Will and Belief

James' notion 'Will to Believe' is often regarded as conflicting with his Pragmatism. For, while the notion entails a leap of faith, without evidence, to the affirmation of the proposition 'God exists', the Pragmatist concept of Truth requires the verifiability of an assertion, the possibility of which seems lacking in James' expression of religious belief. His main defense, that that proposition is a working hypothesis, still does not explain how it can be tested, but, furthermore, it reflects a deeper problem for him--that while he and his pioneering colleagues have formulated a distinctive Pragmatist criterion of Truth, they, nevertheless, continue to accept, from a tradition from which they otherwise divergence, the concept of 'belief' as fundamentally truth-aspirational. In contrast, here, a Belief functions primarily as structurer of Will, i. e. it provides indeterminate Motility with organization, thereby resulting in concrete action. Thus, on this model, to believe that 'God exists' is to adopt it as a plan of conduct, one that might, e. g. influence how one treats others. So, a Belief, in this sense, can be evaluated in terms of, for example, effectiveness, but whether or not it is 'true' has no meaning in the context. Hence, Belief, as a determinant of Will, is more authentically pragmatic than a psychological state that aspires to Truth.