Philosophers often read ‘The will to believe’ as defending the substitution of non-epistemic reasons for inadequate epistemic reasons. I contend that a more charitable reading of James's argument is to understand him as proposing a contextualist account of the kind of evidence needed for responsible believing. On my reading, James claims that evidential support that might be insufficient in a purely theoretical context may be good enough when there is a pressing need to decide on a course of action.

Tom Carson’s recent paper on “Deception and Withholding Information in Sales” contains a critique of my contribution to sales ethics. In this response I outline the approach I develop in two earlier papers and address the four criticisms Carson makes. These criticisms are largely based on a misunderstanding of my position. I suggest that our fundamentally different approaches to applied ethics may lie at the root of Carson’s misunderstanding. Carson uses what I call a theory-application model in which the search for justification in terms of fundamental rules is central, while I attempt to contextualize ethical judgments and consider alternative ways of structuring social roles. In contrasting these approaches I raise the question of which way of doing applied ethics is likely to be more fruitful.