Philosophy 1600 - Honors Seminar

 

Topic 1: Faith, Rationality, and the Ethics of Belief

W. K. Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief"

W. K. Clifford (1845-1879). Essay reprinted from Lectures and Essays (1879)

 

1. Clifford's Basic Thesis

"To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."

 

2. Clifford's Arguments in Support of his Thesis

Argument 1: Specific Beliefs that Lead Directly to Harm to Others

(1) Holding beliefs, however sincere those beliefs may be, that are not based upon the available evidence, or that are held in the absence of sufficient investigation, may harm other people, and so holding beliefs in that fashion is morally wrong.

(2) It may be objected that what is wrong is not holding the belief, but acting upon it in ways that involve risks to others. Clifford offers a number of replies to this objection:

(a) His first response is that one has a duty to investigate whether a belief is justified, and holding a belief that is not justified will interfere with that duty.

(b) His second response is that the connection between belief and action cannot be entirely severed.

Comment: Stronger claims can be made at this point. The first is the functionalist point about belief, to the effect that beliefs are necessarily maps that one uses, when relevant, to decide upon courses of actions. The second concerns the connection between degree of belief and rational action.

(c) His third response appeals to the idea that accepting one belief for which there is insufficient evidence, however insignificant the belief in question may seem, "prepares us to receive more of its like".

(d) ". . . no one man's belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone." What a person believes will affect what others believe, and the beliefs that society holds will affect, in turn, those of future generations. One is thus, not merely harming oneself, but, indirectly, others as well.

Argument 2: Irrational Belief, Self-Deception, and Degradation

Clifford also argues that to accept beliefs for which there is insufficient evidence - for the sake, for example, of "solace", or "to add a tinsel splendor to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it", is to engage in self-deception, and thus to degrade oneself.

 

Argument 3: The Harm Generated by Fatal Superstitions

Clifford argues that if beliefs are accepted on the basis of insufficient evidence, then two very bad results will follow:

(1) One will "keep alive fatal superstitions";

(2) Beliefs that tear society apart will be maintained. (Clifford appears to be thinking here of the terrible conflicts that have been generated by different systems of religious beliefs.)

 

Argument 4: Weakening one's Character

Clifford argues that whenever one accepts a belief for which there is insufficient evidence, one weakens one's character: "we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence."

 

Argument 5: Inquiry Versus Savagery

Finally, Clifford also argues that it is the habit of inquiry that separates us from savage society, and that is the basis of civilization:

To "lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them" is to "sink back into savagery".

 

3. David Hume and a Revision of Clifford's Basic Thesis

David Hume advanced a different ethic of belief than Clifford, for what Hume said was this:

"The wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."

Hume's proposal involves the idea that belief is something that admits of degrees.

Comment

This is surely right. Moreover, once one has the idea of degrees of belief or assent, the problematic notion of sufficient evidence can be jettisoned. We'll also see that William James's discussion becomes clearly problematic when one brings Hume's ethic of belief to bear upon it.