The Ethics of Belief

[Pyrrho]

This thread is addressing the issue of the morality of believing things without evidence.  We will start with the presumption that morality isn't meaningless, and that things like murder are wrong.  The exact nature of morality is, however, a subject for another thread.  If you wish to discuss the nature of morality, please do so in another thread.

Like many words in English, the word "faith" has multiple meanings.  For the purposes of this thread, I will use it exclusively to mean

              belief that is unsupported by evidence.

This is the sense of "faith" that is most relevant to religion, as the whole point of some religionist telling someone that they just need to have faith is that they don't want to bother with proper evidence.  Otherwise, they would just give the evidence, and not make an appeal to faith.

I will keep to this one meaning in order to avoid the problem of equivocation, which is a common issue when this matter is discussed, with an alternate meaning of "faith" used to shift the discussion away from the fact that one has introduced the term in an effort to avoid actual evidence.


As one might expect, this topic has been discussed in the past, and I will be taking as the basis of the present discussion William Kingdon Clifford's essay "The Ethics of Belief" which can be found at:

http://ajburger.homestead.com/files/book.htm

I have selected that site as it also has an essay that is a response to ideas like Clifford's, and has a response to the response.  I will be defending Clifford's position, and will be happy to try to explain any portions of it that anyone has questions about.  I will use extensive quotes, as I rather like the way Clifford approaches this question.  As needed, I will argue against the response to Clifford by William James called "The Will to Believe" at the above link.  I will draw on the essay that is a response to it by A.J. Burger entitled "An Examination of ‘The Will to Believe’" and will defend it, as needed, as it essentially is agreeing with Clifford.  Here is the beginning of Clifford's essay:

A SHIPOWNER was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship.  He knew that she was old, and not over-well built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs.  Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy.  These doubts preyed upon his mind and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him to great expense.  Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections.  He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also.  He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere.  He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors.  In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales. 
        What shall we say of him?  Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men.  It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him.  He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.  And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it. 
        Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it.  Will that diminish the guilt of her owner?  Not one jot.  When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.  The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out.  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 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.

Clifford's conclusion is:

To sum up:  it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

This is probably long enough for an opening post, and will add details as needed in subsequent posts.