Clifford's Argument In The Ethics Of Belief

In this essay, I will be writing to express my thoughts regarding Clifford’s argument in “the Ethics of Belief," as well as presenting my opposition as to why I disagree with Clifford's view. According to Clifford, he holds that it is best to always act according to rationality and logical evidence, rather than relying on baseless assumptions and emotional support since those things can only cloud one’s judgment, which thereby resulting in an erroneous consequence. However, in contradiction to Clifford’s belief, I do not think that it is always the case that acting upon insufficient evidence would consider as being wrong or causing an undesirable outcome to our lives. As I have mentioned, my goal is to present my objection against Clifford’s
In such cases, those choices could be ranging from religious faiths, personal preferences, or emotional inclinations, etc. In most of the times, the majority would choose to ignore their intellectual thought and decided to be in favor with their irrational interests, which ended up clouding their judgments and resulting in an unfavorable outcome. To further support his claim, he proposed an example of the ship owner case. In this example, the ship owner, who has noticed the changes in his ship condition, still forgoes his judgment and allowed the ship to sail out with numerous emigrants on board. He decided to ignore his doubts by entrusted the future state of the vessel to the care of Providence. Just as his prediction goes, since the ship wasn’t durable enough, to begin with, it ended up sinking, and as a result, numerous lives were lost. Clifford applied this example to his argument, aiming to draw a connection between the ship owner and the immorality in believing things without sufficient evidence. He wanted to address the fact that due to the
As such, even though the owner did not directly or physically cause harm to the vessel, would still be the one to blame due to his irresponsibility and the decision to entrust his faith in something that Clifford regards as inadequate or insubstantial in evidence. Therefore, he concludes that it is always in our best interest to act according to our logical reasoning and based our actions on sufficient proof if we want to avoid unfavorable circumstances from happening in life. In response to Clifford’s view, I do not think that Clifford’s argument would be the best option to be successfully applied to all different areas of life. Generally speaking, I disagree with Clifford’s claim as I believe that there lie cases, in which sufficient evidence or rationality alone is inadequate to support one’s consequence in life. What is the reason for my belief? Well, in reality, we, human beings are never assured of what could arise in our lives because we are born unable to grasp or foreseen the future ahead of ourselves. Sometimes, life can go as we planned them out to be, but sometimes it