The Williams of Belief
The term justified belief refers to belief that is formed by the existence of proper evidence and logic. William K Clifford tells us of a story of a ship owner and deaths caused by his unjustified beliefs.
There was a ship-owner that was about to send out an emigrant-ship to sea. He knew that the ship was old and often needed to be repaired. He had doubts that the ship could make the voyage safely, and that he should look into the integrity of the ship. By the time it was to embark on its journey, the man had convinced himself that the ship would not have any troubles because it had safely gone through voyages before. The boat ended up sinking on that voyage and the man collected his insurance money and told no tales.
…show more content…
Where the boat had sailed fine before, and that he would push out all worries of the state of the ship and put his trust in the ship builders and contractors. Through this self-conviction he came up with the unjustified belief that the ship would be able to fare the seas without trouble. The boat being not seaworthy and ultimately sinking is not the fault in his logic, but rather a cause of his unjustified belief. Clifford states, "The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him." (Clifford). What Clifford means by this is that even if the ship hadn 't of sank, and sailed smoothly, the ship owner would still be wrong for his belief because it was not reached by sufficient evidence. His beliefs directly caused harm to others, and thus unjustified beliefs are dangerous and immoral. Clifford believed that how one reached their beliefs was more important than the belief itself. He believed that it was more morally correct to have a false belief derived from a plethora of evidence than a true belief that did not have …show more content…
The first being whether a hypothesis is live or dead, a live hypothesis is one that could be considered, and a dead one being one that would not be considered. A dead hypothesis could be that it’s raining chocolate bars, a live one could be that it is raining normally. The second one is if a belief is forced or avoidable. If you were told to jump or sit, it would be an avoidable one as you could decline to do either. If you were told to jump, then it would be a forced decision as you would either jump or not jump, which is the alternative to it. The last instance is when it is momentous, which means it is of great importance or significance, especially in its bearing on the future. A momentous instance could be that if you were called up and told that you were offered an all-expense paid trip to Europe, and have to accept
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.
The concept of belief perseverance (Myers, 82) can be found in the film, “12 Angry Men”. Throughout the film, the jury members discuss the verdict of a young, Mexican boy. It is essential to note that all twelve men serving on the jury are Caucasian. Somewhat because of the boy’s ethnicity, many of the jurors are initially in support of submitting a guilty verdict. This is made clear in the film when Juror #10 verbalizes what he ‘thinks’ is the opinion of the group; “Now, look - we're all grown-ups in here. We heard the facts, didn't we? You're not gonna tell me that we're supposed to believe this kid, knowing what he is. Listen, I've lived among them all my life - you can't believe a word they say, you know that. I mean
As we delve deeper into the Philosophical understanding of William Clifford and Blaise Pascal we gain a new understanding of evidentialism and non-evidentialism. Having studied both Pascal and Clifford I lean more with Pascal and his thoughts and teachings that you do not need to have evidence to believe in a higher power. This paper will continue to give more examples of Pascals teachings of non-evidentialism and why I agree with them.
Clifford’s claims. Clifford believes that everything must be believed only on the basis of sufficient evidence, including belief in God (Feinberg 139). Clark’s issue with this statement, is that Clifford emphasises that adequate evidence is necessary for all beliefs and in every circumstance (Feinberg 139). Personally, I do not think it is necessary to hold every belief to the same standard of evidence because of the existence of faith and the fact that not everything has to be seen to exist. In John 20:29 it says, “Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’” (NIV Bible). In this passage, Jesus is saying that believing without the visual evidence is particularly harder than having the evidence, but more importantly, it is possible and blessed. Additionally, in 2 Corinthians 5:7 it reads, “For we live by faith, not by sight” (NIV Bible). It is important to notice that in this verse it does not say that we only live by faith and not by sight when it comes to belief in God, but instead we can in every area of life. One reason why we live by faith and not by sight or complete evidence is because it is more practical because as humans we have limited knowledge about the vastness of the universe and every individual thing. Furthermore, in conjunction with Clark’s example against Clifford, it would not
In Fixation of Belief Charles Sanders Pierce discusses logic, knowledge, reason, and how we come about to believe what is true and others may decide to believe it is not true. According to the question of Peirce wants everybody to understand and to wade their thought and express their feelings that to give them an idea which methods of fixing the people use to make them to beliefs. Peirce also addresses in four methods of fixating belief which is tenacity, authority, a priori and science.
William Clifford author of the “Ethics of Belief” creates the argument that it is always wrong for anyone to believe anything upon ‘insufficient evidence’. What does Clifford define evidence as and what is sufficient? Clifford’s argument is more scientific. Basing our beliefs off methodical approaches. If we base all our decisions off sufficient and what we declare to be reliable then what do we stand for? We have our own credentials to believe things even if we do not know why. These beliefs could be innate and
Assessment of the View that it is Rational to Believe that there is a God
Blind faith is hard for many. Clifford takes the side of Evidentialism, which is the assertion t
“They are measured by his willingness to act. The maximum of liveness in a hypothesis, means willingness to act irrevocably. Practically, that means belief; but there is some believing tendency wherever there is willingness to act at all” (Bailey 98). This argument means that belief is the core of this genuine option whether it can be proved or not. James defends his position...
This paper will dispute that scientific beliefs are not the right way to accept a belief and it will question if we should let one accept their rights to their own beliefs. In Williams James article Will to Believe, we accept his perspective on how we set and fix our beliefs. This paper will first outline his overview on the argument that someone does not choose their belief but rather one just has them. Following, it will outline my perspective on how we set our beliefs and agreement with purse. Then it will explain how other methodologies such as science cannot conclude to one’s true beliefs. Science has been seen as a way to perceive life and taken to consideration as the truth. This paper should conclude that humans define ourselves by
... their idea of right and wrong is just an opinion. And opinions are dismissal. Just because Clifford doesn’t have any faith, doesn’t mean that he has to tell everyone to not make any decisions without concrete and sufficient evidence. The reason is because people shouldn’t lie to themselves. The man who lies to himself doesn’t understand himself.
In today’s modern western society, it has become increasingly popular to not identify with any religion, namely Christianity. The outlook that people have today on the existence of God and the role that He plays in our world has changed drastically since the Enlightenment Period. Many look solely to the concept of reason, or the phenomenon that allows human beings to use their senses to draw conclusions about the world around them, to try and understand the environment that they live in. However, there are some that look to faith, or the concept of believing in a higher power as the reason for our existence. Being that this is a fundamental issue for humanity, there have been many attempts to explain what role each concept plays. It is my belief that faith and reason are both needed to gain knowledge for three reasons: first, both concepts coexist with one another; second, each deals with separate realms of reality, and third, one without the other can lead to cases of extremism.
Some of the objections, such as the ones made by Edmund Gettier, claim that three conditions are not nearly enough to justify a true belief, and that at the very least a fourth must be added. Gettier presents a very valid criticism of the JTB theory of knowledge, and his counter examples highlight flaws in the JTB theory that make it an inadequate theory of knowledge. Gettier claims takes an issue with the third part of the JTB theory, which states that proposition P must be true. Gettier makes the interesting observation that person S may very well be justified in believing in proposition P even if P is false
justified in his belief that p at t if the belief is produced by some faculty