Question

Compare and contrast The Ethics of Belief by W.K Clifford and The Will to Believe by William James while also summarizing their arugments within the essay...

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary.

(Answer) The ethics of belief is all about using rationality, intelligence and an ideological standard in order to formulate a conscientious and ethical belief. This essay talks about using certain cognitive standards in certain situations that would help calibrate a code of ethics. In other words, the essay talks about a system of ethics that is developed by the application of rational an intellect or ethics that are developed through simple practice.

The first interesting item in the essay warns people to not formulate their beliefs on insufficient data. We see this rule being broken so often when individuals are judged based on their stereotypes, their race and other categories that one might belong to. The ethics of belief suggests that conclusions should be drawn based on copious and substantial information after it has been churned through logical reasoning.

The second interesting topic is propositioning of one’s ethics based on strong evidence. This means that a proposition is formulated by forming a logical connection between variables. For instance, junk food = heart disease, junk food = cheap, poor people = purchase cheap food, poor people = eat junk food, therefore poor people = prone to heart disease. This is how the essay suggests that propositioning must be conducted by gathering enough information that is perhaps verified through study or evidence. This is how the ethics of belief should be propositional in nature.

The third is avoiding the dismissal of evidence. Dismissal takes place when there is a preference for a certain hypothesis. A researcher might indulge in confirmation bias and focus only on variables that support his hypothesis. This might result in a hollow conclusion as all of the variables have not been objectively considered. This is when the ethics of belief remains tarnished.

William James, on the other hand, conducted a different lecture titled “The Will to Believe.” In this lecture, James says that it isn’t always necessary to believe with prior evidence, testing and research. In other words, he urges that a leap of faith based on one’s decision made through moral conscience would also be equally as necessary at certain times.

His lecture pivoted from logic and explored matters of faith and expounded on a belief in god that was not always something where all evidence is at hand. For example, James says that it is ok to have confidence in oneself to accomplish a particular task even though it hasn’t been done before and there is no statistical evidence to prove that it can be done by that person. Self-confidence would work on the lines of the kind of belief that James explores in his lectures.