Controversy on Religious Belief

Paper Summary:

A look at differing outlooks on religion as seen through the eyes of Clifford (mathematician and philosopher) and James (philosopher and psychologist). The paper asks if James' treatment of Clifford in "The Will to Believe" was fair? Were his arguments against Clifford consistent? Did he take into account all that Clifford wrote in "The Ethics of Belief"? The writer claims that the answer to all three questions is "No". The writer gives a brief exposition of both James' and Clifford's essays and then focuses on James' attack on Clifford.The paper refers to some passages in Clifford's "The Ethics of Religion" and also to James's "The Sentiment of Rationality."

From the Paper:

"The topic of Clifford's paper is revealed in its title. It is about ethics and belief and that only. It is not about deciding to act, guessing or gambling, nor about hypotheses. According to Clifford, "it is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence" (DDR, 181). Put otherwise, whenever we have insufficient evidence, we have a moral duty to suspend judgment and to go on inquiring. Clifford introduces his thesis through two stories. I will give the highlights of only the first one since the second story, though different, adds only reinforcement to the points already demonstrated in the first. A ship owner faces a dilemma; he has doubts as to the seaworthiness of his vessel. He stifles those doubts by working on them, by trying to convince himself that his fears have no ground. He lets the ship sail. It sinks. But our ship owner's culpability goes undiscovered; not a witness survives to tell the tale. And the insurance company pays up. Clifford judges, as the majority of us I am sure would, that the ship owner did wrong. Suppose, he adds, that the belief, nourished and fostered by attention only to favorable evidence (unfavorable evidence not being conducive to establishing the wanted belief), has taken a genuine hold. The verdict, he thinks, still stands. And he is right again. "

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