An Essay from The Conflict of Mind
On W.K. Clifford, Pluralism, and the Morality of Philosophy
In his famous essay “The Ethics of Belief,” W.K. Clifford argued that if a person allowed others to use a car that the owner knew was unsafe, even if the people arrived at their destination successfully and unharmed, the owner of the vehicle would still be guilty of immorality. When we know something is true and disregard it, or when we believe in something without sufficient evidence, according to Clifford, we act immorally. For Clifford, all of us have a burden of “epistemic responsibility” that we must bear well; otherwise, we fail to live the moral life.
Clifford’s overarching idea is immensely important, and I would like to expand on it here to claim that a failure to “think well” is an example of epistemic irresponsibility and immorality. If I avoid evidence that could counter my worldview, if I fail to try to understand fully those I disagree with (and instead stereotype or misrepresent them), if I only read books I agree with, and so on, I am epistemically immoral and irresponsible (and a threat to Pluralism and the Habermasian project, as discussed throughout the works of O.G. Rose). In such circumstances, I fail to “think well,” for a good thinker wouldn’t avoid ideas that could threaten his or her worldview, wouldn’t misrepresent disagreeable ideas he or she didn’t like, and so on. In such circumstances, I would be guilty of the trespasses Clifford wrote to stop.
That said, we don’t always realize when we mispresent those we disagree with, overlook ideas that could prove us wrong, and so on — the ways we “ideology preserve” are sometimes subconscious, unintentional, and subtle. However, epistemic ethics would demand of us to try to “figure ourselves…
