The Ethics of Belief Quotes

“Arational belief formation is frightening because it is, on the face of it, seemingly impossible to counteract psychologically and very difficult to counteract at all. But more frightening still is the ubiquity of arationally caused doxastic—belief-like—states.”
― Jonathan Matheson, The Ethics of Belief

“Hastorf and Cantril’s venerable finding is now part of the common background knowledge on belief formation: what people want to see greatly affects their interpretation of the events they perceive.”
― Jonathan Matheson, The Ethics of Belief

“At the moment, the kind of indirect control that agents exercise over their beliefs,11 is neither efficient nor reliable. Instead, it is very much a hit-or-miss affair. We change our beliefs in this indirect way12 by the kinds of means that Pascal recommended to the person who wanted to bring about belief in God: associate with believers, immerse yourself in religious writings, try to think and act like a believer; eventually, perhaps via the mechanisms of cognitive dissonance reduction, you may find yourself with the correlative belief. If and when that happens, you will not forget that you have the belief via a process of self-manipulation, but you will find yourself with a different take on the evidence. From your perspective, it will seem to you that you have manipulated yourself into holding a belief that is independently warranted.”
― Jonathan Matheson, The Ethics of Belief

“Sosa argues that epistemic negligence resulting from closing off inquiry can detract from one’s epistemic performance and possibly result in the loss of knowledge. In addition, he argues that closing off inquiry can also result in the loss of rational belief since the origins of one’s belief are continually fading from view, which requires that one’s current evidence play a primary role in rational belief.”
― Jonathan Matheson, The Ethics of Belief