The essay below originally appears as Chapter 3 of Ted Lasso and Philosophy.

Ted Talk, Precursive Faith, and the Ethics of Belief

David Baggett

Like a candy bar little Ronnie Fouch offers you on the playground, Ted Lasso is so much more than meets the eye. But in a good way. This is definitely a treat you’ll want to eat, but it’s not mere junk food. For a show so easy to watch, usually light and lots of fun, it contains enough food for thought you’ll think you had two entrees. An important example is the way Ted believes in people. Indeed, belief is a central motif of the show and a wonderfully rich philosophical concept.

Belief in Belief

Ted Lasso is a believer. He believes in belief, hopes in hope. Rather than tending toward doubt, Ted’s default is belief, belief in all sorts of things. Even spirit guides and aliens. When asked if he believes in ghosts, he affirms that he does, though adding it’s more important “they believe in themselves.” Rebecca’s stymied response of incomprehension and incredulity is priceless.

Of course this is a joke, but a telling one. Ted shifts there from believing that, propositional knowledge, to believing in, which includes but goes beyond the factual. To believe in something calls to mind a positive disposition, an expectation of good things, for the believer and for others. Without being blind to corruption or cruelty, Ted is adamant about believing in the best of people, making him relentless in his kindness and resilient in the face of opposition. From the start Ted shows a positive expectation for winning, success, and good results. Unfazed by Roy’s disdain, he tells Beard, “If he’s mad now, wait until we win him over” (“Pilot”). Winning in one form or another—winning games, winning even if outscored, winning over people—is Ted’s default attitude.

Even the posters Ted prominently displays on his office walls herald success in the face of daunting odds. Muhammed Ali’s iconic knockout of Sonny Liston in the rematch after the underdog defeated the seasoned champion in their first bout. The 1980 “Miracle on Ice” in which the US Men’s Hockey team defeated the heavily favored Soviet squad. Jimmy Valvano’s 1983 NC State surprise win over Houston in the NCAA Men’s Tournament, one of the greatest upsets in college basketball history. And James Buster Douglas’s 1990 David-versus-Goliath knockout of Mike Tyson.

Ted envisions winning, cultivates a positive attitude of expectancy, and anticipates success—in games and in his relationships with his players. He recognizes that in order to win, or at least to have a realistic shot at winning, we typically need to be able to envision victory clearly and distinctly, to cop a phrase from Descartes (1596-1650).

Ted combines unrelenting optimism with a self-help regimen of envisioning the possible. Watching him is a little like watching Mister Rogers as a soccer coach, an intentional decision by Jason Sudeikis. Roy coaching little girls not so much, especially with pesky concerns about brain development and all. From the first episode, the importance of believing in oneself is on full display with Ted’s quiet self-assurance and laudable courage in the face of chronic condescension and a chorus of derogatory epithets.

Ted’s resilient and charming optimism might be thought to err on the side of credulity, if not wishful thinking. It’s practically Pollyannaish, some might think, and intellectually irresponsible for Ted’s convictions to go beyond the available evidence. His faith might be thought of as vision impaired, if not downright blind. Let’s consider such a case.

The Ethics of Belief

In “The Ethics of Belief,” an article famous for being almost famous, the mathematician and philosopher W. K. Clifford (1845–1879) advocates for an “evidentialist” conviction: One should believe only those propositions that there’s sufficient evidence for.[1] On this analysis, the strength of one’s beliefs should match the amount of evidence for its truth. Propositions without enough evidence should not be believed at all.

Imagine a shipowner is about to send a ship to sea. He knows that she’s old and often needs repairs. Doubts about her seaworthiness prey on his mind until he succeeds in overcoming them by rationalizing his way into believing she’s ready. By dint of effort he acquires a comfortable conviction that his vessel is safe and seaworthy. He watches her departure with a light heart and benevolent wishes for her success. Then collects his insurance money when she goes down mid-ocean and tells no tales.

The shipowner has no right to his belief, however strong the belief is. Clifford’s takeaway is simple: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”[2] Imagine someone holding a belief he was taught in childhood or that he acquired later. He pushes away any doubts about it, purposely avoiding any books or conversations that call it into question. He regards as impious any challenges to it. “The life of that man,” writes Clifford, “is one long sin against mankind.”[3]

Ted’s reticence to admit Dr. Sharon’s preternatural effectiveness as a therapist. Jamie’s hardened conviction, contrary to most appearances, that Ted had done him wrong in his transfer back to Man City. Nate’s indignation and insolence over Ted’s “mistreatment” of him. Beard thinking Jane’s the right person for him despite ample evidence—and Higgins’s frankness—that suggest otherwise. All of these are examples of potentially bad beliefs that result from neglect of available evidence.

As tempting as it is to think such examples fall outside the scope of Clifford’s point, he would insist that even the Richmond fans imbibing and pontificating at The Crown & Anchor are required to consider the evidence. “It is not only the leader of men, statesmen, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.”[4]

Attending to the relevant evidence is vital. We have a rational responsibility to follow the evidence where it leads and not to go beyond it. We should carefully apportion the strength of our beliefs to the quality of the evidence, at least to the extent we’re able. Failure to do so can be disastrous. Even when it isn’t, our failure is still blameworthy. Lucking out doesn’t absolve us of responsibility.

Notice that Clifford’s point is not just about a logical or intellectual duty to pay attention to the evidence. The suggestion is that there is also an ethical duty at play here. We have a moral responsibility to be attentive to the evidence. To drive home this point, Clifford uses nothing less than the rhetorically thick category of “sin” to describe the failure to do so.

Precursive Faith

Some might suppose that believing in another person, or a particular outcome, or oneself, is more a psychological matter than a philosophical one, but this is a false dichotomy. The great American philosopher William James (1842-1910), for example, often shares insights with both philosophical and psychological import. Might James help vindicate Ted?

In his discussion of “precursive faith,” James challenges Clifford’s notion that all of our beliefs need to be based on adequate prior evidence.[5] Precursive faith, as he understands it, involves believing ahead of the evidence. Such belief, or faith, bears an uncanny resemblance to Ted’s irrepressible optimism. James would agree with Clifford that the shipowner was wrong and irresponsible, but not every case of belief is the same. In some cases, belief that exceeds or goes beyond the evidence is permissible, even important.

Such cases require certain conditions to be satisfied. To begin with, the decision in question needs to be forced, live, and momentous. A forced option is a choice we can’t opt out of. No third option is available. Performing the action or not performing it exhausts the alternatives. Either Ted will play Sam the second half of the game, or not. A forced option. A live option is a practical choice one is able to make. Psychologically impossible or impracticable options, for example, are not live, but dead. For most of us, making our favorite kabob shop our place of worship probably isn’t a live option. A momentous option is a decision on which something important depends.[6] Higgins’s choice to stand up to Rebecca, even to the point of quitting, is not trivial, but a momentous decision, one involving a serious risk to his livelihood and family’s welfare.

A decision that’s all three—forced, live, and momentous—is what James calls a “genuine option.” When faced with a genuine option, James says, one is entitled to go beyond the evidence and exercise precursive faith by making a “passional decision” if one more condition is satisfied: the evidence is indecisive. The evidence for the options on offer is too close to settle the matter or coerce the intellect.

James offers a few telling examples. Take social coordination cases, where, for example, only by acting in unison can a group stop a single train robber or terrorist. Or a soccer team perfecting their dance routine for Sharon’s going-away party. Such NSYNC action requires boldly dancing without the assurance of cooperation ahead of time, no strings attached one might say. Acting in unison might not guarantee the desired result, though it likely will. Inactivity will lead to Bo Jackson diddly squat and leave Sharon empty-handed (“Midnight Train to Royston”).

Sam’s decision to stand up against a corrupt corporate sponsor is a good example. He either will or won’t, so the decision is forced. Both options are living, and a great deal depends on his call. The decision also involves social coordination, as his teammates, in a show of solidarity, join him in the symbolic, risky action. Sam doesn’t know ahead of time that they will, though, so his decision to tape over the sponsor’s logo takes courage and going ahead of the evidence. His decision could backfire or yield bad results, but it is hardly blind faith. It is a principled and admirable stance, and Jamie’s show of solidarity is the occasion of their reconciliation.

James would agree. “Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted.”[7]

Or consider personal relations, where success demands more than strict evidentialism. Romantic relationships require taking an initiative before knowing that feelings will be mutual and reciprocated.[8] Consider Roy and Keeley, or even Sam and Rebecca. If both potential partners wait for the other to show definitive romantic interest, the relationship is not likely to get off the ground. But taking initiative and showing interest invites risk. Not usually the risk of leaving oneself open to attack, as Sassy says, but the risk of rejection, most certainly (“Goodbye Earl”).

Gotta Look Right

Believing in themselves, Richmond stands a chance against Everton, despite their decades-long track record of losses to them. To have a chance at winning, a team may well have to believe they can do it, on at least some level or at least to some degree. And they might have to believe without decisive or even good evidence that it’s true, as in this case. Such precursive faith will not ensure the desired result, but it may well be needed for its realistic possibility.

After Richmond pulls off the upset, Roy comments that nobody believed they could win, not even themselves. This could be taken to mean that the team lacked the precursive faith they needed after all. One explanation might be an inconsistency between James’s analysis and the writing of the show, but there might be a better one. It seems pretty likely that though Richmond had previously doubted they could win, the unusually candid and motivating pregame pep talk delivered by Nate sufficiently changed their minds.

This sort of belief is closely related to hope, another recurring theme of the show and one of the classical theological virtues. The pessimistic mantra cynically repeated by Richmond fans that “it’s the hope that kills you” lowers expectations and anticipates the worst for the sake of self-protection. Ted’s irrepressible optimism retains soaring hope, a hope that may or may not disappoint. Like life itself, soccer involves risk, but to avoid risk by not playing (or cheering on) is too steep a price to pay. Just as a victory may be lost for lack of precursive faith, and rich enjoyment lost by playing it safe, so might truth itself be lost if we fear error so much that we aren’t willing to take some risks.

As James puts it, “We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may, on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and let truth take its chance. Clifford … exhorts us to the latter course. Believe nothing, he tells us, keep your mind in suspense forever, rather than by closing it on insufficient evidence incur the awful risk of believing lies.”[9]

James counsels a different course:

For my own part, I have also a horror of being duped; but I can believe that worse things than being duped may happen to a man in this world: so Clifford’s exhortation has to my ears a thoroughly fantastic sound. It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories either over enemies or over nature gained. Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.[10]

Consider that a Yank crossing the street in England takes a risk. Recall Ted’s entrenched American habit of looking to the left before stepping off the curb. To keep him safe, Beard has to hold him back. “Gotta look right,” Beard reminds him. Our habits can help us or hurt us. It takes intentionality to break bad habits, negative self-talk, a losing mentality, self-sabotaging behaviors, or a defense that’s death. A winning attitude requires more than the fear of losing, and seeking truth requires more than avoiding error. It may demand enough passion for finding the truth to take a risk.

James can’t bring himself to submit to Clifford’s “agnostic rules for truth-seeking,” if only for this reason. “A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule.”[11] Passional decisions, though not without risk, are not always blind faith. Sometimes they are just looking right.

Faith and Practice

Imagine finding yourself lost in the woods, and there’s a leap ahead to cross a chasm. It’s bigger than you’d prefer, you might be able to do it, but there’s no guarantee. It’s getting dark, a snow storm is brewing, and there’s no time to turn back. So a decision has to be made. Choose not to jump and you’re sure to freeze to death. Believing you can make the jump, you just might be able to. You’ve been training a lot, and you’re in the best shape of your life, so you have reasons to think you may well be able to make the leap, but there’s still a risk. Your faith and the training, in this case, go hand in hand.

Now, recall when Richmond was to face Man City, and Nate says that Richmond cannot win. An interesting contrast with his earlier having said that Richmond could do anything, by the way (“Make Rebecca Great Again”). This time his attitude is pessimistic. Concerned such a mentality will be self-fulfilling, Ted reminds Nate of the need for belief. Even Beard, however, chimes in that “belief doesn’t score goals” (“The Hope That Kills You”). One might suggest that the sort of belief Ted’s encouraging here is at odds with what it practically takes to win, but that seems patently wrong. After all, Ted calls the meeting in order to elicit fresh ideas and find innovative strategies to make victory possible. Which he soon does with a litany of trick plays: The Sandman, Lasso Special, Pepper Shakers, Beckham’s Todger, Midnight Poutine, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Broken Tap, Loki’s Toboggan, The Upside Down Taxi, Hadrien’s Wall, and Dirty Martini.

The scene reminds us, though, that some might see faith or trust as contrasting with hard work or adequate preparation. But this bears no resemblance to Ted Lasso. In the show, like in the leaping example and life itself, belief is intimately tied to action.[12] Nowhere does Ted encourage faith instead of hard work, or practice. If he did, he wouldn’t have been so upset with Jamie for missing and trivializing practice. The scenario, imitating (while inverting) a real-life Allen Iverson press conference, reveals the importance Ted ascribes to practice, and the marriage between belief and work.[13] The team’s renewed belief in the finale is combined at a crucial juncture with Nate’s False Nine—another integration of belief and strategy.[14]

Rightness, Religion, and Relations

Does any of this have application to the great questions of philosophy—morality or religion, for example? Or is it mainly limited to sports and, on occasion, death-defying leaps? James thinks it does apply philosophically. He puts it this way regarding morality:

The question of having moral beliefs at all or not having them is decided by our will. Are our moral preferences true or false, or are they only odd biological phenomena, making things good or bad for us, but in themselves indifferent? How can your pure intellect decide? If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one…. Moral skepticism can no more be refuted or proved by logic than intellectual skepticism can. When we stick to it that there is truth (be it of either kind), we do so with our whole nature, and resolve to stand or fall by the results. The skeptic with his whole nature adopts the doubting attitude; but which of us is the wiser, Omniscience only knows.[15]

James thinks that fundamental moral questions are paradigm cases of decisions that call for passional decisions. The evidence by turns for reductionist analyses of morality and for robust moral objectivity is ambiguous. Both stories have their appeal. For many neither option is dead, and the decision between them is forced and momentous. Since the evidence is ambiguous, a passional decision, James says, is not just lawful but required.

In many ways Ted Lasso is a deeply moral show, showcasing kindness, love, and the cruelty of marital infidelity. The dignity and value of persons is nonnegotiable, except, arguably, for some of its sexual ethics. The Diamond Dogs, for example, see Ted’s one-night stand through a myopic and tragically simple lens: Did he and Sassy have fun?

The point is not prudish or provincial. Treating people as ends in themselves with dignity and respect may require more substantive reflection about something as important, consequential, and intimate as sexuality. There seems a disconnect between the show’s celebration of intrinsic human worth, on the one hand, and its reduction of casual uncommitted sexuality to harmless recreation, on the other.

Even Higgins, a staunch family man who’s ostensibly religious, falls into the trap, which raises another question: Is precursive faith relevant to the question of God? To be clear, religion plays no prominent role in Ted Lasso. The writers in fact seem intent on distancing the show from religion in numerous respects. The Higginses are Roman Catholic, and one of their sons, the eldest, is a priest, but his mother is careful to point out that he was born out of wedlock, making him a “cool priest” who can “explore life’s little gray areas” (“The Hope that Kills You”).

Roy himself seems conflicted. Where once he noted that Jamie’s innate talent made him question his own faith, in the later funeral episode, he seems to adopt a philosophy of atheistic materialism where death is the end of the story. Coach similarly endorses atheism[16] (despite his prayer in “Beard After Hours”), and in the final season Rebecca makes a crack about losing money by becoming inordinately religious.

When the show broaches whether it’s appropriate to pray during a game, Ted asks, “But to what God, and in what language?” Ted also quips that if God had wanted ties, she wouldn’t have invented numbers. While Ted believes all sorts of things, he also explicitly disavows knowing what exists beyond this material world. The show bends over backwards to avoid anything religiously heavy handed, content to settle for fuzzy talk of faith in faith instead.

James, however, sees a religious application. Interestingly enough, although Clifford doesn’t explicitly say his essay is about religious faith, James thinks he discerns its subtext. “When the Cliffords tell us how sinful it is to be Christians on such ‘insufficient evidence,’ insufficiency is really the last thing they have in mind. For them the evidence is absolutely sufficient, only it makes the other way. They believe so completely in an anti-christian order of the universe that there is no living option: Christianity is a dead hypothesis from the start.”[17]

James says that if the “religious hypothesis”—the quintessential personal relationship—is dead rather than living, then it’s not a genuine option. Some consider the problem of evil to be absolutely decisive evidence against God’s existence, the final nail in the ashes (as Tartt would say). James suspects that, for Clifford, religion is out of the question, just as unbelief may for certain rationalist theists be a dead option in light of the decisive deliverances of evidence.

But for many if not most, the evidential battle over God’s existence and the nature of ultimate reality is not so clear cut. The evidence is ambiguous. Some in favor, some against. Though Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) doesn’t think the evidence on both sides is equal, he still recognizes and discusses the significance of the ambiguity.[18] Problems of evil and hiddenness are locked in a zero-sum game with arguments from design and contingency, history and morality. For James, if the evidential match is anything near a tie—which Ted would of course hate—if both belief and unbelief are live options, and if the decision between them is forced and momentous, then a step of precursive faith and a passional decision are perfectly appropriate, despite Clifford’s protests.

Whether or not this vindicates Ted’s faith in faith, aliens, or spirit guides, it might help vindicate faith in God.

Notes

[1] William K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief,” available at https://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/Clifford_ethics.pdf.

[2] Ibid., 5.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 4.

[5] William James, “The Will to Believe,” in Essays in Pragmatism (New York: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1948).

[6] Ibid., 89-90.

[7] Ibid., 104.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 100.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 107.

[12] “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” James 2:26. Significant to note is that though we have direct volitional control over our actions, we lack such control of our beliefs.

[13] Iverson’s press conference is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI.

[14] The reassembled “BELIEVE” sign near the end of the third season is rife with significance. Earlier in the season Tish had mentioned kintsugi for its use of gold to repair and enhance broken objects. As the closing montage pans across the screen to Nate’s work reassembling the poster, a bottle of gold glitter is on his work table as he stirs together the compound to put the sign back together. Belief takes on a new dimension with this image invoked from this Japanese aesthetic—belief of the whole team (re)united working harmoniously together, resonating nicely with James’s image of precursive faith involving cases of social coordination. See https://wabisabimusings.blogspot.com/2023/06/an-impermanence-for-coach-beard-and.html?m=1.

[15] James, “The Will to Believe,” 103-104.

[16] Yet Beard is still somehow a citizen of Vatican City (“So Long, Farewell”).

[17] Ibid., 97.

[18] Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).