"The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs"
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Clifford warns that credulity inflicts harm that goes far beyond making others gullible and propping up false beliefs. It corrodes the habits of scrutiny and courage that a responsible society requires. When anyone believes on insufficient evidence, that act becomes part of a shared intellectual environment: it shapes what is taught, what is trusted, and how testimony circulates. Each careless assent lowers the common standard for what counts as justified belief, making it easier for errors to spread, for charlatans to flourish, and for institutions to evade accountability.
His famous essay The Ethics of Belief argues that it is wrong, always and everywhere, to believe without adequate grounds. The shipowner who quiets his doubts about a vessel’s safety and sincerely persuades himself it will sail well is not excused by his sincerity; he has willfully disabled his critical faculties and endangered others. Clifford’s point is that private credulity is never truly private. It becomes habit, and habit becomes influence. A community that tolerates wishful thinking in small matters soon normalizes it in large ones: politics becomes susceptible to demagoguery, science to pseudoscience, and moral life to superstition and prejudice.
The harm is also inward. Credulity dulls the discipline of inquiry, making it easier to ignore counterevidence and to reward comforting stories over difficult truths. That self-deception is a moral failure because it shirks the duty to investigate when the stakes are human welfare. Clifford wrote amid 19th-century debates over faith and science, pressing against the idea that belief without evidence could be virtuous. William James later disputed him, but Clifford’s warning endures: beliefs are not isolated mental events; they are public acts with cascading effects. To respect others and protect the health of our collective reason, one must resist credulity and earn belief through honest, patient, and communal investigation.
His famous essay The Ethics of Belief argues that it is wrong, always and everywhere, to believe without adequate grounds. The shipowner who quiets his doubts about a vessel’s safety and sincerely persuades himself it will sail well is not excused by his sincerity; he has willfully disabled his critical faculties and endangered others. Clifford’s point is that private credulity is never truly private. It becomes habit, and habit becomes influence. A community that tolerates wishful thinking in small matters soon normalizes it in large ones: politics becomes susceptible to demagoguery, science to pseudoscience, and moral life to superstition and prejudice.
The harm is also inward. Credulity dulls the discipline of inquiry, making it easier to ignore counterevidence and to reward comforting stories over difficult truths. That self-deception is a moral failure because it shirks the duty to investigate when the stakes are human welfare. Clifford wrote amid 19th-century debates over faith and science, pressing against the idea that belief without evidence could be virtuous. William James later disputed him, but Clifford’s warning endures: beliefs are not isolated mental events; they are public acts with cascading effects. To respect others and protect the health of our collective reason, one must resist credulity and earn belief through honest, patient, and communal investigation.
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| Topic | Truth |
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