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Ethics Of Belief, Clifford -- Unjustified Beliefs

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:03 am
by _Moniker
EAllusion posted The Ethics of Belief (found below) in another thread. There was a brief spark of conversation before it was lost. I'd like to post some points from EAllusion and dartagnan and ask that they pick up where they left off. I've supplied EAllusion and dartagnan links to prior relevant statements and they can carry them over as they see fit.

EAllusion commented that he used the article to illustrate some points in an earlier argument:
EAllusion wrote:There are two prongs to it. 1) Unjustified beliefs by their very nature are less likely to be tethered to what the world is like and thus present greater risk of undesired consequences from interaction with it. 2) Unjustified beliefs take up mental resources that could be used elsewhere, thus retarding our understanding of the world and thus exacerbating 1. I quoted Clifford for a longer version of these points.


Here is a reply from dartagnan in regards to unjustified beliefs:
dartagnan wrote:The problem with this philosophy that one must operate on absolute knowledge of things proved and justified, before making every "safe" decision in one's life, is that it amounts to an OCD planet. One would have to become obsessive compulsive about anything one did in life to be perfectly safe from danger. Think about it for a moment. The shipowner is to be considered "dangerous" because he went against evidence that the ship needed work, and chose to rely on a gut feeling or whatever, that his ship would make it another trip. What about the passengers who had faith in the shipowner? They're all guilty.




A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and and refitted, even though this should put him at great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.

What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it.

Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. 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.

...

Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it. He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever.

And no one man's belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone. Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handled on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. A awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.

In the two supposed cases which have been considered, it has been judged wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, or to nourish belief by suppressing doubts and avoiding investigation. The reason of this judgment is not far to seek: it is that in both these cases the belief held by one man was of great importance to other men. But forasmuch as no belief held by one man, however seemingly trivial the belief, and however obscure the believer, is ever actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind, we have no choice but to extend our judgment to all cases of belief whatever. Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves but for humanity. It is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action. It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his beliefs with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away.

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. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.

It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, then when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. And if we have supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with--if indeed anything can be learnt about it. It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting.

This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation. For then we may justly feel that it is common property, and hold good for others as well as for ourselves. Then we may be glad, not that I have learned secrets by which I am safer and stronger, but that we men have got mastery over more of the world; and we shall be strong, not for ourselves but in the name of Man and his strength. But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. What would be thought of one who, for the sake of a sweet fruit, should deliberately run the risk of delivering a plague upon his family and his neighbours?

And, as in other such cases, it is not the risk only which has to be considered; for a bad action is always bad at the time when it is done, no matter what happens afterwards. Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide. But a greater and wider evil arises when the credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent. If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves, for then it must cease to be society. This is why we ought not to do evil, that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby. In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

- William K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief (1877)

Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:54 am
by _Gadianton
I don't see the problem as merely believing in unjustified things as it would be difficult to operate in the world any other way. Those who think they scrutinize every decision they make with the skeptics' patented acid test are fooling themselves. The difference is that a reasonable human sees the situation as a problem but one that unfortunately has to be lived with while the Mormon, for instance, sees a great advantage and uses any and every instance of ambiguity in order to excuse any and every nonsensical and crazy idea they wish to believe in at the moment. Now, most Mormons won't do anything too stupid, like trust a fake priesthood blessing over a doctor's opinion, but what's just downright fascinating is that all the little moments of "faith" are training instances so that one day they might actually be ready to make some really stupid decision based on their toxic love of faith. They want to someday prove themselves like Abraham who just about stabbed his kid to death in order to prove just how unreasonable he could be in the heat of religion passion.

Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:09 am
by _EAllusion
Gadianton wrote:I don't see the problem as merely believing in unjustified things as it would be difficult to operate in the world any other way.


I think people have an obligation to try and be reasonable. I think it would be unreasonable to expect a perfect track record for anyone on this front, but that's the ideal. But that's not the question at hand. It's whether unjustified belief is itself dangerous. I maintain that it is.Clifford uses that argument as the grounding for his ethical case for the duty to act rationally. In some cases, it's very dangerous. In others, only minimally so. I think poor thinking is damaging and morally criticizable. The short of it is that actions are always informed by one's network of beliefs. To the extent that you base any of your actions on unjustified ideas, you are increasing the risk that you will interact with the world in ways you do not desire. In other words, we base our actions on our expectations of what reality is like. We take a step in front of us because we expect there to be solid ground. To give ourselves the best chance to achieve what we want to, we must be reasonable in our beliefs about what reality is like. Further, to the extent that you waste your time and resources on irrational beliefs when they can be spent on others, you are retarding your personal progress and in some small way social progress. Again, sometimes this is major and sometimes it is minor, but it is always a negative. To the extent that religion entails this, I think it is dangerous. Kevin has tried out a few arguments against this, the most recent being an attempt that argue that religious beliefs sometimes are true. That dangerous behavior sometimes has lucky consequences doesn't seem to be much of a point to me. The most vulnerable part of my reasoning is the link between rational thought and predicting the world, but even attacking that isn't going to wipe away the idea for all practical purposes. Interacting in the world always entails risk, but admitting that isn't going to change what those risks are or our desire to avoid them.

For what its worth, I also don't think we need to consciously think through every single thing we think in order to be reasonable in those beliefs. I think a person can, in certain instances, trust information passed on in their culture, for example, without doing some formal, scientific evaluation of it themselves. I'm not sure if the sketpic's acid test is at all what I (or Clifford for that matter) have in mind.

Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 3:20 am
by _mikwut
We do have a duty to be rational. No thinking religious person should dispute that. We also have a duty to be spiritual. The basis and rooting of both rational and spiritual abilities are found in our personhood. Neither disrupts, or should disrupt the other, for spiritual cognitive abilities to disrupt our rational abilities would be unspiritual and for our rational abilities to disrupt our spiritual expressions and abilities would be, irrational.

Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:18 am
by _Moniker
Where oh where is dart?

Busy playing with the JAKster???

Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 10:01 am
by _marg
Kevin wrote:The problem with this philosophy that one must operate on absolute knowledge of things proved and justified, before making every "safe" decision in one's life, is that it amounts to an OCD planet. One would have to become obsessive compulsive about anything one did in life to be perfectly safe from danger. Think about it for a moment. The shipowner is to be considered "dangerous" because he went against evidence that the ship needed work, and chose to rely on a gut feeling or whatever, that his ship would make it another trip. What about the passengers who had faith in the shipowner? They're all guilty.


It's really not how it should work kevin regarding "unjustified beliefs". Obviously people can not operate with every belief justified, but everyone can operate with skepticism even highly religious theists, that is a person may hold a belief for operational purposes but remain open minded to new information and reasoning. Be open to new information and willing to change beliefs upon that information if necessary. Be willing to investigate new information. Be objective about that information.

It is faith based beliefs which tend to be held absolutely. Faith does not operate with evidence and reasoning and hence new information is not relevant. Nothing argued rationally, no evidence can change the beliefs of a person who relies upon faith and is determined to accept that belief as true no matter what. The difference between a person who claims to know God exists based on faith and one who claims to believe God exists...is a matter of attitude. In essence the one claiming absolute knowledge is closed minded to reasoning and new information. The one holding beliefs with a skeptical mindset is open to new information.

Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:59 pm
by _Moniker
Gadianton wrote:I don't see the problem as merely believing in unjustified things as it would be difficult to operate in the world any other way. Those who think they scrutinize every decision they make with the skeptics' patented acid test are fooling themselves. The difference is that a reasonable human sees the situation as a problem but one that unfortunately has to be lived with while the Mormon, for instance, sees a great advantage and uses any and every instance of ambiguity in order to excuse any and every nonsensical and crazy idea they wish to believe in at the moment. Now, most Mormons won't do anything too stupid, like trust a fake priesthood blessing over a doctor's opinion, but what's just downright fascinating is that all the little moments of "faith" are training instances so that one day they might actually be ready to make some really stupid decision based on their toxic love of faith. They want to someday prove themselves like Abraham who just about stabbed his kid to death in order to prove just how unreasonable he could be in the heat of religion passion.


I think you make a good point, Gad. That we all do have unjustified beliefs, rely on faith (not religious) to some extent, in our everyday lives. Yet, most do recognize this and don't twist themselves in pretzels attempting to defend these beliefs and assert these unjustified beliefs on others. You see some that are so adamant about their beliefs that they are unwilling and unbudging to consider they could be wrong -- this is terrifying to witness. This is seen outside of religion as well.

According to polls over 70% of Americans are uncomfortable with proselytizers. Anyone that has the gumption to walk up and tell you they know the truth and are ready to let you in on it makes most uncomfortable -- for it's not just a personal unjustified belief at that moment -- NO, it becomes one that they are foisting upon others. That MOST Americans of religious faith do not proselytize shows that they are capable of recognizing that it is a personal faith and they don't desire to rationalize it for others or sway others with it. I think this is healthier all things considered. Those that are told they MUST convert others are put into an odd predicament of making excuses for unjustified beliefs not only to themselves, but others as well in an attempt to convert them.