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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Clifford's Rule — believe only those propositions that enjoy adequate evidential support — is morally valid

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 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 for 2 of 2
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    • 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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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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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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