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Clifford Insufficient Evidence

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Clifford Insufficient Evidence
What I'm here to discuss is some of the flaws in Clifford's principal in The Ethics of Belief. Clifford argues that it is always wrong to believe on insufficient evidence. He brings up a couple of premises. Premise 1 is that believing anything on insufficient evidence is always harmful to others. Premise 2 is that it is always wrong for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence. With the example of a shipowner, the shipowner believed strongly in his ship without sufficient evidence that it was ready for a voyage. However, because the ship sank and caused the death of the men on the ship he was in the wrong for believing in the soundness of the ship without enough evidence to support it. His decision harmed other men and thus supports …show more content…
I do believe that in most cases it is wrong to believe on something without gathering enough information and evidence on the subject matter. For example, if someone was murdered and the police arrested someone who was at the scene of the crime, it would be wrong to accuse him and believing this person committed the crime without investigating and looking for evidence that indicates he was the culprit. So, I agree with Clifford based on this example. However, it's not always the case where it is wrong to believe on insufficient evidence because sometimes you can't find evidence to support either side. We can't always use sufficient logic and evidence to decide an issue even though we may still believe in one thing or the other. For example, if a person was offered to be on board on a mission to explore space in search for a new colony, there is insufficient evidence to decide whether to go or not on this mission. It is high stakes, unique and irreversible making you unable to decide on any evidence even though you must choose to go or not to go. The decision to go or not only effects the person making the decision and does not harm another person. This contradicts Clifford's premise that believing on insufficient evidence is always harmful to
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