passage a page further down:

To go about the world believing everything in the hope that thereby we shall believe as much truth as possible is like practicing polygamy in the hope that among so many we shall find someone who will make us happy.

Bertrand Russell was a great writer. Did you know that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950? Well, he was. "..."in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."

Being pragmatic about this

I've been buoyed today by comments on my post "Grave second thoughts." A theme of the post and of the comments is that good people acting as individuals can (or should try to) make the world a better place. Maliha, for example, speaks of "walking the walk" when it comes to religion:

The meaning of "walk the walk" goes beyond rituals...extending compassion, working for justice, and being commited to the spirit of the law as much as the law itself.

And after I admitted that I myself had been "tilting at windmills" with my impractical, idealistic proposal for a "new, consolidated Abrahamic religion," that thoughtful and compassionate blogger Scary Monster reminded me that

To dream and hope for the improvement of life is neither foolish nor a waste of time. It's the questions we ask ourselves and each other that will eventually bring things into balance.

In questioning the sources of my quixotic bent, I guessed that I might have been

motivated by my 1960s, Beatles desire to find a way for currently unreconciled groups to "come together now, love one another right now"....

And Maliha responded:

At the risk of sounding Hippy, I would like to see a "love" revolution, which will bring us closer to ourselves and to each other. I saw this saying (is it from the Bible?) on a church notice board once:

When the power of love overwhelms the love for power; only then peace will reign [she was paraphrasing].

I thought it was really gorgeous.

And, serendipity of serendipities! I investigated a new visitor to Moristotle who also commented on the post ("Jolene42") and discovered that her motto on her own blog is

When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have peace.

And she attributes it to Jimi Hendrix!

Anyway...

A little later, I was driving to pick up our poodle Wally at the groomer's and listening to R.W.B. Lewis's biography of the James family (The Jameses: A Family Narrative, pp. 562-563), when I heard this passage:

The whole contrast of the difference between pragmatism and rationalism, James then said [in Lecture VI on pragmatism at Columbia University in 1907], was now in sight (italics his):

The essential contrast is that for rationalism reality is ready-made and complete from all eternity, while for pragmatism it is still in the making, and awaits part of its complexion from the future. On the one side the universe is absolutely secure, on the other it is still pursuing its adventures.

In the closing lecture, William James enlarges on that last image of an adventurous universe. The grand issue arises of "the salvation of the world"; and as against the pessimists who declare it impossible and the optimists who think it inevitable, the pragmatist takes the view that the world's salvation is possible. The pragmatist, says James, believes that the world can be bettered, here and there, bit by bit, in patches—and this by the moral and intellectual actions of individual human beings. "Our acts, our turning-places, where we seem to ourselves to make ourselves and grow...why may they not be the actual turning-places and growing-places...of the world [italics added by Lewis]—why not the workshop of being, where we catch fact in the making, so that nowhere may the world grow in any other kind of way than this?"

And this brought me right back squarely up against one of the things that most struck me in Sam Harris's book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Religion: his attack on the philosophy of pragmatism was no less hard-hitting than his attack on religion. (Pragmatism, he said, is relativistic, but truth is truth.)

It is fitting that my circling back from Harris to reconnect with my belief "in Something that we know as God/Allah/or whatever other name" should circumscribe the enabling philosophy of William James.