Why It Is Morally Wrong To Believe Something Without Good Evidence: Arthur Schafer on The Ethics of Belief

Some time ago we blogged about the “ethics of belief”, in which we discussed the question whether a person’s sincere belief can exonerate him when something goes wrong due to the consequences of his belief.

In October 2010, Professor Arthur Schafer, Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, gave a presentation for the  Winnipeg Skeptics, on the “Ethics of Belief” which we are happy to post here:

Alternative Medicine: Does Belief Exonerate? Philosophy of Science for Beginners

Right from the start of this blog, purveyors and proponents of alternative medicine have posted comments or sent us emails explaining why we are wrong in thinking alternative medicine is dangerous and that we have no right to say it is deceptive.

The Science Game

There is a wonderful post by Val Jones on Science-Based Medicine, in which she explains what science is about and how we acquire scientific knowledge. To do this, she uses the “Game of 20 Questions” as an analogy.

It reminds me of the beautiful metaphor of the crossword puzzle, used by Susan Haack to clarify the process of acquiring knowledge in her book Defending Science.