The Ethics of Belief by William Clifford: The Moral Obligation to Justify Your Beliefs

It is crucial that every belief must be thoroughly explored and justified to avoid any future repercussions. Clifford provides two examples in which, regardless of the outcome, the party that creates a belief without comprehensive justification ends up at fault. It is possible to apply the situations in The Ethics of Belief to any cases of belief and end up with the conclusion that justification is of utmost importance. Justifying beliefs is so important because even the smallest beliefs affect others in the community, add to the global belief system, and alter the believer moral compass in future decisions.
Clifford believes that it is a moral requirement that beliefs are justified in order to minimize the chance that an incorrect belief will affect other people. In the case of the ship-owner, who sent out his old emigrant ship based solely on the fact that he was able to suppress his doubts, killed every family looking for a better future. His unjustified belief had minimal effects on his business, but destroyed the lives of many families, due to his negligence in getting the ship repaired. Clifford argues that even if the ship had arrived safely, the ship owner is still guilty of not justifying his belief because once an action has occurred; it is “right or wrong forever” (Clifford). The only difference would be he would not have found out about his misdoings. His decision to convince himself that his ship would not fail him served two purposes: saving his enterprise money and easing his mind if anything were to happen to the people aboard his ship. In the second example, the unjustified accusations against, “individual citizens of the highest position and character” (Clifford), hurt their professional lives. The accusations...

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... from previous experiences and bases future decisions on what they have experienced. When a person makes a decision that isn’t justified, they unknowingly change how they view future problems. If the decision has not been based in truth, it allows them a certain amount of unearned freedom to make wrong decisions, as opposed to when one make a proper decisions. It is crucial that every decision made is justified in order to keep their moral compass steady and to make the proper decisions when the choice is hard.
Clifford makes a very strong and valid case for justifying every decision, regardless of how insignificant. Using his view of thinking, it is easy to understand why everyone has a moral right to justify decisions. Without the cooperation of society in making every decision a justified one, it is useless to hold someone accountable for an immoral belief.