Download or read book The Ethics of Belief By William K Clifford A Paper Read Before the Metaphysical Society written by and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book W K Clifford and The Ethics of Belief written by Timothy Madigan and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2008-12-18 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: W. K. Clifford (1845-1879) was a noted mathematician and popularizer of science in the Victorian era. Although he made major contributions in the field of geometry, he is perhaps best known for a short essay he wrote in 1876, entitled "The Ethics of Belief", in which he argued that "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Delivered initially as an address to the august Metaphysical Society (whose members included such luminaries as Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Gladstone, T. H. Huxley, and assorted scientists, clerics and philosophers of differing metaphysical views, "The Ethics of Belief" became a rallying cry for freethinkers and a bone of contention for religious apologists. It continues to be discussed today as an exemplar of what is called 'evidentialism', a key point in current philosophy of religion debates over justification of knowledge claims. In this book, Timothy J. Madigan examines the continuing relevance of "The Ethics of Belief" to epistemological and ethical concerns. He places the essay within the historical context, especially the so-called 'Victorian Crisis of Faith' of which Clifford was a key player. Clifford's own life and interests are dealt with as well, along with the responses to his essay by his contemporaries, the most famous of which was William James's "The Will to Believe." Madigan provides an overview of modern-day critics of Cliffordian evidentialism, as well as examining thinkers who were positively influenced by him, including Bertrand Russell, who was perhaps Clifford's most influential successor as an advocate of intellectual honesty. The book ends with a defense of "The Ethics of Belief" from a virtue-theory approach, and argues that Clifford utilizes an "as-if" methodology to encourage intellectual inquiry and communal truth-seeking.' The Ethics of Belief' continues to provoke and stimulate controversy, which was perhaps Clifford's own fondest hope, although he had no right to believe it would do so.
Download or read book The Ethics of Belief and Beyond written by Sebastian Schmidt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a framework for approaching and understanding mental normativity. It presents cutting-edge research on the ethics of belief as well as innovative research beyond the normativity of belief—and towards an ethics of mind. By moving beyond traditional issues of epistemology the contributors discuss the most current ideas revolving around rationality, responsibility, and normativity. The book’s chapters are divided into two main parts. Part I discusses contemporary issues surrounding the normativity of belief. The essays here cover topics such as control over belief and its implication for the ethics of belief, the role of the epistemic community for the possibility of epistemic normativity, responsibility for believing, doxastic partiality in friendship, the structure and content of epistemic norms, and the norms for suspension of judgment. In Part II the focus shifts from the practical dimensions of belief to the normativity and rationality of other mental states—especially blame, passing thoughts, fantasies, decisions, and emotions. These essays illustrate how we might approach an ethics of mind by focusing not only on belief, but also more generally on debates about responsibility and rationality, as well as on normative questions concerning other mental states or attitudes. The Ethics of Belief and Beyond paves the way towards an ethics of mind by building on and contributing to recent philosophical discussions in the ethics of belief and the normativity of other mental phenomena. It will be of interest to upper-level students and researchers working in epistemology, ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology.
Download or read book Believing Against the Evidence written by Miriam Schleifer McCormick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of whether it is ever permissible to believe on insufficient evidence has once again become a live question. Greater attention is now being paid to practical dimensions of belief, namely issues related to epistemic virtue, doxastic responsibility, and voluntarism. In this book, McCormick argues that the standards used to evaluate beliefs are not isolated from other evaluative domains. The ultimate criteria for assessing beliefs are the same as those for assessing action because beliefs and actions are both products of agency. Two important implications of this thesis, both of which deviate from the dominant view in contemporary philosophy, are 1) it can be permissible (and possible) to believe for non-evidential reasons, and 2) we have a robust control over many of our beliefs, a control sufficient to ground attributions of responsibility for belief.
Download or read book Belief s Own Ethics written by Jonathan E. Adler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-01-20 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fundamental question of the ethics of belief is "What ought one to believe?" According to the traditional view of evidentialism, the strength of one's beliefs should be proportionate to the evidence. Conventional ways of defending and challenging evidentialism rely on the idea that what one ought to believe is a matter of what it is rational, prudent, ethical, or personally fulfilling to believe. Common to all these approaches is that they look outside of belief itself to determine what one ought to believe. In this book Jonathan Adler offers a strengthened version of evidentialism, arguing that the ethics of belief should be rooted in the concept of belief—that evidentialism is belief's own ethics. A key observation is that it is not merely that one ought not, but that one cannot, believe, for example, that the number of stars is even. The "cannot" represents a conceptual barrier, not just an inability. Therefore belief in defiance of one's evidence (or evidentialism) is impossible. Adler addresses such questions as irrational beliefs, reasonableness, control over beliefs, and whether justifying beliefs requires a foundation. Although he treats the ethics of belief as a central topic in epistemology, his ideas also bear on rationality, argument and pragmatics, philosophy of religion, ethics, and social cognitive psychology.
Download or read book John Locke and the Ethics of Belief written by Nicholas Wolterstorff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-26 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new view of Locke's ethics of belief and his contribution to modern philosophy.
Download or read book Responsible Belief written by Rik Peels and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What we believe and what we do not believe has a great impact on what we do and fail to do. Hence, if we want to act responsibly, we should believe responsibly. However, do we have the kind of control over our beliefs that such responsibility for our beliefs seems to require? Do we have certain obligations to control or influence our beliefs on particular occasions? And do we sometimes believe responsibly despite violating such obligations, namely because we are excused by, say, indoctrination or ignorance? By answering each of these questions, Rik Peels provides a theory of what it is to believe responsibly. He argues that we lack control over our beliefs, but that we can nonetheless influence our beliefs by performing actions that make a difference to what we believe. We have a wide variety of moral, prudential, and epistemic obligations to perform such belief-influencing actions. We can be held responsible for our beliefs in virtue of such influence on our beliefs. Sometimes, we believe responsibly despite having violated such obligations, namely if we are excused, by force, ignorance, or luck. A careful consideration of these excuses teaches us, respectively, that responsible belief entails that we could have failed to have that belief, that responsible belief is in a specific sense radically subjective, and that responsible belief is compatible with its being a matter of luck that we hold that belief.
Download or read book The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays written by William Kingdon Clifford and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anythingupon insufficient evidence." -- W. K. CliffordThe above forthright assertion of mathematician and educator W. K. Clifford (1845-1879) in his famous essay "The Ethics of Belief" drew an immediate response from Victorian-era critics, who took issue with his reasoned and brilliantly presented attack on beliefs "not founded on fair inquiry." An advocate of evolutionary theory, Clifford recognized that working hypotheses and assumptions are necessary for belief formation and that testing and assessing one''s beliefs in light of new evidence strengthens those worthy of being held. "The Ethics of Belief" is presented here in complete form, along with an insightful biographical introduction by editor Timothy J. Madigan. Also included are four other noteworthy essays by Clifford: "On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought," "Right and Wrong," "The Ethics of Religion," and "The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious Belief."
Download or read book Evidentialism and the Will to Believe written by Scott Aikin and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-05-22 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Work on the norms of belief in epistemology regularly starts with two touchstone essays: W.K. Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief" and William James's "The Will to Believe." Discussing the central themes from these seminal essays, Evidentialism and the Will to Believe explores the history of the ideas governing evidentialism. As well as Clifford's argument from the examples of the shipowner, the consequences of credulity and his defence against skepticism, this book tackles James's conditions for a genuine option and the structure of the will to believe case as a counter-example to Clifford's evidentialism. Exploring the question of whether James's case successfully counters Clifford's evidentialist rule for belief, this study captures the debate between those who hold that one should proportion belief to evidence and those who hold that the evidentialist norm is too restrictive. More than a sustained explication of the essays, it also surveys recent epistemological arguments to evidentialism. But it is by bringing Clifford and James into fruitful conversation for the first time that this study presents a clearer history of the issues and provides an important reconstruction of the notion of evidence in contemporary epistemology.
Download or read book Kierkegaard on Self Ethics and Religion written by Roe Fremstedal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-17 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of Søren Kierkegaard's most controversial and influential ideas are more relevant than ever to contemporary debates on ethics, philosophy of religion and selfhood. Kierkegaard develops an original argument according to which wholeheartedness requires both moral and religious commitment. In this book, Roe Fremstedal provides a compelling reconstruction of how Kierkegaard develops wholeheartedness in the context of his views on moral psychology, meta-ethics and the ethics of religious belief. He shows that Kierkegaard's influential account of despair, selfhood, ethics and religion belongs to a larger intellectual context in which German philosophers such as Kant and Fichte play crucial roles. Moreover, Fremstedal makes a solid case for the controversial claim that religion supports ethics, instead of contradicting it. His book offers a novel and comprehensive reading of Kierkegaard, drawing on important sources that are little known.
Download or read book God and the Ethics of Belief written by Andrew Dole and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-06 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy of religion in the Anglo-American tradition experienced a 'rebirth' following the 1955 publication of New Essays in Philosophical Theology (eds. Antony Flew and Alisdair MacIntyre). Fifty years later, this volume of essays offers a sampling of the best work in what is now a very active field, written by some of its most prominent members. A substantial introduction sketches the developments of the last half-century, while also describing the 'ethics of belief' debate in epistemology and showing how it connects to explicitly religious concerns and to the topics of the individual contributions. These topics include: the relationship between God and the natural laws; the metaphysics of bodily resurrection; the role of appeal to 'mystery' in the religious life; the justification of both theistic belief generally and more specific doctrinal beliefs; and the social-political aspects of religious faith and practice.
Download or read book Shalom and the Ethics of Belief written by Nathan D. Shannon and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the individualism and abstractionism of standard modern accounts of justification and epistemic merit, Wolterstorff incorporates the ethics of belief within the full scope of a person's socio-moral accountability, an accountability that ultimately flows from the teleology of the world as intended by its creator and from the inherent value of humans as bearers of the divine image. This study explores Nicholas Wolterstorff's theory of "situated rationality" from a theological point of view and argues that it is in fact a doxastic ethic based upon the theology of Wolterstorff's neo-Calvinist, Kuyperian background, which emerges in terms of his biblical ethic and eschatology of shalom. Situated rationality, the sum of Wolterstorff's decades-long work on epistemology and rationality is a shalom doxastic ethic--a Christian, common grace ethic of doxastic (even religious doxastic) pluralism.
Download or read book Islamic Philosophy and the Ethics of Belief written by Anthony Robert Booth and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-04 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the author argues that the Falasifa, the Philosophers of the Islamic Golden Age, are usefully interpreted through the prism of the contemporary, western ethics of belief. He contends that their position amounts to what he calls ‘Moderate Evidentialism’ – that only for the epistemic elite what one ought to believe is determined by one’s evidence. The author makes the case that the Falasifa’s position is well argued, ingeniously circumvents issues in the epistemology of testimony, and is well worth taking seriously in the contemporary debate. He reasons that this is especially the case since the position has salutary consequences for how to respond to the sceptic, and for how we are to conceive of extremist belief.
Download or read book The Public Perspective written by Maria Paola Ferretti and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-11-02 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that we can find the resources to build a public perspective if we make two commitments: to respect people as autonomous agents and to endorse a shared ethics of beliefs.
Download or read book Believing by Faith written by John Bishop and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-12 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does our available evidence show that some particular religion is correct? It seems unlikely, given the great diversity of religious - and non-religious - views of the world. But if no religious beliefs can be shown true on the evidence, can it be right to make a religious commitment? Should people make 'leaps of faith'? Or would we all be better off avoiding commitments that outrun our evidence? And, if leaps of faith can be acceptable, how do we tell the difference between goodand bad ones - between sound religion and dogmatic ideology or fundamentalist fanaticism? Believing by Faith offers answers to these questions, inspired by a famous attempt to justify faith made by William James in 1896. In doing so, it engages critically with much recent discussion in the philosophyof religion, and, especially, the epistemology of religious belief.
Download or read book The Ethics of Belief written by A. J. Burger and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2008-08 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic discussion between William Kingdon Clifford (The Ethics of Belief) and William James (The Will to Believe), with added explanatory footnotes, and further commentary by A.J. Burger (An Examination of "The Will to Believe"). Never before have these essays appeared together in their complete and unabridged forms, with added footnotes, in an inexpensive edition. The recent essay by A.J. Burger, published for the first time, provides a thorough and unflinching examination of James' The Will to Believe. "People have long been interested in the circumstances under which it is appropriate to believe. Often, the source of this interest is the desire to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence. Extensive excerpts ... are often reprinted in anthologies. This is sufficient proof of the enduring interest in this subject, and of the importance of these particular essays." -from the Preface
Download or read book William James on Ethics and Faith written by Michael R. Slater and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new interpretation of James's ethical and religious thought focusing on the prominent role these views played in his philosophy.
