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Clifford Ethics of Beliefs Argument Summary

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Summary of The ethics of belief
William K. Clifford’s essay “The Ethics of Belief`” is divided into three separate subsections. These subsections are: The Duty of Inquiry, The Weight of Authority and The Limits of Interference. Throughout the essay Clifford uses various illustrations to help prove his argument and for the reader to have a better understanding of beliefs. After giving an illustration, Clifford gives us his argument on his view of the ethics of belief. Clifford’s thesis that he seems to follow is that forming a new belief without proper evidence, or to support an existing belief by intentionally ignoring your doubts and avoiding a thorough investigation would be immoral.
In the first section entitled ‘The Duty of Inquiry,’ Clifford provides us with two stories as illustrations on the question of beliefs. The first story tells of a ship owner with an old, not very well built ship, whom is considering sending this ship on a voyage full of immigrants. Doubts had been raised by the ship owner and also other people about how worthy the ship was to set sail. Despite these doubts the ship owner decided to send the vessel on its voyage with all the people aboard believing that there was nothing wrong with the ship. Around the midpoint of the journey the ship sank and killed all the people on board. Clifford leads us to believe that the ship owner was guilty of all the deaths of the people aboard his ship. The reason he is guilty of this is due to the ship owner having neglectful beliefs of how sea worthy the ship was. He did not do a solid investigation to get the proper evidence to support his beliefs of the ship.
In the second story Clifford tells of an island where some of the citizens formed a society for the purpose of agitating the public. They did this to try and get the people to join in their specific beliefs that some of the other religious citizens were teaching their doctrines by unjust ways. These unjust ways included stretching the laws of the country so that children could be taken away from the care of their parents or legal guardians; and also kidnapping these children away from any friends or relatives they have. A committee was soon appointed to investigate and gather evidence on these matters. The committee found that the accused were not guilty of anything. Clifford then goes on to explain that the evidence used was not sufficient enough for charges. He also points out that it was readily available to the accusers if they had only looked for it themselves. The accusers however truly believed in the charges that they had made. But that had no right to believe in them because of the evidence that was in front of them.
After the illustration of these two stories Clifford goes into the details of his argument. Clifford concludes that the dispute is not whether a person’s belief is true or false but is based on how the belief was reached and if there is proper evidence to support a claim. He then explains that even when someone has a strong belief already, they still have the choice of the action that can be taken. They also still have a duty to fully investigate and gather all the evidence before just going on beliefs. Clifford also explains that no matter how strong of belief it is that a person has it cannot control a person actions. Saving these beliefs inside just gathers more like it and Clifford states that someday these will all come out in someone’s actions and destroy their reputation forever. He also points out that the role of mankind is to protect their beliefs from the ones that have been gathered by insufficient evidence. He then reckons that by holding beliefs without proper evidence will only lead to actions that will be wrong to mankind.
The next subsection of the essay is ‘The Weight of Authority.’ In this section Clifford sets out to prove that there are two reasons that a person may say that something is not worth believing. The two reasons Clifford gives is when something is untrue either by people knowing it is or them not knowing it is. He then goes on to explain how people can accept someone’s testimony based on how truthful they are or how well they use their judgement. Clifford then breaks in to two illustrations again to help support his argument. The first illustration is of a Muslim man. The Muslim man explains how great of a person his prophet is, having good character and also being a great noble teacher. Clifford explains that the Muslim man had good beliefs and was speaking the truth but also that there was no evidence that this man even knew the truth. The second is of the followers of the Buddha. Clifford states how Buddha says there is no God and the Muslim says that there is. He says that both of these people cannot be reliable people because one of them had to be a victim of a lie and thought he knew the truth about God in which he did not really know.
Clifford then uses an illustration of a chemist that tells his customers that a substance can be made by combining other substances. Clifford explains that he is a professional and people can believe what he says because he has the knowledge of the truth. People could actually verify what he is saying but may never actually verify it. Clifford then finishes off this section explaining how important it is for people to test beliefs daily. He states that it is a man’s duty and responsibility to question these things and to help understand our doubts.
In the final subsection of his essay Clifford states that interferences that are a historical kind are more unjustified than those form a scientific perspective. Clifford details how our experiences cannot show evidence to support how uniform nature is. People do not know how nature works and there is no evidence to support that. People believe things that go beyond their experience but only when they assume they know something about the experience that they do not actually know. People may believe statements from other people when they have proper evidence to support the facts they are speaking on to verify how truthful it is. Clifford finishes off this section stating that it would be wrong for someone to believe anything without proper evidence or before they have a chance to investigate the statement.

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