 Although he disagrees with Clifford about the justifiability of believing without conclusive proof, James appears to share Clifford’s view that – at least in certain cases – belief is subject to the will (hence the title of his essay). In other words, James’s argument in “The Will to Believe,” like Pascal’s wager argument, seems to imply some version of doxastic voluntarism. But depending on how this latter notion is understood, certain worries may here arise. If belief is understood as a function of one’s total epistemic situation, rather than an independent judgment which that situation might or might not warrant, then James’s analogy between believing and entering into a relationship appears problematic: only the latter is subject to direct voluntary control. Of course, believing is subject to indirect voluntary control. In other words, one can change one’s beliefs by changing one’s epistemic circumstances; the latter, even if not the former, are susceptible to direct control by the will. James himself acknowledges that, in the vast majority of cases, beliefs are not modifiable at will: “Can we, by just willing it, believe that Abraham Lincoln’s existence is a myth, and that the portraits of him in McClure’s Magazine are all of someone else? Can we, by any effort of our will, or by any strength of wish that it were true, believe ourselves well and about when we are roaring with rheumatism in bed, or feel certain that the sum of the two one-dollar bills in our pocket must be a hundred dollars?” (4–5) James appears to take the position that it is only with respect to live hypotheses that the will can play a role.