The Ethics of Belief

[Pyrrho]

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The argument Clifford is presenting is essentially this:  What you believe affects your actions, and your actions affect others.  As you are responsible for the effects of your actions on others, so, too, are you responsible for the beliefs that prompt your actions.  So just as you have a responsibility to be careful about your actions, you have a responsibility to be careful about your beliefs that lead to your actions.  And the way one is responsible about one's beliefs is by seeking evidence prior to accepting a proposition as true or false; that is, prior to having a belief one way or another about the matter, one should have evidence.

Thanks for starting this topic and making a small summary of the main argument. I partially agree with what the author says, but I also have some doubts, namely:

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- What if what you believe doesn't affect your actions? For example, if I believe in a deistic god that created the universe and doesn't care about Human affairs, does that belief impact my actions? How would you respond if the belief didn't and couldn't impact one's actions?

Clifford addresses that concern:

       Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it.  He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.  If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future.  It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole.  No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may some day explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever.

When one believes one thing, it affects the other beliefs one has.  Both in terms of what other things fit with it, and in terms of the way one acquires one's beliefs.  In your specific example of deism, it is likely to impact one's examination of the origins of the universe, as well as make one more receptive to other god related beliefs.  And those affected beliefs may affect other beliefs, rather like a pebble being tossed into a still pond, causing a ripple across the surface.

To put this another way, beliefs are not all held in isolation from each other.  So one belief will affect the aggregate of beliefs one has.  And, as already mentioned, if one is willing to accept one thing on insufficient evidence, one is more likely to accept another thing on insufficient evidence.  After all, if such 'reasoning' is okay in one case, why not another?  As Clifford puts it:

We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide.  But a greater and wider evil arises when the credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent.

- Is there always a correlation between beliefs and actions? How do we prove that a hideous act like murder, even if the author claims it was in the name of some god we all know, was really motivated by belief? Can we prove it?

There are two separate issues in those questions.  If you mean, 'can we prove that the person did the action for the reason the person claims,' much will depend on what one counts as "proof."  But if you mean to question whether the action had any connection to any belief, are you seriously going to tell us that you believe the action had no connection to any beliefs the person had?

If I take a gun and shoot someone in the head, are you going to tell me that I did not have the belief that shooting someone in the head might lead to the person's death?  That when I loaded the gun, I had no beliefs about the significance of putting bullets in it, in order to make it work?  Is not every action that one takes connected to some belief (or more likely, beliefs)?

If you mean that a person might lie about an action, obviously, that is true.  So we cannot simply accept people's claims.  But that does not mean that their actions have no connection with any beliefs.

- How do you define evidence?

That is a very complicated question to answer.  And to be perfectly frank, I am not going to give a complete answer, as that would be practically impossible.  However, the short answer is, different things require different kinds of things as evidence.  For example, evidence that the Pythagorean theorem is true is going to look very different from evidence that I am presently in my home.  The former is going to involve discussions of mathematical concepts, and the latter is going to involve looking in my home (or, for such a trivial thing, one might regard my testimony as adequate, as there is nothing extraordinary in being in one's home).

The nature of a particular idea determines the sort of things that would be necessary for there to be evidence in favor of it.  It is no use looking in my home and seeing me here if the object is to prove the Pythagorean theorem, but it is more than acceptable for determining that I am in my home.

I suppose it's the criterion of "verification" that means you need some kind of proof to know something works or not - But do we apply that criterion to everything in life? I used the example of love between me and my significant other (in the other thread) as an example of belief unsupported by evidence, but I still find that belief rational. I can't comprehend what goes on the theist mind, but it's something that makes them believe.

You will either need to repeat the story or at least provide a link for me to address your specific example regarding your love.  However, I can address the general idea of trusting someone.  I trust my wife.  Now, I do that not because I love her, but because I have known her for many years, and have gotten to know her character fairly well.  She has been honest in the past, and so I infer that she is likely to be honest in the future.  Of course, there is much more than that, as there has not been a falling out or argument recently, nor has she started being distant or otherwise altered her behavior, etc.  Regardless of the details, the evidence I have regarding such things is not the same sort of evidence one can have for the Pythagorean theorem.  That may affect the level of certainty involved, but it does not mean that there is not enough evidence for it to be reasonable for me to trust my wife.

I presume that if you are in love with someone, you have known the person for some time, and during that time, you have observed that person's conduct.  You can make inferences from such observations, though what inferences will depend on what observations you have made.

It is also worth emphasizing that Clifford specifically wrote about "sufficient evidence" and was not trying to tell you that you needed an absolute perfect certain proof before believing something.  You may, of course, complain that there is some slippage in some of what I have stated in this post, but, to bring in someone else for variety:

Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also give rise to a similar fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for before now men have been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage. We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs. 

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html

Not every subject has the same level of precision, and so we must be content with what is possible in a given subject.