uh this is video five f and in this video i want to discuss william clifford's famous ship owner's case uh that appears in his essay the ethics of belief in the row text which you might want to have handy it's on page 95 and following the reason this is an important case is because one could view william james's pragmatic justification of theism as a reaction to or a response to this famous case that william clifford discusses and i usually don't go through a passage line by line and analyze it but in this case i think it's important to do that so let me begin an analysis of clifford's famous ship owner's case i i think this is very i think you'll find this case quite interesting what does clifford say a ship owner was about to send to see an immigrant ship an immigrant ship would be a ship that is transferring passengers passengers from their home country to a new country the ship owner knew that she was old and not over well built at the first in other words when they constructed the ship when the ship was constructed the builders didn't do a terrific job she had seen many season climbs and often had needed repairs it seems like every time she went out to see and came back they had to do some kind of repair on the ship doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy and 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 to great expense in other words he had doubts about the seaworthiness of the ship because every time he sent the ship out or most of the time he sent the ship out after it returned i mean he had to do all these repairs so maybe a major overhaul a major repair is in order but then he says to himself that's going to cost me a lot of money okay so he's a bit conflicted there all right now you see what happens next in the passage is that the ship owner wants to get rid of these nagging doubts and so he starts rationalizing in order to rid himself of these doubts so he says before the ship sailed he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections melancholy reflections i think just means these nagging doubts that he had about the seaworthiness of the ship 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 home safely from this trip in other words she's saying to himself hey look every time i sent her out in the past she always came back right yeah we had to do some repairs but let's face it every time i sent her out she came back you know i've got all those past voyages to fall back on that's one way of ridding myself of any doubts i might have about her sea worthiness and look we could add something to that he would put his trust in providence providence with a capital p there it's a reference to a god right he would put his trust in god who could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere you know in a new country you know god's not gonna let those passengers die at sea come on right so he would dismiss from his mind all on generous suspicions about the honesty of the builders and contractors okay yeah those guys when they constructed the ship they might have cut some corners right you know but uh hey i'll i'll put that aside in such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction conviction there means belief he acquired a sincere belief that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy so he watched her departure with a light heart and benevolent wishes benevolent wishes means good wishes for the success of the exiles the passengers right in their strange new home that was to be but what happened the ship went down at sea and so he says he got his insurance money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tails so the the ship went down and the passengers went down with the ship and they all died right but he got his insurance money okay he collected when he says uh and told no tales i think that means well you know it's not going to be an investigation right i mean the ships at the bottom of the sea the passengers are down there with the ship you know people are going to chalk it up to what storms winds uh gnome it's got to pin it on me okay that that type of mindset okay now what is what does rose say of this man namely the ship owner clifford says he was guilty of the death of those passengers who went down at sea the fact that the ship owner sincerely believed in the soundness of the ship does not diminish his guilt so his belief his conviction no matter how sincere it was his belief or his conviction right that the ship was seaworthy was a wrong belief that's important it was a wrong belief why was the belief wrong here's the key point it was not supported by adequate or sufficient evidence right so he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him instead of arriving at his belief by carefully inspecting the ship's condition the ship owner had derived the disbelief without any adequate evidence at all taking up a belief on insufficient evidence is clifford argues completely unjustified that's really the essence of clifford's position you have to be able to justify your beliefs with adequate evidence you've got to be able to support them with that of code of evidence and if you have a belief that's not supported by adequate evidence that belief is wrong okay see name of the essay is the ethics of belief ethics has to do with right and wrong so some beliefs are just flat out wrong beliefs why are they wrong they're not supported by adequate evidence right now at the bottom of page 95 roe takes up a possible criticism of clifford's uh position he says we might object that he has confused the ship owners believing his ship to be sound with the ship owner's action of sending the ship to sea without proper inspection in other words isn't there a difference between believing and and action sure the action of senator everybody's going to agree that the action of sending the ship out to sea uh was wrong but was his belief that the sh that the ship was seaworthy uh was that wrong too and clifford would say well clifford would say sure the action of sending the ship out to sea was wrong but the belief was too all right the belief led to the action so if the action was wrong so was the belief that preceded it that's his point there all right now uh on 96 he makes a couple of points that i think are worth mentioning uh what are they the first point i want to touch upon is isn't there a distinction some would say between significant beliefs like the beliefs that the ship owner had right that was clearly that was not a trivial belief it was not an insignificant belief so there seems to be a difference between significant beliefs and insignificant beliefs between significant beliefs and trivial beliefs okay and what would be an example of a trivial belief and he gives an example right in the middle of the page when he says this suppose you had the belief that one year ago today the weather was warm some guy says to himself i believe that one day one year ago today the weather was warm well what's our reaction who cares i mean what could be more trivial than that what could be more insignificant or take a an example it's not in the book but it is a silly example but it might help us make the position clear suppose i believed that i had 1193 hairs on my head who cares it's totally trivial okay so hey clifford maybe significant beliefs should be supported by you know adequate evidence but are you going to tell me that even a trivial or insignificant belief like believing that a year ago today the weather was warm or believing that i have 1193 errors on my head you're going to tell me that that that those beliefs are wrong too if they're not supported by adequate evidence and what does clifford say amen yes any belief that's not supported by adequate evidence is a wrong belief for william clifford all right look at the last paragraph on page 96 it's kind of important whether a belief is trivial is significant and likely to lead to actions harmful to others or is significant and likely to lead to actions beneficial to others clifford's judgment is the same we are justified in taking up that belief only if we have sufficient evidence for its truth it's a important point for otherwise we harm ourselves and society somehow if i take up the belief that there are 1193 hairs on my head without sufficient evidence somehow i'm harming myself and society how am i doing that well here's what he says for otherwise we shall harm ourselves and society by weakening that by weakening the habit so you harm yourself in society by weakening the habit of requiring evidence for our beliefs it's clear then that clifford will tolerate excuse me a habit that has slowly raised us out of the age of superstition and savagery so if you ask clifford you know is the belief that there are 1193 hairs in my head a wrong belief if it's not supported by sufficient evidence he will say yes it's a wrong belief and if you ask him well how does that harm anybody myself or society he will say it harms yourself and society because it weakens the habit of requiring sufficient evidence for your beliefs that's his answer all right you can ponder that and think about that last two lines of the page awfully important he sums up his view in a remark quoted by william james himself and james's famous essay the will to believe of clifford james says it is wrong always always means no exceptions and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence clearly if clifford is right no one can be justified in believing theism to be true without evidence for the without adequate evidence for the truth of theism similarly no one can be justified in believing atheism to be true without eviden adequate evidence for its truth if we have adequate evidence neither for theism nor for atheism then on clifford's view what is our duty what is our obligation he says our obligation is to suspend judgment that is to be agnostic so it's like saying this i mean agnostic is someone who doesn't know what whether one way or the other whether god exists right he might not have adequate evidence for god's existence or adequate evidence for god's non-existence so he's what is inadequate evidence well what does it what does an agnostic say i don't know so he suspends judgment so uh rose trying to say that clifford's position basically on on the god question clifford's position leads to what mindset the agnostic mindset right now uh before i end this video uh let me just take a minute and mention something that roe does not mention but the other commentators on clifford have some people think that a serious weakness in clifford's position and quite frankly i tend to agree with this criticism is that he does not clearly define what he means by adequate or sufficient evidence and if we don't have a clear idea of what he means by adequate or sufficient evidence that tends to weaken his pronouncement that it's always wrong to believe something uh without sufficient evidence does everybody see that and uh in in my interactions with people over the years discussing religious questions i've come to believe that this concept of adequate evidence gosh i mean i'm not sure it's an it's an absolute it's it's it's relativity seems to be attached to it in my respect one person may think that the ontological argument provides adequate evidence for the existence of god you know they may they may think that that argument makes it likely more than likely that god exists um but you know there are other people who who thinks that the evidence that the ontological argument provides is inadequate well who's right that's that's a hard question okay um one person's adequate evidence there's not necessarily another person's adequate evidence so ask yourself gosh if if there is such a thing as adequate evidence how would i go about defining it and the criticism of clifford is that he does not clearly define what he means by adequate or sufficient evidence okay that's enough for today see you in the next video which will be video 5g take care