In a retort against Pascal's pragmatic Wager Argument for the justification of faith-based beliefs, William Kingdon (W.K.) Clifford introduces in The Ethics of Belief a moral code that holds that it is wrong for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence, that all genuine beliefs must only be formed on reasonable grounds. Responding to Clifford's attack on pragmatic justifications for faith-based beliefs, William James, a U.S. philosopher and psychologist, writes in The Will to Believe that the evidence for many important propositions is often unclear, and, when presented with a "genuine option," that we ought to assent to or dissent from a particular hypothesis on passional grounds, disregarding the lack of intellectual support for the decision we make. Although I neither completely agree with one argument nor completely disagree with the other, I feel that there is sufficient evidence for the overarching correctness of Clifford's ethics of belief argument, and I find an even greater deal of evidence for the toxic implications of James's passional-belief argument on the following grounds: I agree with Clifford's argument that our beliefs form a sacred commonwealth that belongs to society, not to the individual, and that this endows the individual with certain obligations concerning his beliefs; also, Clifford clearly demonstrates that forming beliefs on passional grounds leads to credulity, blindness to truth, and a decline of inquiry accompanied by faith-in-faith phenomena, three of the most malignant symptoms an individual or a society can exhibit.

Belief as Social Obligation

I agree with Clifford's argument that it is our societal duty to believe things for which we have sufficient evidence, to not refute propositions for which sufficient evidence abounds, and to remain impartial while questioning hypotheses for which we lack sufficient evidence. While Clifford writes, "belief…is ours not for ourselves but for humanity," (C. 238) James professes that it is better to risk error than loss of truth when "questions whose solutions cannot wait for sensible proof" (J. 243) arise; it is better to hold a belief on passional grounds for lack of sufficient evidence than to abstain from forming a belief and potentially lose truth. While Clifford's view of belief as an obligation to society is civilized and compassionate, James's response is extremely selfish. Holding a belief on passional grounds connotes a personal interest in the fruition of that belief as truth because it is natural to prefer being right to being wrong. When we hold passional beliefs, especially concerning the "moral questions" that James suggests as candidates for passional decision making, we bind our character to their latent veracity; if the belief is proven true, we are vindicated; if it is proven false, we are wrong and shamed. This dilemma inspires a tremendous bias on behalf of the passional believer, leading him (the believer) to overemphasize the little evidence that may support his belief, and even to ignore mountains of reasonable evidence that would disprove his belief.

Responding to Clifford's remarks regarding beliefs as social obligations, James attempts to further his own argument using an example of a train robbery: if the passengers on a train being robbed all shared the passional belief that if one passenger were to make a stand against the armed robber, all would rise together in a cooperative attempt to stop the robbery, the crime would be stopped and the passional belief that the robbery could be stopped would be validated. This example fails to justify passional beliefs in the following way: if I were the armed robber and the same passengers attempted to put an end to my business, it would be by self defense, if not by my determination to complete the task at hand coupled with my criminal nature, that I would use my weapons against the good Samaritans. Show me someone who agrees with James's argument on these grounds and I will show you someone who values luggage more than life.

The Dangers of Credulity

Clifford's argument succeeds where James's argument fails when the implications of an entire society forming beliefs on passional grounds are realized: forming beliefs on insufficient evidence leads to credulity, blindness to truth, and a decline of inquiry accompanied by faith-in-faith phenomena. When a belief is formed on insufficient evidence, Clifford argues that whether the belief proves true or false is inconsequential: the moral significance of the belief lies in how it was formed.

The danger to society is not merely that is should believe wrong things, …but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery. (C. 239)

A prime example of a society forming passional beliefs leading to "savagery" that also demonstrates the danger of faith-in zvezin phenomena is found in the circumstances surrounding the Holocaust. Eugenics and Social Darwinism were non-evidential beliefs given a false air of credibility on the passional grounds of the Nazi agenda. Yet another passional belief was formed upon those beliefs, causing the faith-in-faith dilemma: slowly limiting the rights of its Jewish citizens would cure Germany of her ailments, a process which snowballed as planned, resulting in the extermination of six million Jews and twelve million people overall. On passional grounds, the friends and neighbors of those who were sent to their deaths formed the belief that the genocide taking place in their country was not actually happening. Proponents of James's argument would reply that this is an exception, that when millions of lives hang in the balance, all sources of evidence must be exhausted before making a decision; however, to the theist, the choice of salvation, wherein infinitely many lives risk infinitely more than death, is as genuine an option as was the Nazi's "Final Solution:" they are both live in that the hypotheses are not completely incredible, they are both forced in that the hypotheses demand immediate assent or dissent, and they are momentous in that resolution of belief with respect to the proposition is imminent in either case. James writes that we ought to decide upon these and other genuine options on purely passional grounds - I disagree emphatically. "Guard the purity of…belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away" (C. 238).

Conclusion

I agree with Clifford's argument that all beliefs must be formed on sufficient evidence, and I disagree with James's argument that decisions ought to be made on passional grounds. Clifford shows that believing only those propositions for which there is sufficient evidence is the societal obligation of the individual, noting that forming a belief on improper grounds is immoral even if the belief proves to be true. James fails in his attempt to provide an appropriate counterexample for these arguments. In addition, Clifford's argument enumerates the ill effects that the accumulation of passional beliefs can have on a society when he writes that forming beliefs on insufficient evidence leads to credulity and blindness to truth. The deleterious effects of this accumulation are also understood when one considers the implications of faith-in-faith phenomena, which have harmed countless people throughout history. In our day-to-day experience, we do believe much more than we have sufficient evidence for simply because we do not have the time to verify every proposition we encounter; however, lacking sufficient reasonable evidence for the decisions we make regarding these options does not make beliefs made on passional grounds any less immoral.