The Ethics of Belief

[Pyrrho]

I think you have skipped the other side of the coin: it may be that there are many beliefs which lead to immoral behavior BECAUSE someone has accurately assessed something in reality.

There are much simpler examples than what you proceed to give.  A man may rob a liquor store because he believes that there is money in the register.  

(It is worth mentioning that obviously the action proceeds not from just one belief, but an aggregate, and also involves desire [emotion].  But in my example, without the belief that there is money to be had, the robber would not rob the store.)

This would only be a problem for Clifford (and me) if it were claimed that being careless about beliefs was the only source of bad actions.  But no such claim has been made, and it would be quite absurd to make such a claim.

So, Clifford's proposal is not a panacea for all the ills of the world.  Just for some of them.

 There is sufficient evidence that humans represent a net negative for the world.  It wouldn't be hard to establish the belief that the only way to save most of nature would be to start killing as many people as possible.

I think that more humane methods of achieving the goal you have in mind would be better.  And your likelihood of success would be no better if you tried to kill everyone, as the vast majority of people will be against you.  Most likely, you would be caught before you had killed a significant number of people (that is, significant in terms of your goal).  So I would recommend trying to get people to stop having so many children, through education, access to birth control, helping to get people out of poverty, etc.  And to also get them to look at the evidence regarding damage to the environment (which is to say, get them to go along with Clifford on this matter).  You are more likely to be able to find allies in those sorts of things, and so you are more likely to make a difference.

This is not to say that your chances of success would be good in some other way, but if you tried to kill everyone, you will be very unlikely to get very far.  Even if you are one of the people in a nuclear missile silo, one nuclear missile is not going to kill all humans (not to mention the fact that, I believe, they design them such that it takes two people to fire off such a missile, in order to prevent one crazy person from causing too much damage).

 I would argue that this is an immoral beleif, because mores are a human construct meant to sustain and better individuals and the species as a whole.

What say you?  Is it immoral to act to remove people from the world, whatever kind of people they are, simply because the reality is that we cause harm?

I think it is an unreasonable belief to suppose that you have the capability to kill everyone, so Clifford and I are quite happy to condemn such an idea.  (We would both condemn it for other reasons as well, but more than this one is unnecessary for the present purposes.)

I think I might take the position that forming beliefs based on sufficient evidence is immoral, because ultimately it will lead to self-deleterious positions on the importance of humanity.  As you say, though individual beliefs might not seem deleterious, they are all connected, and we may eventually arrive at a self-negating position, with the unfortunate behaviors that could stem from that.

If you have in mind something along the lines of a person who desires to torture and murder as many people as possible, then such a person forming reasonable beliefs would likely make the person more dangerous than if he or she had unfounded beliefs (e.g., like the belief that just thinking about people dying would cause them to die, etc.).  And that is true enough, that someone who is inclined to do damage will often be more effective if he or she has beliefs that better line up with the way the world works, which is more likely if one forms beliefs based on evidence than on wishful thinking or some other non-rational way.

But, again, Clifford is not saying that his ideas are a panacea for all that is wrong with the world.  He is just focussed on one problem, the problem of 'accidents' due to carelessly forming beliefs.  Like accidentally sending out an unsafe ship, accidentally believing a false religion that leads to one torturing and murdering other people, etc.