Sunday sermonette

It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.--W.K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief, 1879.

James Wolcott launched the Sunday sermonette meme, and Revere and Eli are keeping the newly-minted tradition alive. I hope other bloggers will join in.

Comments

[Eli (creepandblink)]

Creep and Blink has one now. It may be an obvious one from an obvious source, but the meme has at least replicated itself.

[Wirkman Virkkala]

I put up a long passage from Herbert Spencer's "Inductions of Ethics." On my blog, as a Sunday sermonette. The theme of this passage is how Christians profess a religion of love and yet espouse, in practice, what Spencer calls "the ethics of enmity." There are many such passages in Spencer. Some much more pithy. I chose this passage at random. Almost.

[Bernie Nicholls]

"It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."

Define 'insufficient.' While you're at it, define 'believe.' I can think of plenty of examples where it's better to believe something without much evidence than believe nothing at all (assuming belief is a necessary precondition to action). I'm not trying to dog your quote, but it doesn't seem to offer much more than saying, "Think rather than don't think." If that's Clifford's point, then I agree, but I can't imagine this is much more than a truism.

[Protagoras]

I love Clifford. The quote comes from the conclusion to the first part of his essay; he explains his view a lot more in the remainder of his essay, and perhaps addresses your concerns.

Still, I think I find Clifford's point is perhaps best explained as William James explained it. Many of our beliefs seem to be forced on us by the evidence; no matter how hard the skeptics try, most people really can't be convinced that they shouldn't believe in tables. When you see a table, you can't help believing in it. But there seems to be some element of choice in belief, whatever story you want to tell about choice. Though James was of course a libertarian about freedom, you don't have to be to think that whatever form choice takes, sometimes people can deliberately take steps to influence what their beliefs will be. James seems correct in his claim that, for example, someone who was actually convinced by Pascal's wager (poor lost soul) could very likely bring themselves to adopt Catholicism by hanging out with Catholics, going to services, reading Catholic writings, and just trying as hard as possible to take it all seriously.

So, how does that help us understand Clifford? Well, if belief does indeed have both voluntary and non-voluntary components, one way to understand Clifford is the way James understands him; Clifford can be read as saying that voluntary belief is always immoral, you should only believe if compelled by the evidence. James doesn't agree with the principle he attributes to Clifford, but I'm definitely on Clifford's side on this one.

[Bernie Nicholls]

Protagoras:

Thanks for the explanation/elaboration on the Clifford quote. However, my question is about "voluntary belief is always immoral." Does 'voluntary' include those who haven't exactly consciously cogitated on issue x but believes x nonetheless? For instance, those who believed the Earth was flat, but really didn't do much to question that assumption?

Second, does 'immoral' invoke a Kantian sense of what is moral? The reason I ask is that I don't normally think of beliefs without any action as being moral or immoral (unless we're talking about some Lutheran sense of sole fide). However, to be honest, I haven't given the matter much thought.

Third, would it be any less immoral to be agnostic due to willful blindness? That is, we can either believe x or not believe x (yet there isn't sufficient data to believe x or not x), and I choose to abstain simply because I'd prefer not to think about it (so lazy am I that I don't even do enough research to discover that there is in fact insufficient data to believe x). Would that be any less immoral than believing x?

Honestly, I don't know but I'd like to hear what you, Protagoras, or your take on Clifford, might offer.

[Protagoras]

Hmmm. The flat earth case brings up a lot of issues. For one, whether the earth is flat doesn't matter for a lot of purposes, and Clifford was most interested in beliefs that affect people's behavior. Still, Clifford thought being credulous in cases that don't matter encourages intellectual sloppiness, so I think he'd say that if you haven't done much to question your belief that the earth is flat, you shouldn't be committed to that belief. Of course, many primitive people may not have had evidence of the non-flatness of the earth available in any way they could reasonably be expected to figure out; in that case, I'd say they're probably innocently mistaken.

As far as what sense of morality is involved, Clifford's essay talks a lot about the consequences of believing on insufficient evidence, so I think he could be read as presenting his principle as a sort of utilitarian guideline, like Mill's view that, even though people don't have anything like Kantian rights to free expression or anything else, they should be allowed to express themselves freely because a policy of allowing that maximizes happiness. However, Clifford also says that if you get lucky and your unjustified belief does no harm, you're still blameworthy; that isn't necessarily incompatible with a sophisticated consequentialist position, but it does suggest that he might have been more Kantian. I don't actually know on that point.

On your last point, if you're too lazy to be bothered to look for evidence, then agnosticism is precisely what Clifford recommends: '“But,” says one, “I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments.” Then he should have no time to believe.'

You can find Clifford's full essay online at http://ajburger.homestead.com/files/book.htm#ethics.

[Njorl]

Well, there goes willing suspension of disbelief, not to mention my many and varied sexual fantasies.