The ethics of belief: is it always wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, and does the principle survive being applied to itself?

William Kingdon Clifford, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

The wrong lies in the manner of acquiring the belief, not in its truth or its outcome. Since we act on beliefs and transmit them, no belief is a private possession, and the credulous man is a danger to the community whose habits of inquiry he degrades.12345

Sources

  1. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town.
    The Scientific Basis of Morals and Other Essays, incl. The Ethics of Belief
  2. That duty is to guard ourselves from such behefs as from a pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. What would be thought of one who, for the sake of a sweet fruit, should dehberately run the risk of bringing a plague upon his family and his neighbours? THE ETHICS OF BELIEF.
    Lectures and Essays Vol II, ed. Pollock
  3. But I cannot help doing this great wrong toward Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
    The Scientific Basis of Morals and Other Essays, incl. The Ethics of Belief
  4. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should beheve wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should be- come credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and 186 THE ETHICS OF BELIEF. inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
    Lectures and Essays Vol II, ed. Pollock
  5. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live. In the two supposed cases which have been considered, it has been judged wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, or to nourish belief by suppressing doubts and avoiding investigation.
    The Scientific Basis of Morals and Other Essays, incl. The Ethics of Belief

Where the argument is made

  • "The Ethics of Belief" (Contemporary Review, 1877), in three parts: "The Duty of Inquiry", "The Weight of Authority", "The Limits of Inference"
  • collected in Lectures and Essays (1879) and in The Scientific Basis of Morals and Other Essays (1884)

How the argument was received

The canonical statement of evidentialism, and the standing target of pragmatists and reformed epistemologists alike.