Episode Details

This lecture discusses the William Clifford's 1877 essay "The Ethics Of Belief", in which he makes and argued for the central claim "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." It focuses on the third section of his essay, titled "The Limits Of Inference" in which Clifford discusses conditions for having well-founded beliefs of matters we don't have direct experience of, for example matters of everyday life, science, or history. We inevitably rely upon the assumption that the future or present will resemble what we have experienced in the past To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Clifford's The Ethics of Belief - https://amzn.to/41WkkYA