Believing without proof

Most of us know the value of critical thinking and understand that believing something without any proof is credulity, pure and simple. In fact, credulity is our willingness or ability to believe that a statement is true, especially on minimal or marginal evidence. 

While it’s not necessarily a belief in something that may be false as the subject of the belief may even be correct, it simply is that a credulous person will believe it without satisfactory evidence. Until recently, I had never heard of William Kingdon Clifford. 

In ‘The Ethics of Belief’ (1877), this Briton who died at the young age of 33, gives some arguments as to why we have a moral obligation to believe responsibly, namely to believe only what we have sufficient evidence for, and what we have diligently investigated. 

This suggests that what we believe is of tremendously practical importance. Reality is different, though as we naturally think that what be believe in is inconsequential for society and our fellow humans. 

This is especially true in a world in which just about everyone’s beliefs can be shared instantly, at no cost, to the entire planet, and if you consider how influential the ramblings pouring through your social media feeds have intruded into your very own daily behavior. 

In the digital global village that we now inhabit, false beliefs cast a huge social net, hence Clifford’s argument as never been so true as it is today. This is how careless believing turns us into easy prey for fake-news peddlers, conspiracy theorists and charlatans. 

Paying attention to truth is a much more precious virtue today than it ever was. It goes even farther than this; even without being a regular on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, more and more of what we do in the real world is being recorded and digitized, and from there, algorithms are created that can easily infer what we believe before we even express a view. 

In turn, this enormous pool of stored belief is used by algorithms that are created to make decisions for and about us. So if there was ever a time when critical thinking was a moral imperative, and credulity a calamitous sin, it might be just now.