‘The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)’ is a 2013 electronic dance music song and viral video by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis. Brothers Vegard and Bård Ylvisåker produced the song and music video to promote the upcoming season of their television talk show ‘Tonight with Ylvis.’ Vegard was initially skeptical about making a song about a fox, but soon relented, saying in an interview:
‘The way we work is we just sit around and talk about things and get ideas and take some notes. I guess we must have been talking about what sound a fox makes. And then we had a chance to work with Stargate, a production company in New York City… We actually did a favor for them and we asked them if they could produce a song for the new season in exchange.’
The Fox
The Will to Believe
‘The Will to Believe‘ is a lecture by American philosopher and psychologist William James, first published in 1896, which defends, in certain cases, the adoption of a belief without prior evidence of its truth. In particular, James is concerned in this lecture about defending the rationality of religious faith even lacking sufficient evidence of religious truth.
James’ argument hinges on the idea that access to the evidence for whether or not certain beliefs are true depends crucially upon first adopting those beliefs without evidence. For example, it can be rational to have unsupported faith in one’s own ability to accomplish tasks that require confidence. Importantly, James points out that this is the case even for pursuing scientific inquiry. James then argues that like belief in one’s own ability to accomplish a difficult task, religious faith can also be rational even if one at the time lacks evidence for the truth of one’s religious belief.
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