Hello Panopticon,
James was merely saying that we are creatures of passion and sometimes have to make decisions that are consistent with our emotions.
I don't think so, he was saying much more than that. Also the Victorian use of "passions" doesn't translate to mere "emotions" as we use the term today, it would include moral choices, intuitions etc... whereas today's rationality usually incorporates those within itself. Neither James or Clifford would reduce a belief or choice to mere emotion. They agreed there.
What both James and Clifford overlook is the fact that we cannot choose to believe something. Our belief automatically scales to the evidence. Of course, different people weigh evidence differently, but it is impossible to believe in something that you know to be false.
I think you misunderstand both of them because neither overlooks the ability for us to choose, Clifford insists, in his ship-owner story, the captain is morally responsible because he let his beliefs be guided by things other than the evidence by his failure to inspect. It was actions that were deplorable to Clifford and that came from failing to obtain evidence. Clifford agrees that even if beliefs are fixed or outside our faculties control that we can control action and that we have duties to act in certain ways that will automatically come when comporting with evidence, so check the ship before it hails to sea for example even if someone doesn't believe there is anything wrong. But he thinks if the belief came about without relying on good evidence then holding the belief is open to moral criticism. The biggest initial problem is - what is the evidence for holding our beliefs only with good evidence?
Clifford also recognizes that belief isn't just a private matter. He uses the analogy of an heirloom that beliefs are like. They are passed on in our language - but if we are careless about the evidence for those heirlooms we become careless about the truth - again action. He would agree that if we know the evidence the belief is axiomatic.
What we can choose to do is "profess" to believe in something, but that simply means that many of us are liars.
I don't think so. They both really talked past each other but James was more properly broad to the wide scope of how we form beliefs. He agreed with Clifford that if evidence is in accord with a belief the belief is properly formed and that whenever practically possible we should seek the truth through the evidence Clifford suggests (which was scientific) he was scientist himself. James suggested that in totality and in certain circumstances (the most meaningful to us) an axiom of withdraw until all the evidence is in, or an agnostic/weak atheist position is just as problematic as failing to obtain evidence. For example if one puts off marriage until they are certain from evidence that it will work out they could very well lose the option to marry to loved one. Today's weak atheists by the very axiom they stand on risk gaining truth, while believers risk error. He believed and I concur that there are "worse things in the world than being duped". That it is better to risk error and gain truth than risk losing truth. James issued that personal knowledge is often all one can go on. But that is much different than mere emotion. For instance I have often used the example of Einstein, he formulated relativity intuitionally and before all the evidence was in and in face of those rationalists that declared it wrong because of the lack of evidence. The evidence came later in the form of verification, but the truth was discovered prior to.
my regards, mikwut
All communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.
-Michael Polanyi
"Why are you afraid, have you still no faith?" Mark 4:40