Belief without Verification or Certainty

[vulcanlogician]

I'm also inclined to think that "verified" may be on the strong side for what you're talking about. To me it has a nuance of certainty. 

If the passengers in the train have verified (by subtle communications among themselves, unheard by the robbers) that all will rise as one, then much less faith is required to act. 

I know you were making a point about degrees of certainty. But I just wanna add that I think the thought experiment wants us to accept that no such subtle communications have transpired. Perhaps one of the robbers bends down to tie his shoe. Now's your chance. You can subdue the one robber without him shooting you, but unless the rest of the passengers do their part.

You either have "faith" that the other passengers will act as you have, or you don't. "Faith" here meaning only that you act on something that you are not certain of. I suppose a good objection would be to ask, "What separates this from a calculated risk?" I'm not really sure James can answer that, and I'm all for exploring that question. I think your quote below is a good start in arguing in support of James:

At the simplest level, as has been pointed out, a total lack of faith means you won't even try. And if you don't try you're bound to fail. There has to be some adequate feeling that success is at least in the realm of possibility, and then the mere fact that you're making an effort raises the chances above 0%. But we have to factor in desire, also. If you think the chances are 10%, but you don't want it very much, then you might not make the effort. If you really really want it, you would surely increase the odds, just because you'd put in more effort. 

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I looked in the dictionary just now, and I see that the definitions for "verify" and "justify" are almost the same, except that it says a "justified decision" may be a "reasonable" one, not simply a proved one. To me, that's the space where it gets interesting -- what is reasonable, despite a lack of total verification. In what cases are we justified in going ahead when we have 51% confidence, rather than 99% confidence. 

Well, I may as well come out and say: I think James makes the case that some faith, even that of a religious sort, can be considered reasonable. I don't think this is too ambitious of a thesis. But it does challenge the notion that we ought only to believe that which has evidential support. Some hard-nosed atheists will make the claim that any belief or action made on insufficient evidence is foolhardy. If anything, James challenges them... even though I think most atheists already acknowledge what James is saying.

Also, I don't think this is very beneficial for our times. People undervalue skepticism these days. An anti-vaxxer can't really learn anything from James I don't think. I think James is most-appropriately read by people who know the value of skepticism and are ready to put the final nail in faith's coffin. For these folks, James's arguments are a good "Not so fast!" But for the general population, especially in these trying times, James's thesis can only be misunderstood.

The context in which James formulated his arguments was in the wake of Clifford's Ethics of Belief. Many people were swayed by Clifford's notion that it is unethical to act unless one can be reasonably sure of the outcome. We are always to suspend our judgments and actions until we have sufficient information. At the very least, I think James provides a decent refutation of Clifford. But it's possible that he achieves even more.