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Contemporary discussions of the ethics of belief stem largely from a famous nineteenth-century exchange between the British mathematician and philosopher W. K. Clifford and the American philosopher William James. In 1877 Clifford published an article titled "The Ethics of Belief" in the journal The Contemporary Review. There Clifford argued for ...
Clifford's principle holds that it is immoral for individuals, no matter of circumstances, to believe anything without sufficient evidence.While this principle has existed for centuries, it only became prominent in the minds of the common people after the ethics of belief debate in the 19th century [1] between W.K. Clifford and William James, with Clifford articulating the principle in his now ...
William Kingdon Clifford (4 May 1845 – 3 March 1879) was a British mathematician and philosopher.Building on the work of Hermann Grassmann, he introduced what is now termed geometric algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his honour.
James' "The Will to Believe" and William K. Clifford's essay "The Ethics of Belief" are touchstones for many contemporary debates over evidentialism, faith, and overbelief. James' "The Will to Believe" consists of introductory remarks followed by ten numbered but not titled sections.
Replying on behalf of Clifford, Aikin argues that such cases are not exceptions, because knowledge that one's belief in a proposition makes that proposition more likely to be true amounts to evidence for that proposition. Aikin has also contributed to the public debate about the ethics of belief in religious contexts, in Reasonable Atheism. [3]
The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays by William Kingdon Clifford edited by Timothy J. Madigan (1999) Promethean Love, edited by Timothy J. Madigan, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006. God and the Philosophers, by Paul Edwards edited by Timothy J. Madigan, Prometheus Books, 2008.
This philosophical view is derived from a branch of logic known as doxastic logic; however, as opposed to other philosophical views on belief, doxastic voluntarism claims each human agent as the author of their own beliefs. Doxastic voluntarism falls under the branch of philosophy known as ethics of belief.
Mavrodes is the author of Belief in God: A Study in the Epistemology of Religion (1970) and Revelation in Religious Belief (1988). He has nearly one hundred articles covering such topics as revelation, omnipotence, miracles, resurrection, personal identity and survival of death, and faith and reason, as well as ethics and social policy issues that intersect with religion and morality ...