William Clifford The Ethics Of Belief Analysis

Although you may think Thomas Andrews the designer of the Titanic Is responsible for the sinking, I believe Captain Smith is responsible. I believe this because he ignored the seven iceberg warnings. On a result of ignoring these seven warnings while the ocean was very calm, no one spotted the iceberg, they hit but Smith didn’t take caution. So it’s Captain Smith’s fault!

Even though Providence had been through many passages; including many hot and cold weather conditions that could have taken a toll on the ship, the ship owner knew that his ship may have required repairs, which could have caused Providence not to complete the passage. Despite all the negativity and thoughts that the ship owner had reminisced upon, he came to the belief that the ship was safe because he had let go of his doubts so much, that he actually convinced himself into believing that the ship was truly fit to go out on a passage. The reasons that were strongly desired upon by the ship owner that assured him to believe that the ship was safe, was that even though his ship had been through many voyages and strong weather storms before, he had built assurance, feeling that it was irrelevant to base his beliefs upon the negative facts that he restrained upon, concerning the possible condition of the ship which could or could not have effected the ships current trip. The ship owner was playing Russian roulette with the lives of people based on his selfish beliefs. We could criticize the act of sending the ship out without criticizing the belief that the ship is sound, by weighing pros and cons based on how many passages the ship has made and also based on that evidence that one should have sent the ship out for an inspection, that way if repairs were required repairs could

In Clifford’s universal demand for evidence he states that you base all of your beliefs on evidence (138). Clark utilizes this premise to restate the argument in which he will eventually will give reasoning to why the claim is false. In the article he foreshadows the problem with Clifford’s demand for evidence by saying, “ No one would disagree: some beliefs require evidence for their rational acceptability. But all beliefs in every circumstance?”(139) Clark is somewhat supporting the demand for evidence. However, he does not find it rational to believe that evidence is required in every situation.

Innocent until proven guilty is a phrase that applies to our judicial system in modern times; however, when the play Doubt by John Patrick Stanley was written this phrase did not always apply. The play is a parable that makes you think about how gossip and rumors can cause havoc and potentially ruin someone’s career. In the play the rumors that are flying are rumors about whether or not Father Flynn is innocent or guilty to the crime of molesting a young boy named Donald Muller. Critics still argue whether he was innocent or guilty to the crime today, and no answer is known. However, based on the evidence in Patrick Shanley’s play Doubt: A Parable, one could conclude that Father Flynn is innocent due to the fact that he had reasonable evidence

Kathryn Schulz is an excellent writer who wrote an essay, Evidence, regarding her ways of thinking and how different types of “evidence” prove said different ways of thinking. “We rely on it […] to advance our understanding of the world” (Schulz, 362). She explains in great detail throughout the entire piece the importance of evidence in everyday life. The evidence she is explaining is the proof of why people think how they think or why they do what they do. “We care about what is probable. We determine what is probable based on our prior experience of the world” (Schulz, 366).

However, the people who know about the sinking of the ship, do they really know why they

In science, James declares that our options are for the best part but not momentous, As well as today’s technology, we should do all in our power to let proof guide our choice. Therefore, James does not actually differ with Clifford cases. However, James disagree merely on cases where the intelligence is quiet. James states that “faith in the fact can aid make the fact”. In which the fact in query is something to be wished for, in these case William James believes that faith is clearly sensible. For example, supposing that a person is involved in a significant party-political tussle just like the “civil rights movement” and she/he recognizes from tough experience that tussles of this kind thrive merely if persons have belief that they can and will prosper, no matter what the impartial proof says. In view of this case, James embraces that it is ethically allowable for a person to believe that the tussle will prosper, since this belief makes it more possible that a person will attain something which is greatly

William James (1897), on the other hand, attempts to define the permissible cases in which it is intellectually respectable to believe without sufficient evidence. James (1897) begins by providing three criterion for judging beliefs: either beliefs are 1) living or dead; 2) forced or avoidable; or 3) momentous or trivial.

In the film Monsters are Due on Maple Street the theme is you should never make accusations at people when you truly have no real evidence for your claim.

As you can see in many situation people will mistake their beliefs and assumptions for something that is true and backed up with facts. In order to be able to distinguish what is true and what

The Will to Believe is a lecture that was presented by William James in 1896, it specifically defends that one can choose to believe in a religion without prior evidence of its truth. William James was a well-distinguished philosopher as well as a psychologist and a physician. He with a few other philosophers like Charles sanders Pierce and John Dewey were fundamental in establishing modern philosophy in America and are thought to be the founding fathers of pragmatism.

The boat sank and he collected the insurance money without ever telling anyone about his suspicions of the boat not being in the best of shapes. He thought he had gotten rid of any doubts by overhauling the vessel. 'He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts'; (Voices of Wisdom, 348). On the last quote, what Clifford means by 'his (the shipowner) belief'; is his thoughts of his ship being in good sailing condition. According to Clifford, even if the boat had made it all the way, the shipowner would still be guilty because when an action is once done, it is right or wrong forever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The fact that he got his relieved from his worries by covering the holes instead of searching for evidence that would tell him that the boat was in good sailing condition gives him the guilty status.

“Making assumptions, without all of the facts, leads you to draw conclusions, create stories about the person 's background, judge his or her motives, and focus on what you think is truer rather than what is really the truth” Wiley & Sons, 2013).

In this paper, I discuss the continued debate of whether or not it is ever right to believe in anything without sufficient evidence.This topic is philosophically important, because everything we believe contributes and aids in the development of our own personal belief system, thereby determining our actions. From a very general perspective, this topic relates to a far larger philosophical issue and according to Andrew Chignell, a professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, “The central question is it ever or always morally wrong or epistemically irrational, or practically prudent to hold a belief on insufficient evidence?’1

in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, and lead them to certain beliefs. It is not the case that any one sit down and study bunch of facts and weigh the pros and cons, and choose the most logical and rational one. Rather, they gather the facts of the world that come to them through the colored filters the ideologies, hunches, hearsays, religious declaration, and prejudices that have accumulated throughout their life time. Then they sort out the information and select those that confirm what they already believe, and ignore those that disconfirm. Most of us do this . Many other psychologists have similar views. For example, Gary Marcus said that we always seek to confirm what we believe, and we make up reasons to believe them even by disconfirming evidence . Social psychologist Carol Tavris said; “Most people, when directly confronted with proof that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously” . But there people who are better