Epistemic Trust and the Ethics of Belief

The question of when it is epistemically or morally permissible to believe on the word of another connects the epistemology of testimony to a much older debate in the ethics of belief. W.K. Clifford's essay "The Ethics of Belief" (1877, Contemporary Review) argued for an uncompromising evidentialism, summarized in his frequently quoted line that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence," using the example of a shipowner who convinces himself, without adequate investigation, that an aging vessel is seaworthy, and is culpable for the deaths that follow even though he sincerely believed his own reassurances. William James responded directly to Clifford in "The Will to Believe" (1896), arguing that on certain "live, forced, and momentous" options — paradigmatically religious faith — where the evidence genuinely underdetermines the answer and withholding belief itself carries practical costs, a person is within her epistemic rights to let non-evidential, passional considerations settle the question, a view sometimes called doxastic voluntarism about permissible belief-formation in evidentially ambiguous cases.