In the Absence of Evidence: Mill and James Against Hume’S “Of Miracles” in Conversation With Ancient Voices and Sacred Text

David hume’s arguments against miracles in an enquiry elicited a unique set of responses from fellow empiricists john stuart mill and william james. in james’ the will to believe and mill’s three essay’s on religion one finds a psychological, pragmatic, and utilitarian justification for the rationality of religious belief, which as j.b. shouse has observed, reflects hume’s own belief in enquiry that religious faith is best defended on the merits of faith as faith and not by evidence. this paper will unfold in three sections. first, it will explore the responses of mill and james against hume by summarizing hume’s arguments against miracles and surveying a sampling of evidential responses to hume. second, the paper will proceed to compare evidential responses to the psychological, pragmatic, and utilitarian justification of belief offered by mill and james. third, the paper will show how these arguments echo ancient and diverse voices such as socrates in the phaedo, blaise pascal in pensees, and as scholar m. shahid alam has argued persuasively, the qur’ān itself, which contains similar pragmatic arguments for belief and for something like the arguments from epistemic posture in pascal, james, and mill. the paper will endeavor to show that contrary to modern and contemporary philosophical attempts at evidential arguments for the rationality of belief which assume the evidential burden advocated by hume (and later clifford), the pragmatic, psychological, and utilitarian responses of mill and james have both a more ancient and diverse precedent as well contemporary appeal.the paper will endeavor to show that contrary to modern and contemporary philosophical attempts at evidential arguments for the rationality of belief which assume the evidential burden advocated by hume (and later clifford), the pragmatic, psychological, and utilitarian responses of mill and james have both a more ancient and diverse precedent as well contemporary appeal.