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    Clifford's Rule — believe only those propositions that en... — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Clifford's Rule — believe only those propositions that enjoy adequate evidential support — is morally valid

    Moral ResponsibilityTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.As intellectual beings, humans have the dual goal of maximizing significant true beliefs and minimizing false ones
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    • 2.Clifford's Rule derives its moral validity from that intellectual goal
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.William James demonstrates in 'The Will to Believe' that some genuine options are forced, live, and momentous yet undecidable by evidence alone.
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    • 2.When evidence is insufficient to decide a forced option, withholding belief is itself a choice with moral consequences, not a neutral epistemic stance.
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    • 3.Therefore Clifford's Rule, applied to forced options, does not eliminate moral risk but merely privileges the risk of missing truths over the risk of believing falsehoods.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The goal of maximizing true beliefs cannot be specified without a prior normative account of which truths are significant, which Clifford's Rule does not provide.
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    • 2.Blaise Pascal and pragmatist thinkers argue that beliefs constitutive of personal identity, commitment, and flourishing may be epistemically self-validating rather than evidentially constrained.
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    • 3.If the moral validity of Clifford's Rule depends on an intellectual goal it cannot itself ground, the argument from that goal is circular and fails to establish universal moral validity.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityTruth & Knowledge

    Connections

    1 topic

    Skepticism1 linked

    Related

    As intellectual beings, humans have the dual goal of maximizing significant true...Blaise Pascal and pragmatist thinkers argue that beliefs constitutive of persona...Clifford's Rule derives its moral validity from that intellectual goalIf the moral validity of Clifford's Rule depends on an intellectual goal it cann...
    +4 moreShow less
    The goal of maximizing true beliefs cannot be specified without a prior normativ...Therefore Clifford's Rule, applied to forced options, does not eliminate moral r...When evidence is insufficient to decide a forced option, withholding belief is i...William James demonstrates in 'The Will to Believe' that some genuine options ar...

    Similar

    Although moral opinions are not genuinely true or false (being optativ...83%Ross's considered view does not hold that self-evident moral propositi...82%James's argument permits violating Clifford's Rule by believing propos...82%The reply that one is justified in believing a proposition and justifi...82%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: pragmatic-belief-god
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    A more significant objection contends that James’s argument fails “to show that one can have a sufficient moral reason for self-inducing an epistemically unsupported belief” (Gale 1990, 283). This objection contends that there is a weighty moral duty to proportion one’s beliefs to the evidence, and that this duty flows from moral personhood – to be a morally responsible person requires that one have good reasons for each of one’s beliefs. But to believe an epistemically unsupported proposition i
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit