[1]Believing without evidence is always morally wrong:
You have probably never heard of William Kingdon Clifford. He is not
in the pantheon of great philosophers - perhaps because his life was
cut short at the age of 33 - but I cannot think of anyone whose
ideas are more relevant for our interconnected, AI-driven, digital
age. This might seem strange given that we are talking about a
Victorian Briton whose most famous philosophical work is an essay
nearly 150 years ago. However, reality has caught up with Clifford.
His once seemingly exaggerated claim that 'it is wrong always,
everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient
evidence' is no longer hyperbole but a technical reality.
In '[2]The Ethics of Belief' (1877), Clifford gives three arguments
as to why we have a moral obligation to believe responsibly, that
is, to believe only what we have sufficient evidence for, and what
we have diligently investigated. His first argument starts with the
simple observation that our beliefs influence our actions. Everyone
would agree that our behaviour is shaped by what we take to be true
about the world - which is to say, by what we believe. If I believe
that it is raining outside, I'll bring an umbrella. If I believe
taxis don't take credit cards, I make sure I have some cash before
jumping into one. And if I believe that stealing is wrong, then I
will pay for my goods before leaving the store.
What we believe is then of tremendous practical importance. False
beliefs about physical or social facts lead us into poor habits of
action that in the most extreme cases could threaten our survival.
If the singer R Kelly genuinely believed the words of his song 'I
Believe I Can Fly' (1996), I can guarantee you he would not be
around by now.
But it is not only our own self-preservation that is at stake here.
As social animals, our agency impacts on those around us, and
improper believing puts our fellow humans at risk. As Clifford
warns: 'We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and
support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they
lead to …' In short, sloppy practices of belief-formation are
ethically wrong because - as social beings - when we believe
something, the stakes are very high.
The most natural objection to this first argument is that while it
might be true that some of our beliefs do lead to actions that can
be devastating for others, in reality most of what we believe is
probably inconsequential for our fellow humans. As such, claiming as
Clifford did that it is wrong in all cases to believe on
insufficient evidence seems like a stretch. I think critics had a
point - had - but that is no longer so. In a world in which just
about everyone's beliefs are instantly shareable, at minimal cost,
to a global audience, every single belief has the capacity to be
truly consequential in the way Clifford imagined. If you still
believe this is an exaggeration, think about how beliefs fashioned
in a cave in Afghanistan lead to acts that ended lives in New York,
Paris and London. Or consider how influential the ramblings pouring
through your social media feeds have become in your very own daily
behaviour. In the digital global village that we now inhabit, false
beliefs cast a wider social net, hence Clifford's argument might
have been hyperbole when he first made it, but is no longer so
today.
The second argument Clifford provides to back his claim that it is
always wrong to believe on insufficient evidence is that poor
practices of belief-formation turn us into careless, credulous
believers. Clifford puts it nicely: 'No real belief, however
trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant;
it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which
resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a
stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode
into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character.'
Translating Clifford's warning to our interconnected times, what he
tells us is that careless believing turns us into easy prey for
fake-news pedlars, conspiracy theorists and charlatans. And letting
ourselves become hosts to these false beliefs is morally wrong
because, as we have seen, the error cost for society can be
devastating. Epistemic alertness is a much more precious virtue
today than it ever was, since the need to sift through conflicting
information has exponentially increased, and the risk of becoming a
vessel of credulity is just a few taps of a smartphone away.
Clifford's third and final argument as to why believing without
evidence is morally wrong is that, in our capacity as communicators
of belief, we have the moral responsibility not to pollute the well
of collective knowledge. In Clifford's time, the way in which our
beliefs were woven into the 'precious deposit' of common knowledge
was primarily through speech and writing. Because of this capacity
to communicate, 'our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and
modes of thought' become 'common property'. Subverting this
'heirloom', as he called it, by adding false beliefs is immoral
because everyone's lives ultimately rely on this vital, shared
resource.
While Clifford's final argument rings true, it again seems
exaggerated to claim that every little false belief we harbour is a
moral affront to common knowledge. Yet reality, once more, is
aligning with Clifford, and his words seem prophetic. Today, we
truly have a global reservoir of belief into which all of our
commitments are being painstakingly added: it's called Big Data. You
don't even need to be an active netizen posting on Twitter or
ranting on Facebook: more and more of what we do in the real world
is being recorded and digitised, and from there algorithms can
easily infer what we believe before we even express a view. In turn,
this enormous pool of stored belief is used by algorithms to make
decisions for and about us. And it's the same reservoir that search
engines tap into when we seek answers to our questions and acquire
new beliefs. Add the wrong ingredients into the Big Data recipe, and
what you'll get is a potentially toxic output. If there was ever a
time when critical thinking was a moral imperative, and credulity a
calamitous sin, it is now.
(Via [3]Aeon)
Also on:
[4]Twitter
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My original entry is here: [5]Believing without evidence is always
morally wrong. It posted Sun, 11 Nov 2018 21:25:33 +0000.
Filed under: philosophy,
References
1.
https://aeon.co/ideas/believing-without-evidence-is-always-morally-wrong?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss-feed
2.
http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/Clifford_ethics.pdf
3.
https://aeon.co/feed.rss
4.
https://twitter.com/prjorgensen/status/1061732641341427712
5.
https://www.prjorgensen.com/?p=2275
