Category Archives for "Epistemology"

In the last post, I talked about William Clifford's ethics of belief. If you missed that post you may want to take a look at it.
William James published a response to Clifford. James thinks Clifford is a "delicious enfant terrible"...or someone whose ideas are shocking and embarrassing.

Clifford's principle about belief formation prevents faith from running ahead of fact. That sounds reasonable and good. Then, why all the smack talk from James? You'll know by the end of this post.

For Clifford it's wrong to believe on the basis of insufficient evidence. What you believe and your confidence in a belief should strictly align with the evidence you have for the truth of the belief. If you have good evidence that supports a belief, then you should believe it. But, if you don't have sufficient evidence for it, you shouldn't believe it. Below is his principle.

James notices that Clifford's principle prescribes agnosticism in certain cases. Agnosticism is often mentioned in connection to religious belief. A religious agnostic believes that God's existence is just as likely as God's non-existence. The agnostic suspends judgment about whether God exists. Clifford's principle endorses this stance when a person has evidence that's equally divided for and against something, like whether God exists.

William James thinks this fence sitting can lead you to miss out on important truths. Sometimes you need to take a leap of faith in order to see what's in fact the case. Does this mean you can just believe whatever the heck you want on James's view? Can I believe that unicorns live in my basement because such a belief is comforting. Okay, that's weird. 

Anyway, James' view doesn't make belief formation the wild West. He thinks you can believe in advance of having sufficient evidence in cases where you know the evidence is divided. Also, the issue needs to be "momentous" or of great importance, believing or not believing it needs to not be forced, and it needs to be a genuine possibility in your mind. So, the unicorn in my basement thing just isn't a "live" possibility for James.

As James says about Clifford's principle and its prescribed agnosticism in such cases, "[A] rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule (James, p. 313).

James thinks in specific cases going beyond the evidence helps you establish or discover a truth.

Let's take a practical example.

Think about genuine friendship. Friendship is important. It's good and healthy to have trusted confidants in life.

But, when you first start becoming friends with someone you may not have sufficient evidence whether they are trustworthy as a friend. Your evidence may be neutral on that score. If you sit back and wait for sufficient evidence to roll in, you will not lean into that friendship. They might pick up on that. You may never become genuine friends. Without doing that you'll never discover the truth--that they are a trustworthy friend, assuming that they are.

In such a scenario, the fact of the matter does not arrive on the scene unless you initially believe the person is trustworthy, something that goes ahead of the fact. You miss out discovering an important truth. As James says, contrary to Clifford, "where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is 'the lowest kind of immorality' into which a thinking being can fall."