Lecture 7 Ethics of Belief Flashcards
What is Clifford’s view on belief?
Clifford’s Principle: It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence (Clifford pg. 5)
Clifford’s Other Principle*: It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to ignore evidence that is relevant to his beliefs, or to dismiss relevant evidence in a facile way
What is evidentialism?
one should only base one’s beliefs on relevant evidence that is in one’s possession (Chignell 2010).
Who is this quote from? “We must know the truth; and we must avoid error, –these are our first and great commandments as would be knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are two separable laws.”
William James.
Why does James think adhering to Clifford’s principle is irrational?
It’s primary shortcoming is that it’s far too restrictive when applied as a general rule for belief formation.
Strict adherence to it would cause us to exclude most
of our beliefs.
We would throw out too many valuable, practically necessary beliefs in the service of excluding the few ‘bad apples’ that Clifford is focused on eliminating.
What does William James describe as a hypothesis?
“anything that can be proposed to our belief.” For any such hypothesis there will be options to believe or disbelieve it.
What is the living or dead quality of a hypothesis?
An hypothesis is live if belief or disbelief in it is a relevant feature of one’s contemporary life. Not every hypothesis will be live for every individual. What determines whether an hypothesis is live is a function of one’s place in the world, their culture, their values etc.
What is a forced or avoidable quality of a hypothesis?
Belief or disbelief in an hypothesis is forced if one cannot avoid making a commitment to it one way or another. “Believe this truth or go without it” Such options take the form of exclusive disjunctions: Believe either p or ~ p
What is a momentous or trivial quality of a hypothesis?
For a hypothesis to be momentous means that it must be of genuine significance. James uses the example of having the opportunity to be part of the first expedition to the North Pole. This is a significant and unique opportunity with historic implications if one succeeds.
An option is trivial if nothing much hangs on it, as in the
example of the Chemists yearlong commitment to an
hypothesis that proves inconclusive.
What are Genuine Hypotheses?
Those which are living, forced, and momentous. James thinks belief in God is one such option, whereas, say, belief in Thor is not (William James didn’t like comics or Viking Metal).
What does James conclude about believing on the basis of faith?
James thinks that belief in something on the basis of faith, so long as it is a live, forced, momentous option, is perfectly legitimate. In short, we have to believe in so many things on the basis of faith that it would be “churlish,” shortsighted, and inconsistent to withhold it the case of sincerely held religious beliefs like whether God exists or not.
Whose quote is this? ““To preach scepticism to us as a duty until ‘sufficient evidence’ for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law. And by what, forsooth, is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear ? I, for one, can see no proof; and I simply refuse obedience to the scientist’s command to imitate his kind of option, in a case where my own stake is important enough to give me the right to choose my own form of risk.”
William James, in Will to Believe
Whose quote is this? ““I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or wilfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that 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. That for me is the long and short of the formal logic of the situation, no matter what the kinds of truth might materially be.”
William James, in Will to Believe
