William Clifford The Will To Believe

The argument presented by William James in “The Will to Believe” covers theistic beliefs and also includes various philosophical issues as well as matters of practical life. James's primary concern is to argue that Clifford's Rule is irrational. According to Clifford's Rule, one should avoid error at all costs and ultimately risk the loss of certain truths. James claims that Clifford's Rule is just one intellectual strategy and then makes an argument to seek truth by any means available, even at the risk of error or being completely false. James is not arguing against conforming one's belief to the evidence. Nor is he arguing against the importance of evidence. His argument is against withholding beliefs whenever there is little evidence,

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.

Although multiple studies have been done, the original study presented in 1975 with undergraduates and suicide notes are the basis for the theory that facts do not necessarily change a person’s standpoint on a topic that they strongly believe in. The students were asked to choose between a real suicide note and a fake suicide note. Without knowing which ones were truly correct, they were given their scores at the end then asked how they believed they did. Those with lower scores believed that they had done worse than that of an average student, whereas those with higher scores believed they had done better than an average student. At no given point was it mentioned that if you scored lower, you did poorly

In the essay “The Believing Game” by Peter Elbow, he discusses the concepts of taking the emotion out of arguments and using logic by seeing another person’s opinion or ideology through their eyes. Elbow uses “The Doubting Game” as his counter-argument in the essay and speaks of how most humans are naturally conditioned to over-analyze any argument that is presented before them. Elbow, while making some insightful points to the way humans think, presents his essay with too much emotion and bias. Morality is not considered in his essay and Elbow is not presenting the realistic way most people think or argue.

Vogel’s second premise draws from the underdetermination principle. This principle is the idea that if there is no reason to believe one

William K. Clifford, a great mathematician and philosopher of the 1877 authored the essay The Ethics of Belief. In this famous essay he wrote about how it is always wrong to believe anything that does not have concrete evidence. Although people always have different opinions, beliefs based on bad or incomplete evidence are always wrong no matter what. I believe what Clifford says in this essay about bad evidence because when people believe things that are not true it could negatively affect another person’s life. Clifford gives two examples one of a boat and one about gossip, which helps demonstrate how not having concrete evidence to support one’s statements can negatively impact people around them.

In Peter Elbow’s essay “The Doubting Game and Believing Game” he discusses the two types of games that an individual can use to look for the truth in a situation. The Doubting game, is when an individual believes everything is false, and prove each assertion wrong, and the Believing game, is the process where an individual believes that all assertions are correct, and go over each one separately. With both games, there are certain rules that must be followed.

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 his lecture, “The Will to Believe,” William James addresses how one adopts a belief. There is a hypothesis and an option, where you choose between two live hypotheses. An option has the characteristics to be live or dead, forced or avoidable, and momentous or trivial. In his thesis, James argues how “our passional nature” must make our decisions about our beliefs when they cannot be certainly determined on “intellectual grounds,” however, this is not the case, we can always make the decision based on intellectual grounds. One can use Bayesian probability to gain some grasp of the situation and eventually to make a decision.

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

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.

Since the 19th century, William Clifford and William James have been the foremost religious theorist and have attempted to answer significant creation and theological mysteries. However, Clifford and James have varying views on the belief debate, each formulating a rational argument of what the basis for belief should be. Clifford’s, Ethics of Belief and James’ The Will to Believe outline their respective arguments which are vastly similar and but have marked differences. Both articles will be examined for these similarities and difference and stated within this paper.

Lee Stronel, a Christian apologist and author conducted a survey from 75 churches in the United States and Canada in 2012. Stronel, asked the number one question that most Christians were afraid to ask, “Why does God, allow suffering and pain?” Many people wrote down their beliefs and ideas, which says is is only temporary or for a way Jesus can act in our life.

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

Evidence implies that an entity presents itself to the knowing cognition of man in such a way that it can be looked at in a direct and immediate manner and be regarded as meaningful. Evidence originates when a given, in its disclosure, is experienced as sense by the human soul, by means of an immediate intuition or observation. The correlation between intuition and the given in its disclosure, constitutes the experience called evidence, and is therefore a composite factor of evidence (Theron, 1995).