 Hopefully, this should be familiar by now, if it's not, last chance, we're asking, we're trying to figure out what question James is trying to answer in this piece, and trying to figure out what his answer to the question is. So just to forestall any confusions, he is not trying to answer the question, what's sufficient evidence, right, or when do we have sufficient evidence for belief? He's not trying to do that. In fact, he doesn't really deal with evidence directly in this piece. Now he's still, although he, you know, he's not dealing with the question of what's sufficient evidence, right? Remember, we dealt with that with Clifford. But both James and Clifford are still trying to answer this question, to what beliefs are you entitled? What do you have the right to believe? And James has a pretty different answer than Clifford. So for starters, he's not saying that you are entitled only to those beliefs for which you have sufficient evidence. He's not doing that. That's what Clifford was doing. He's also not saying you can believe whatever you want to believe. He's not saying that either. There are some constraints on belief, right? Instead, what he says is this, like, look, if the belief is an option, is a genuine option, right, the option for belief is a genuine option, then you believe, act and believe as if the belief is true. You don't need to look for evidence, just believe. If it's not a genuine option, then you, you know, you avoid error. You withhold belief until you find evidence either way, until you find evidence either way. So, you know, if it's a genuine option, then you side with knowing the truth. If it's not a genuine option, then you side with avoiding error, right? You withhold belief, right? So this is following his two rules for rationality, right? These two rules that he talks about, we have two rules. We have the obligation to know the truth. We also have the obligation to avoid error. However, we can't follow both at the same time. If we follow avoid error to its extreme, we'll never be able to really believe anything, right? Think back to Descartes. We don't get to believe much. And even think back to Clifford, right? We don't get to believe much. If we avoid error all the time and think of all those problems that we had to deal with. On the other hand, we can't just know the truth all the time right now. If we did that, we believe everything, which is also equally absurd. So we have to, and we follow these two rules, but we have to know when one trumps the other. And this is when James gives his response like, look, if it's a genuine option, then you side with knowing the truth. But if it's not a genuine option, then you aside with avoiding error and you with whole belief. So now we're asking, whose two philosophical views is James trying to avoid here, right? He's trying to weave his way between two very different views. On the one hand is Clifford, right? We got Clifford on the one hand and Pascal on the other. So Clifford, if you recall from the last discussion, kind of restricted the beliefs to which you're entitled, right? You're entitled only to those beliefs that conform to the uniformity of nature and to the common human experience. But that leaves pretty much just mathematics and science. And I'm not saying math and science is bad. I'm not saying these conditions are bad, right? These conditions work really well when you deal with mathematics and science. But we really don't get a whole lot beyond that. Morality is gone, right? That discussion of morality is gone. Any kind of talk about divinity is gone. And whether this is divinity, right? I remember that last discussion. But which one, right? That's just gone. All kinds of beliefs, you know, politics, right? Politics, gone. Politics is very definitely gone. Art, gone. These things are all gone now because they don't conform to these two standards. So James wants to avoid that standard because, well, he wants to be able to keep knowledge of, you know, more fields besides mathematics and science. There's a lot more to the human experience than that. Not to mention the fact that Clifford's own conditions, well, they didn't meet his own conditions. So that's one hand. Clifford, you got Clifford on the one hand. On the other hand, you have Pascal. If you remember that discussion where I said in the video, Pascal is arguing that you should believe that there's a divinity regardless of any evidence. Because the consequences of being wrong are disastrous if there is a divinity and you don't believe. And the consequence of being wrong is not so bad if there isn't a divinity and you do in fact believe. This is Pascal's argument. Interestingly, Pascal doesn't cite any evidence for the existence of divinity or which he just kind of presumes it's either the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, and specifically Jesus of Nazareth and the Trinity and Christianity. He doesn't really consider anybody else. That's probably an issue. But Pascal is not dealing with any sort of evidence for divinity, just the consequences if you happen to be wrong. Now, Pascal argued you must believe in a divinity. And James said, look, hold on guys, let's calm down a little bit here. On the one hand, you have Clifford who says you must not believe in these things and Pascal saying you must believe in this thing. He wants to be able to try to find a way for somebody to be rational, for somebody to believe, and to avoid both of these very extreme views. He's trying to weave his way right in the middle. It's like, look, if somebody doesn't believe in a divinity, that's fine. If somebody does believe in a divinity, that's also fine. He's trying to figure out a way to do that. So James is telling us that when it's a genuine option, we should side with knowing the truth and believe. Kind of take the risk, right? But so the question is, well, what's a genuine option? Well, the genuine option is live, forced, and momentous. Live, forced, and momentous. So live, all that really means is that you're willing to consider evidence for the belief. That doesn't mean you actually believe it. That doesn't mean you have already withheld judgment of this point. No, you can, in fact, believe the opposite. You can believe something different, but still have the option is live. You don't have to, in fact, you can disbelieve something and it can be live. So for example, in my own case, astrology. Astrology is not a live option for me. Find no credible evidence, nor am I at the point where I think that the position of the stars in the heavens somehow determines my personality or my fate, right? Astrology is, for me, not live. I'm not willing to consider evidence for it. I mean, you could try if you like. You can go ahead and talk. Okay, but I pretty much don't care what you present to me, right? You're not going to persuade me that the position of the stars in the sky, the night I was born, the day I was born, what have you, somehow determines my fate. Other options are live, in my own case. So, for example, I don't think there's actually any life, any life, you know, say in the rest of the solar system, certainly the rest of the solar system, but the rest of the universe, right? I don't think there is any other life. And the reason is the chances are so tiny. The chances are so tiny. But if you were to provide evidence to me, right? Maybe my calculation of the chances is off. Okay, maybe, what, maybe we found some evidence of life under, we found satellites, man-made satellites around Venus, like, oh, wow, that's a surprise, right? Or not man-made, but alien-made satellites around Venus, like, wow, that's a huge shock. If you provide evidence, then sure, right, then I believe. So, astrology is not live for me. I don't care what evidence you provide, you're not going to persuade me of astrology. It's not like, but the existence of alien life, yeah, that is live, even though I don't believe that there's alien life. Presumably, right, if you believe something that's also live for you. It'd be strange to say, I believe there are trees behind me, but I'm not willing to consider evidence for it. Okay, that would be, that'd be strange. So that, that's live. All live means is that you are willing to consider evidence for the, for the proposed belief that doesn't mean you in fact believe it. That doesn't mean you don't believe the, you know, the opposite, right? That doesn't mean that everybody else considers it live, right? This is not a majority vote. Whether something is live is purely up to you, purely up to you. That's just you. The second condition for genuine option is that it's forced. And that means either that belief, you have to either believe one or the other, right? You actually believe one or the other. You can't accept both. You can't reject both. One or the other must be true or the other one is false. And logic speak, this is called contradictory. Um, it's an interesting question for James whether merely contrary beliefs, right? Just at both can't be true, right? That's what merely contrary means that both can be false, but they both can't be true. It's an interesting question of whether merely contrary ones can also be forced, but I'm not going to try and answer that here. Third condition for genuine options, if it's momentous, meaning that if the option is true, it has an impact on your life. Whether you believe it or not. So for example, I don't believe in astrology, but suppose it were true. Suppose it were true. So wow, that would be rather momentous because then my faith's determined by my date of birth. And maybe I ought to start reading the astrology column. I mean, if astrology is true, WTF, which of course means what the firmament? If astrology is true, I better figure out not only my astrological sign, because I think they just changed recently. But what that means for my fate, and I better start living according to that. Maybe I can maximize my chances if I live according to my fate. Now, just to be clear, since astrology is not live for me, it's not an option for me to believe. But it's nevertheless momentous, right? It's nevertheless momentous, because if it were true, I'd have a huge impact. So that's what it means to be genuine option. Live, it's forced, and it's momentous.