A Comparison of W.K Clifford and William James's Arguments on the Right of Belief

In William K. Clifford’s, “The Ethics of Belief (II),” he argues that humans must always question their conceptions and beliefs.

In W.K Clifford’s Essay he states that “It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” This argument is not totally wrong but does have some problems to it. In Clifford’s essay he explains a scenario with a ship owner and someone who he will be sending out to the sea. The ship owner does no believe the ship to be good enough, ready enough or in other words sea worthy to be sent out to the sea. Instead of checking the ship to see if it is ready to be sent out to the sea because it Is time consuming, he decides to send the ship out anyway. In the end, the ship ends up sinking in which case, Clifford considers to owner to be guilty of the ship sinking because he should have believed that ship

During the time James was writing his paper, another professor, William Kingdom Clifford was backing the opposite. He believed that belief without evidence is immoral. He wrote an essay called the ‘The Ethics of Belief’; he wrote ‘It’s wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’. He first used this statement to explain all aspects of life but he later applied it specifically to religious belief. The will to believe was written after the ethics of belief and was written to combat the arguments and plays off all the failures in

In Plato’s Theaetetus, the dialog between Socrates and his student, Theaetetus, sets up the argument that knowledge is true belief that is adequately justified. Although there are many examples that prove Plato’s suggestion, people such as Edmund Gettier have questioned and disproved the notion of knowledge as justified true belief. In response to Gettier’s findings, many have tried to modify or find an alternative to the Justified True Belief model in search for the true definition of knowledge. In this paper, I will outline and discuss Plato’s Justified True Belief argument, outline and discuss Gettier’s response to Plato’s argument, and lastly, present and analyze four solutions to the Gettier problems.

Next, William James argues that there are situations in which believing without logical evidence would be reasonable. He uses moral questions as an example. Moral questions are questions that answer what is good and can't wait for evidence to be provided to answer. William James then goes back to Pascal's teachings and talks about what Pascal calls our heart. Pascal's states that decisions can be made with out

In the readings from Clifford and Clark it covers the vague issue of whether or not we can believe something based on if the person has enough information or proof to validate their belief. Clifford starts off with the fact that Not having enough evidence, but forming a belief anyway. Suppressing doubts that the belief is false, or avoiding evidence to the contrary. He states that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” This illustrates how he believes that just Clifford believes that is something is something then something must happen. He declares that believing is not a private matter. Believing for unworthy reasons not only weakens a person's powers of self-control, it also adversely

Furthermore, J.L. Mackie calls his outlook on morality, moral skepticism that is about objective facts. “Mackie offers three arguments for

Answering the question of whether or not believing without good reason is morally wrong poses difficulties. In that, we live in a world that is extremely diverse with different religions, cultures and beliefs. Consequently, what one culture might consider dead wrong, another, based upon their beliefs, could possibly be widely accepted. William K. Clifford stated, “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.” The world has changed, inasmuch as morals can be found on printed pages, for example the Bible teaches its followers to love one another, and to love their enemies. Whereas, other religious books, teach their followers to kill, if anyone doesn’t believe as they do. Therefore, the moral question

In discussions of Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”, a controversial issue has been whether Clifford’s writing is flawed making his argument invalid. On the one hand, some argue that his writing may have some issues it is a strong essay. From this perspective, the essay’s strengths outweighs the minute amount of weaknesses in the essay. On the other hand, however, some may argue that there are too many weaknesses and overall the essays argument is flawed because of this. In other words, the paper’s weaknesses influence the interpretation of the writing causing the paper to be weak. In sum, then, the issue is whether Clifford’s essay is filled with too many weaknesses for his argument to be strong.

In Gettier’s essay, he uses two main case analyses to explain the lack of sufficient knowledge provided in the Justified True Belief theory. His first objection involves the lack of truth that may be supported through an individual’s justification. According to the first case from Gettier’s “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” , two men tried to apply for the same job and one of the candidates was wrong on their assumption based on believing his justified true belief. In this case, Smith had evidence that Jones will get the

While much can be reasoned and argued to scrutinize the foundational source of propositional knowledge by senses, the problem of other minds undertakes the challenge of knowing the senses, thoughts, and experiences of other beings than one’s self. To illustrate this problem in action, a justified true belief (JTB) analysis can be performed on two people’s experiences with seeing an apple. Both can say they believe that the apple is red in color. Moving past the issue brought up by Bertrand Russell with regard to direct realism, the color of the apple is truly red, and both people have the right to know due to their senses. Individually, this JTB analysis

If one never asks, or questions, or even tests one's own belief, whether that be the belief in the physical or in the beliefs that aren't physical, then they are guilty not by law, but by conscience. Clifford also states: Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live. Which shows it is not only wrong to believe anything upon insufficient evidence but also to believe something just because one told another to believe something. Beliefs are passed down from generation to generation, and without the question of those beliefs, those beliefs cannot become one's true beliefs because of the insufficient platform in which one had begun to believe on. Clifford states that this is morally wrong. Arguments based on luck cannot be valid because arguments based on luck are not based on evidence or reasonable

William James is one important philosopher we have discussed in our lectures. James brings a unique interpretation of pragmatism. Pragmatism is an approach to assessing the truth of meaning for beliefs, based on their practical use. James believed that a belief is true, if the results of its implication are satisfactory. In addition, James believed that unpractical beliefs couldn’t be rejected because our different human experience yield different truths. I find James argument compelling because he focuses on individual human experiences. The way in which we see the world and implement our beliefs, are the truths that we come to believe. In addition, our experiences validate the truth behind our beliefs because we are experiencing it. An interesting syllogism arises from this philosophical ideology. If all men have individually formed beliefs, and those beliefs through individual experiences become truth, then there are multiple versions of how society should be.

One important task of Epistemology is to find an analysis of knowledge that can both fulfil our intuitions and is genuinely informative. The traditional analysis of knowledge is tripartite. This so called “JTB” (Justified True Belief) account holds that for a subject “S” to know a proposition “p” (a) S must believe that p, (b) p must be true and (c) S must be justified in believing p (Ichikawa & Steup, 2014). In 1963 Edmund Gettier published a now-famous paper demonstrating the insufficiency of the JTB account. Here I will focus on the “nonpartisan” debate in the analysis of knowledge, which centres around the question of whether or not it is possible for a false belief

Clifford’s position concerning belief is that it is illogical to believe anything without sufficient evidence to back up his/her beliefs even if the outcome ends up working out in the long run. The story of the man in his ship is told in two versions; the first version of the story the ship owner lets the ship set sail even though he knows the ship is in need of extensive repair and everyone on the ship dies. Now in the other version, everyone arrives safely. Clifford argues that either way he goes the ship-owner is still in the wrong despite his best motives.