 So it's pretty much a truism in our society is this claim you're entitled to your belief Right, you've probably heard that before especially in those circumstances in which you and somebody else have been discussing something and you Significantly disagree Right, and you've reached that point where you realize that there's no way the two of you are going to come to agreement on this And so you say something like I will you're entitled to your belief or let's agree to disagree or something like that and That's not really what people mean is it In fact, we think quite often that people believe things that are absolutely crazy They're nuts that have no foundation on the evidence no reason to believe that at all. They shouldn't believe what they in fact believe We do this a lot and Clifford provides us Clifford is asking this question To what beliefs are you entitled? He wants to figure this out. Are you entitled to just any belief that you have? and he says no and In fact, there are only certain conditions Upon which you may have a belief and the catchphrase that he that he has I mean this this kind of phrase that he's coined that's repeated again and again and The exact phrase is going to escape me for the moment, but I'll have it printed here down at the bottom It is wrong always and everywhere to believe that for which you do not have sufficient evidence In other words, if you don't have enough evidence for the belief You do not have the right to believe it and on top of that Clifford's gonna say That right is subject to public scrutiny Well, I have a choice to make You know, I came from that path over there But you know now I got to I got a path over here or I can keep going on down that way Now these are actions that are taking and You know, it's not as if any action I take is just fine right actions have consequences. I could I could take the wrong path and one up with somebody's private property and go trespassing I could keep wandering in a circle down a path never You know never really reaching the exit then, you know the park rangers have to come and rescue me which incurs cost or Or maybe I you know two bears to call the park rangers and I get lost out here And I just kind of you know decide well, I'll just spend the night here Which is against the rules and you know, maybe I spend the night here and I dive exposure, right? Which which is a bad thing Or even you know, maybe I don't think it lost it just I take too long a way to go and I run out of water I need to be rescued There's lots of moral consequences even for something is choosing which path I need to walk down now the actions that I take are Morally evaluable, you know, that means that we can look at the consequences the rights that I had who I'm opposing on What you know what I'm capable of it this sort of thing and we could judge whether I Did the right thing? Okay now Actions are morally evaluable and since the morally evaluable that they're subject to public scrutiny, right? If I You know if I got lost here and had to be rescued Yeah, and I say well, you know, I did the right thing and everybody says well, how do we know and I just said well, you know I did oh, okay. Well, that's fine. No, it doesn't work that way You know if we think we did the right thing especially when we have an impact on other people's lives Well, then our you know actions become morally valuable Now something that Clifford is pushing on here is beliefs are morally evaluable too and the morally evaluable evaluable in the way that Actions are mainly through public scrutiny Right, there is such a thing as having a right to one's belief, but you don't have it just because you say so There are certain conditions upon which you have a right to your belief Okay Well, how does he go about say this thing? Well, you know actions are morally valuable and they're evaluable Through public scrutiny. Well, guess what beliefs cause actions. Maybe I necessitate them, right? He doesn't want to go that far that we're necessitated by our beliefs, but Or that we you can never resist our beliefs. It doesn't want to say anything like that But as a matter of fact, we tend to act on our beliefs All right Now especially in those cases where we're acting on our beliefs and our actions are morally evaluable Then he's going to push on the point and say well The reasons for your belief are also morally evaluable, right? We can determine whether you Reach that belief with good reasoning if you did your responsibility if you did your duty to Following the right procedures the right methods for reaching a true belief not just to believe quote-unquote honestly held You know somebody can honestly hold a belief and never try once to investigate it, right? This is kind of Clippers point You can try to invest you know, you can you say yeah, I believe this. Did you investigate it? No? I just believe it. Okay. Well, you honestly believe that all right But clippers gonna say you don't have a right to that belief at least not yet You have to do your due diligence. You have to do the investigation and if you haven't You know, that's gonna come under public scrutiny So just as an action is morally valuable and hence through public scrutiny So our reasons are evidence for belief. This is morally evaluable and subject to public scrutiny So You know, where is this saying you have the right to your opinion clippers can say no because you act on That belief you act on that opinion and your actions affect me I really hope I don't get lost a Clifford starts this discussion when you're titled to your belief When you know when you're titled to believe somebody else, I'm not gonna start there I'm gonna start with with the individual, okay, so you're entitled to your own belief under two conditions and The first condition we look at is that the belief conforms to the common experience of humankind or mankind Now he doesn't go to a rigorous definition of this, but he gives lots of examples now I think what Clifford is getting at it is this idea that You know as far as what the common experience of mankind is and something he repeats again and again The belief must in principle Be able to be held by anybody else in similar circumstances All right So any one of us must be able to reach that belief in similar circumstances And it doesn't mean that you necessarily Everybody necessarily has the same circumstances. He's not talking about that but in principle You have You would you would have the same belief in the same circumstances So I'm looking around me and I see trees and so I formed the belief there are trees and any other person In principle can can be in this situation. Yeah, there are trees and so I look at this tree here or Look at see if one is a viewfinder Look at you know any that tree in the background over there wait way over there and I say that's an oak and I'm entitled to that belief when anybody else and relatively similar circumstances You know presumably with some the same education that I have and be able to see the same way I have would reach the same conclusion say that's an oak tree over there okay, now this is this is also a Principle of what counts as a good scientific conclusion right is in principle The experiment must be able to be replicated by any other scientists or really any other person and get the same results This is what counts as a good scientific experiment So it's considered to be good science That the experiment can be replicated by anybody else and get the same or similar enough results If that can't happen, it's not considered to be good science Okay, so that So this is really what I think this is what Clifford is getting to when you talk about this common experience of humankind if you have a belief about You know Whether a certain land mass exists anybody else has to be able to go out and find that land mass in the same location if You reach a scientific inference using an experiment anybody else has to be able to do that if you reach a conclusion In mathematics anybody everybody else in principle should be able to reach that same conclusion in a mathematical inference or a logical Inference anybody else must be able to reach that same conclusion in the logical inference Um, if you can't do that if other people can't have the same belief Right or they or they you know, they don't have the same belief and relevant similar circumstances Then you're not entitled to that belief your beliefs If you're entitled to if you're right to it your beliefs must in principle Either be held or could be held By other people all other people the second condition Clifford gives us is when These beliefs extend beyond experience So I think what he's trying to get at here. He's trying to get at generalities So it's one thing to have experiences and form beliefs in particular instances, right? So I believe it's raining And anybody in my circumstance would also believe that it's raining that sort of thing Okay, but it's another thing to be able to predict when it's going to rain or in all circumstances All relevantly similar circumstances would I be able to say that it that it's raining? So he's gonna push on the uniformity of nature here. Okay, so the idea is that I'm Entitled to a belief that goes beyond my experiences and really beyond all of our experiences Only when that belief Conforms to the principle of the uniformity of nature So the idea is that if I'm going to make a claim about what's going to happen If I'm going to make a claim about well, it's happening in this situation And so it's happening in another situation way over there it conforms to the idea that I Whatever I'm making a claim about some kind of knowledge or belief about what has not happened Or was not currently experiencing has to look like what I'm experiencing now And must be like the experiences that I'm basing it upon now. I can't Make a claim about something I haven't experienced or say this is gonna happen But it's not like anything I've ever experienced before Right, so I'm not gonna make a claim about well today I make the prediction that the Sun is gonna be blue tomorrow I was like well, no you can't do that because the Sun has never been blue in the past and Nothing about what your experience right now tells us that's going to be blue tomorrow doesn't look like You know the claim that the Sun is blue doesn't look like what we're experiencing right now. All right So that's the second condition is that the belief must conform to the uniformity of nature And these are the two main conditions just to sum up these are the two main conditions upon which you are entitled to your belief if it conforms to the common experience of humankind and It conforms to the uniformity of nature. This brings us to the testimony of others now you know, we already saw the conditions upon which you're entitled to your own belief and Clifford gives us the conditions upon which we're entitled to somebody else's belief because you know quite frankly a lot of our knowledge Does rely upon the testimony of others You know we believe your teachers You believe you're you're entitled he's gonna say you're entitled to believe a lot of teachers Especially since I'm pretty sure he was one and You know quite frankly there's gonna be a lot of circumstances of which you're not going to be in those experiences and you're not going to carry out the experiments yourself and Yet you still Clifford still wants to give us a way in which we're titled to believe what other other people have done okay, so the condition two conditions upon which we May believe we're entitled to believe somebody else and The first is that we know that they're at least intending to tell the truth We know they're at least intending to tell the truth. So this is a question of their character and that's probably a long discussion about When somebody is likely to lie and whatnot, but I think you know probably Clifford has a mind It's like look academics teachers are not intending to lie to you They want to tell you the truth at least most of the time and you know, it's not always there many cases of academics lying But you know, we've done a really good job in uncovering that and so on and so forth. Okay So that's the first condition we know that they intend to tell the truth and again that knowledge read that claim with the entitlement that's going to be based upon the two previous conditions that discussed earlier that It conforms to the common experience and uniformity of nature. All right The second condition is that you know that they have a made a mistake You know, they have a made a mistake and the mistake is going to lie and violating whether two conditions for whether you're entitled to your belief whether it's Common is a belief that anybody could hold and whether it presumes or conforms to the uniformity of nature and This is gonna tell me we can apply these conditions for everything right can apply the conditions for when you're entitled to your belief to when anybody is entitled to their belief and When you're entitled to believe somebody else now for Clifford if you do not follow these conditions and You take action, which he thinks you're gonna do you're gonna take action on your beliefs You are morally responsible for having that belief. It's one thing to follow these conditions Act on the belief and it's something go wrong, but you know, you're entitled to that belief, right? You follow the conditions you're entitled to that belief. It's another thing if you take action based on the belief and You don't follow the condition. You are morally responsible for that belief. You can honestly hold it all you want Unless you tried to reach that belief through these conditions, you're not entitled to it