W.K. Clifford believed that humans should not hold a belief as long as it was unjustified or unsupported by clear evidence because they are immoral beliefs. William James refuted his argument by saying that some beliefs are unjustified and unsupported, but those arguments can be as moral as much as evidence-based beliefs because humans have options when choosing moral beliefs. Beliefs unbacked by evidence can be moral if they are live (a belief you would reasonably have), forced (being forced to choose an option), and momentous (a belief that changes the outcome of your life). Coincidentally, James’s talk of moral belief coincides with a belief in God. In fact, other “moral” beliefs could be unsupported by evidence while being live, forced, and momentous. The following are some examples: not vaccinating your children, drunk driving, sexism, or following a cult.
Clifford believed that even beliefs
that do not explicitly hurt other people are immoral if they are unsupported by
evidence. I categorize my examples to be immoral beliefs because they explicitly
hurt the receiver and people influenced by them, like children. In the examples
from the previous paragraph, even James’s decision to believe in a god can hurt
others. Believing in a god causes the believer to live in an unrealistic,
selfish world where they feel untouched by the law. Not vaccinating your
children can kill them if they are not treated immediately for the diseases. Drunk
driving can cause the individual to crash because of delayed reactions, killing
himself/herself, others in the car, or others outside of the car. Sexism causes
men and women to internalize problems caused by stereotypes, eventually causing
them to satisfy the stereotype. Following a cult is an extreme version of
following a religion in that cults exploit individuals for the leaders’
personal reasons.
While some of these activities are
not exactly immoral by today’s standards, they would be counted as immoral by
Clifford. He had a famous example about a ship owner that he used to defend his
morality argument. A shipowner has an unsafe ship that needs to travel across
the Atlantic loaded with goods. If the ship sinks, he will receive money and no
blame; if the boat arrives safely, then he and the crew will be paid. With either
outcome, Clifford says that both sides cause the shipowner to be greedy and
guilty of being immoral. Whether the ship makes the trip is almost irrelevant
because he was focused on how the shipowner almost killed the people on the
ship. I understand why the shipowner would be guilty of sending the ship
knowing that the evidence shows that the ship will not make the trip. I do not
understand why William James was courageous enough to propose believing in god
works in the model. The gods worshipped around the world have no evidence for
them aside from blind faith, and as the years pass, their powers and stories are
compromised to fit new philosophies. As we have seen from Fantasyland, blindly believing in an idea has caused many problems
in American history that have grown exponentially in intensity over time.
In the next installment, I will
defend William James’s side of the moral beliefs argument. This video was from Crash Course Philosophy.
The James-Clifford debate over the ethics of belief is one of the most interesting in philosophy. Do we have a right to believe what we can't prove? Clifford says no, James says sometimes - if the choice is forced and the stakes are momentous. But he didn't say that it's always right to believe in god or anything else, necessarily - it all depends on the situation, the person, the probable outcomes etc. For instance, suppose you're trying to climb a steep mountain and come to a chasm where you must leap, in order to continue. If you don't leap successfully you'll fall to your death. If you don't try, you'll be stranded to face a slower but no less certain death. Should you believe you can do it, can make the jump? Clifford would say the evidence does not support it. James would say you have the right to believe, especially if believing is itself a condition of success.
ReplyDeleteAnd so it is, he thought, with many of the more engaging perennial issues in philosophy concerning god, freedom, etc. We don't always have the luxury of neither believing nor disbelieving. We've got to make a choice and a move.
But did James himself believe in God? It's more accurate to say he believed in the right of some people to believe in God, though he himself personally did not feel forced to choose and did not consider the issue momentous for him. Others might be in a different situation.
I find James' ideas intriguing. I don't however fully agree that his 'belief without evidence is immoral'. I don't think you always needs evidence to believe some things to make them moral.
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