Clifford's Argument In The Ethics Of Belief

In this essay, I will be writing to express my thoughts regarding Clifford’s argument in “the Ethics of Belief," as well as presenting my opposition as to why I disagree with Clifford's view. According to Clifford, he holds that it is best to always act according to rationality and logical evidence, rather than relying on baseless assumptions and emotional support since those things can only cloud one’s judgment, which thereby resulting in an erroneous consequence. However, in contradiction to Clifford’s belief, I do not think that it is always the case that acting upon insufficient evidence would consider as being wrong or causing an undesirable outcome to our lives. As I have mentioned, my goal is to present my objection against Clifford’s
belief on consequences occurring in related to insufficient evidence. Nonetheless, I will first be stating Clifford’s argument and clarifying the reason for his claim. Then, I will continue with my objection and explain the reason for my opposition. To begin with Clifford’s argument, he argued that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” (The Ethics of Belief, p.5) According to Clifford, the reason for his argument was based on the belief that human beings are usually neglecting their rational judgments for other irrational choices.
In such cases, those choices could be ranging from religious faiths, personal preferences, or emotional inclinations, etc. In most of the times, the majority would choose to ignore their intellectual thought and decided to be in favor with their irrational interests, which ended up clouding their judgments and resulting in an unfavorable outcome. To further support his claim, he proposed an example of the ship owner case. In this example, the ship owner, who has noticed the changes in his ship condition, still forgoes his judgment and allowed the ship to sail out with numerous emigrants on board. He decided to ignore his doubts by entrusted the future state of the vessel to the care of Providence. Just as his prediction goes, since the ship wasn’t durable enough, to begin with, it ended up sinking, and as a result, numerous lives were lost. Clifford applied this example to his argument, aiming to draw a connection between the ship owner and the immorality in believing things without sufficient evidence. He wanted to address the fact that due to the
ship owner’s own ignorant and his decision to entrust his faith into God, which eventually leads to a tragic outcome that could have been prevented if the ship was to be checked thoroughly beforehand.
As such, even though the owner did not directly or physically cause harm to the vessel, would still be the one to blame due to his irresponsibility and the decision to entrust his faith in something that Clifford regards as inadequate or insubstantial in evidence. Therefore, he concludes that it is always in our best interest to act according to our logical reasoning and based our actions on sufficient proof if we want to avoid unfavorable circumstances from happening in life. In response to Clifford’s view, I do not think that Clifford’s argument would be the best option to be successfully applied to all different areas of life. Generally speaking, I disagree with Clifford’s claim as I believe that there lie cases, in which sufficient evidence or rationality alone is inadequate to support one’s consequence in life. What is the reason for my belief? Well, in reality, we, human beings are never assured of what could arise in our lives because we are born unable to grasp or foreseen the future ahead of ourselves. Sometimes, life can go as we planned them out to be, but sometimes it
can also be thrust into an unexpected situation, where all its await is one’s morality or instinct to act upon oneself. Thus, if everything could just be calculated and predicted solely by our intellectual and rational minds, there would not be catastrophe or suffering events continuously happening among our society. Assuming that Clifford was to see and counteract my opposition, he could perhaps criticize that if we were to take precautions and gathered all the risks ahead of time, we would be able to avoid those catastrophic events from happening. My answer to this would be impossible. By looking at the various stages throughout our society, it is clear that the fact, we, human beings can continue to evolve until the present day is mostly due to our ability to open ourselves to risks and to learn from our experiences. And yet, there are still many problems that need to be taken care of within our world. Therefore, if everyone is born able to calculate and convinced of every risk ahead of time as Clifford suggested, there would not be any sufferings now. Hence this means that regardless of how much contemplation and calculation we have, there can only be an absolute limit to how much control we have over our lives. For example, let’s suppose that A man is riding a boat with his mother and wife. Before the ride, he made sure to check the weather forecast and the boat condition ahead of time. In contrast to his expectation, a massive storm approached and the boat sunk, leaving both his mother and wife drowning at the same time. The man could only rescue one, given his ability. In this case, this person would not be able to rely on any factual evidence or cognitive skills at all as he is being forced to face with both a spontaneous situation at hand, as well as a restricted time limit. From this example, this individual would have no other choice but to rely on his instinct and conscience as a human being on whom he could save. Even if in the end, he was only able to rescue one person and not the other, I do not think that he should be blamed for his decision because this situation is not within his control. Henceforth, if we were to rely on Clifford’s argument here, we would not be able to reach a conclusion on whom to save, not to mention if we would be successful in saving even one person at all. Relatively, another example that I find would work well against Clifford’s claim, in which we would have to rely on our instincts and not factual evidence, is the followed scenario. Let’s say that Sarah, as a tourist, is on her way to explore a new city that she has not visited before. In all of a sudden, she began feeling unwell and need to look for the nearest hospital within her location. As Sarah, always has been a cautious individual, made sure to bring with her all the different types of medications, along with her new modern mobile device at hand. Naturally, Sarah would be relying on whatever she has prepared, but unfortunately for her, the medications were not helpful, and the location that was showing on the mobile phone was also quite far away. Fortunately, a local nearby noticed and offered to help. In this case, instead of continuing to rely on her medicines and the mobile device, she had no option but to follow the local’s instruction, which luckily for her, she ended up in a hospital that is closer to what was instructed on the GPS device of her mobile phone. In this case, it is clear that Clifford’s principle of logical and sufficient evidence would not be able to apply here, as Sarah’s condition has limited her options to choose, but also restraining her from relying on her rationality. Furthermore, as we can see here, Sarah’s condition would have been worse if she chose to abide by her phone’s GPS instead of following the local’s instruction. Therefore, not all situations that resulted without contemplation and substantial proof would consider being as “failure.” By applying these two examples, my goal was to prove that life does not merely limit to logical reasoning alone, but it is far more complicated than what Clifford had generalized it to be. In conclusion, it is clear to us that regardless of how reliable or substantial our beliefs hold, there are always place for contemplation or evaluation. This continuous process of doubts and consideration in itself shows that evidence or proof alone does not limit to everything we do in our lives.