William Clifford And William James

William K. Clifford sets out to show in “The Ethics of Belief” that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence…” In this assignment, I aim to show deficiencies in his argument, and lack of key definitions needed in order to find his assumption and that it begs the question as to what qualifies as insufficient evidence. Moreover, I will show that the primary issue is not the belief but the results of the belief that is important and that all judgment and interpretation should be based upon said results.

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

In this paper I will be discussing Pascal’s Wager. What I first plan to do in this paper is explain the argument of Pascal’s Wager. Next I will explain how Pascal tries to convince non-theists why they should believe in God. I will then explain two criticisms in response to Pascal’s argument. Finally, I will discuss whether or not these criticisms show Pascal’s reasoning to be untenable.

David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion provide conflicting arguments about the nature of the universe, what humans can know about it, and how their knowledge can affect their religious beliefs. The most compelling situation relates to philosophical skepticism and religion; the empiricist character, Cleanthes, strongly defends his position that skepticism is beneficial to religious belief. Under fire from an agnostic skeptic and a rationalist, the empiricist view on skepticism and religion is strongest in it’s defense. This debate is a fundamental part of the study of philosophy: readers must choose their basic understanding of the universe and it’s creator, upon which all other assumptions about the universe will be made.

In this paper, I hope to effectively summarize W.K Clifford’s (1879) argument on the ethics of belief, followed by a summary of William James’ (1897) argument on the right to believe, and finally, provide an argument for why W.K Clifford’s (1879) argument is stronger by highlighting its strengths while simultaneously arguing against William James’ (1897) argument.

William Kingdon Clifford’s argument in “The Ethics of Belief” that it is morally wrong to form beliefs upon insufficient evidence has been widely debated. One such objection to Clifford is William James’s “The Will to Believe,” which argues, under certain circumstances, it can be morally justified to form beliefs without adequate evidence. In this paper, I shall argue that James’s position on belief is stronger than Clifford’s on the basis of being able to reveal more truths while not violating morality.

Most religious zealots have no doubt about who created and the source of the origin of the universe. The same is true of the existence of the omnipotent, omniscience and omnipresent God. Although God may not be seen or heard or touched, however; by faith, we believe of his majestic existence. His existence as God cannot be measured in terms of Gallup surveys or scientific proofs to show otherwise but “religious thinkers” according to James and Stuart Rachels have offered numerous thesis for the for the existence of God, starting with the argument from design, with its subtitles such as the wonders of nature; the “best-explanation arguments and the same-evidenced argument” (Rachels). In either of the cases, the conclusions drawn were similar in the sense that the universe was created by an intelligent designer.

In this paper I will contrast the ways that Blaise Pascal and Saint Anselm of Canterbury attempted to convince people to believe in God. Before getting into the two arguments I should first clarify a few key terms. Firstly, the difference between ordinary and religious beliefs. An ordinary belief is exactly what it sounds like, it’s a typical belief based on adequate evidence. An example would be “I believe the sky is blue because I’ve observed it as blue countless times”. Religious beliefs on the other hand, are not based on reasoning, but instead “Sola Fide”, or faith alone suffices, meaning that these beliefs are based only on trust that the proposition is true. A basic example of a religious belief would be “God exists” despite a lack of evidence for the claim. The major conflict between the two different types of beliefs is that in ordinary belief its considered shame worthy to belief something without have reasons to support it while belief without evidence is the core of religious belief. Another key term that must be understood to understand the arguments is “faith seeking understanding”. This idea was championed by Anselm and is crucial to understanding his argument. In short, he means that if someone begins with just faith in God then through that God will help them attain understanding.

James attempts to establish a will or right to believe. On the other hand, Pascal establishes reasons for logically believing God. This paper will discuss their individual arguments and proceed to show that Pascal’s argument is the more convincing argument of the two. 2. James James view was formulated in response to William Clifford’s view, who argued that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence.”

This paper also aims at discussing three criticisms of the aforementioned argument before making an assessment of the value of the argument for belief in God. Thus, whether the argument is convincing or not. Eventually, a conclusion shall be drawn concerning

It is clear that many philosophers fail to agree on many arguments and debates. As for The Ethics of Belief, it refers to many questions of it being right or wrong to believe anything and everything regarding sufficient evidence, from ethics, epistemology, and psychology. “Clifford's principle” is better yet known as the principle which Clifford states it is wrong to believe on the basis of insufficient evidence. In Clifford's “Ethics of Belief”, he attempts to defend his principle. After reading through Van Inwagen’s “Is it Wrong, Everywhere, Always, and for Anyone to Believe Anything Upon Insufficient Evidence”, it is no secret that he begs to differ with Clifford’s beliefs.

First and foremost, the book ‘The Case for Faith’ by Christian apologetic Lee Strobel manages to properly focus on the philosophy of Christianity. For this reason, its major theme is the study and analysis on each of the strongest objections to the Christian faith—whereby Lee Strobel sought to intentionally disprove Christianity, ironically, each answer leading him to prove why faith in God is a justifying conclusion. All things considered, each objection delves into the topic of faith, ranging from Church history to both the philosophical and ethical basis on the Lord’s word. Altogether, each aspect explores the theme on the effect of faith. Even so, the worldview starts off as skeptical, while slowly developing into an informed Christian

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.

The production of knowledge is a process that occurs through a sequence of related actions, these series of actions allows for the Ways of Knowing to interact in a way that works to develop the knowledge that is being produced. From the prescribed title we can claim that while the Ways of Knowing may appear to be acting in isolation when forming knowledge, they are actually working in a variety of different ways in the construction and formation. In some cases, the Ways of Knowing are interacting so closely together that it is often hard to differentiate between them, for example emotion and reason, or imagination and memory. Given the right circumstances faith can be isolated to a point where it can be acting by itself to produce knowledge. However, this knowledge is often deemed as unreliable, due to faith being seen as one of the more “subjective” ways of knowing. This inability to differentiate the ways of knowing from each other during the production of knowledge, raises the questions “Can any knowledge in any Area of Knowledge be produced by a single Way of Knowing?” and “Is it possible to distinguish between Ways of Knowing if they are working together?”. While reason is used in almost all production of knowledge, it is the other Ways of Knowing used that can determine whether the knowledge is reliable or not, as some Ways of Knowing are more subjective than others. This essay will attempt to