William K. Clifford, a mathematician, philosopher, and fellow of the Royal Society, was praised as “a brilliant, witty, charming man, who was also an excellent teacher.”[1] Clifford proposed the development of a geometric theory of gravity, later accomplished by Albert Einstein, who was born eleven days after Clifford died. In philosophy, Clifford took a bold stance against having confidence exceeding the evidence. He expressed this nowhere better than in his 1877 essay “The Ethics of Belief,” excerpted below:
A ship owner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him at great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.
What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it.
Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong forever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him.[2]
When I first read Clifford’s essay, I was unaware that he had personally survived a shipwreck near the Sicilian coast in 1870. But I recognized immediately that nothing in the Bible or Shakespeare could rival these three paragraphs in eloquence or wisdom.
The philosopher Michael Martin wrote that Clifford’s objection to believing without adequate evidence was a moral objection rather than an epistemic one.[3] On deeper analysis, however, we see that Clifford was recounting a cautionary tale against confirmation bias. He was advocating for intellectual protocols similar in spirit and intent to scientific protocols: double-blind tests, peer review, and so forth.
We are not all scientists. Yet, in our own limited ways, we should emulate the critical mindset of scientists. Clifford urged us to actively seek out contrary facts and perspectives. That sounds trivially obvious and easy, but it goes against our inclination to focus on promising and credible theories, rather than exploring seemingly improbable objections to our theories. This mental tendency to overly restrict our research domain doubtless traces back to our foraging ancestors, who didn’t waste time searching for resources in relatively unlikely places. When seeking objections to our ideologies, however, the most promising locations to search are on hostile and seemingly barren terrain.
We establish error-prevention protocols for both moral and epistemic reasons. Insisting that one consult one’s philosophical critics is not fundamentally different from insisting that the chemist assay the purity of drugs sold to medical facilities. Whether one is concocting medicines or philosophical systems, failure to exercise due diligence potentially harms others. It also reflects our own meager concern for truth, or at least for those intellectual procedures crucial for discerning truth.
Kelly James Clark was for years an assistant professor of philosophy at Calvin College, a Christian liberal arts college situated in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At Calvin College, faculty members are required to be church members and to agree that sexual activity belongs exclusively within the covenant of heterosexual marriage. The school motto is “My heart I offer to you, Lord, promptly and sincerely.”
Such a motto reflects a hurried and impatient attitude. It’s not conducive to prolonged and deep contemplation. The motto must therefore pose a challenge for any serious philosopher. The motto seems particularly contrived to forestall the kind of careful and scrupulous objectivity recommended by Clifford.
Clark grimaced, “Clifford has an inordinate dread of acquiring false beliefs. If one acts on it, paying such fastidious attention to evidence and arguments as he enjoins, one will have scarcely any beliefs at all.”[4] Clark never justified this assertion, though he did express it, in compliance to his college motto, “promptly and sincerely.”
Clifford, in contrast to the doctrinaire, obscurantist pygmy peckers who teach at Christian colleges, demonstrated commitment to reason, integrity, and truth:
If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it, the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.[5]
Faith, like an autoimmune disorder, misperceives reality as toxic and tries to exclude it or attack it. This makes faith counter-noetic. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, “The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”[6]
[1] Gordon Stein, ed., An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (New York: Prometheus Books, 1980), 276.
[2] William Kingdon Clifford, The Ethics of Belief (Pantianos Classics, 1877).
[3] Martin, Atheism, 33.
[4] Kelly James Clark, Return to Reason: A Critique of Enlightenment Evidentialism and a Defense of Reason and Belief in God (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), 108.
[5] Clifford, The Ethics of Belief.
[6] Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack: Being the Choicest Morsels of Wisdom, Written During the Years of the Almanack’s Publication (Peter Pauper Press, Inc., 1987), 16.