Quote
Great quote from my Epistemology book for this weeks reading:
It is not only the leader of men, statesman, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic, who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help or kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit ti her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.
William K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief
Clifford’s a crazy. Another quote of his: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
A few questions: why is it a duty/wrong? Is it an epistemic duty or moral duty?
Josh
September 29, 2008 at 12:23 pm