“A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I say to you: ‘Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan,’ it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: ‘Be an agnostic or be Christian,’ it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.”
-William James, “The Will to Believe”
On a first reading, at least, “The Will to Believe” strikes me as offering some very useful terms for any kind of inter-traditional conversation. That is, when I am approached by, say, Mormon missionaries, I want to be able to tell them, “Listen, I am sorry, but I see no way in which your propositions will be living hypotheses for me. Would you still like to talk?” And then we could talk. (Of course, they are actually trying to convince me that Mormonism should be a living hypothesis, but the term seems to capture in two words what it usually takes a minor monologue for me to express.)
This distinction between living and dead options lets us further distinguish between describing what it is like to face such choices and actually trying to get someone to make such a choice. So if I know that Christianity is not a living hypothesis for you, I can describe my own situation without assuming that you face the same choice. This is something we very often do implicitly, but it's good to have a phrase for it.
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2 comments:
Does this "living option" distinction make evangelism somewhat pointless? Perhaps I don't yet understand the term fully, but as I see it, saying that Islam is not a living option for me means either that I have considered its claims, and rejected them, or that I am living in willful ignorance. Is there a third possibility?
Not at all—there is no rule against trying to demonstrate that a hypothesis should be alive for a particular person.
An obvious example: a friend owns a business, and is thoroughly convinced that his assistant can be trusted. To doubt his assistant's loyalty would not enter his mind. But I am aware that his assistant is actually stealing from him. I should probably find a way to demonstrate the reality of the assistant's duplicity, but I should also be aware of the pain it will cause my friend to confront this sort of doubt.
At another point in the essay, James says, “As a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use.” There are some hypotheses we have tried and found useless, and some that we feel no pressing need to try. Others, we consider.
So there's nothing that prohibits Mormons from trying to convert me, or me from trying to convert them. It's just that I'd like to let them know it's a long shot.
(And do I even need to say that it is beauty lived out in the form of the Church that is best able to awaken the desire for the gospel, to create a living hypothesis where there was none before...?)
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