Such enthusiasm
for a parliament
without power
John Cameron
What climate change?
If my poor pun needs an
exclamation mark, please
add it yourself
Thom Cross
A letter to David Torrance
The Cafe
As a former chair-holder at the University of St Andrews, Lorn Macintyre’s feature (29 November) certainly stimulates me to read his novel ‘Adoring Venus’. Once an individual stepped out of line in St Andrews, it was not so much the experience of being stalked that was bothersome, but that of being shunned – and becoming an unperson. Fear trickled from the top down, and dissenters would find themselves not being spoken to in the street because a potential interlocuter would not wish to be reported to College Gate.
The unfortunate reformer Patrick Hamilton is to my mind a living archetype in the collective unconscious of St Andrews, a decent young man who amply exemplifies the psycho-social fate of those who dare to deviate in the genteel hell where everything is ostensibly ‘forever the best’.
Richard H Roberts Professor of divinity, University of St Andrews, 1991-5
Andrew McFadyen’s journey (30 November) to achieve a PhD is not untypical. Having worked with him I would have no doubts about his intelligence and perseverance. A PhD is as much a test of character as intelligence, and whilst many fail, he passes that test.
Richard Simpson MSP
SR Extra
The UK is non-symmetric. Or a
complete mess
Click here
for Dennis Smith’s weekend essay
The universal duty
to question everything
we believe
Eileen Reid
The Leveson inquiry reveals just how far that magnificent guiding principle of liberal democracy, freedom of expression, has become abused and confused in modern liberal democracies. In the rush to condemn the media for its egregious breaches of acceptable conduct, the worry is that the inquiry will recommend draconian regulation of the press, thereby threatening one of the central pillars of the political system.
A vibrant and critical press is vital to the functioning of a healthy democracy. But there is also much hypocrisy, for very rarely has ‘the public interest’ really been the driver behind what has become shoddy journalistic practices. Of course it is true that tabloid journalists only provide what the public is willing to pay for; but this only means that the charge of hypocrisy applies to the public too. That we are regarded as craven, venial, with a puerile interest in other people’s private lives does not exonerate the press’s reprehensible behaviour. Here the press plays the part of dealer to the public’s addict, an intimate, sickening relationship
However, there is another respect in which the press and the public are falling short of the highest standards. With budgets tight, and the yards of newsprint and hours of airtime rising constantly, there has been a noticeable drop in the quality of factual content in reporting. Much investigative journalism has given way to opinion pieces, and newspapers are now ‘viewspapers’. Talk is cheap, and there is no shortage of self-important windbags, tolerated largely because we require our prejudices confirmed.
This approach to journalism is justified not on the grounds of being truly informative; rather, it is defended on the grounds that the press is the forum in which the country ‘talks to itself’, where ‘the national debate’ takes place, and in these contexts having an opinion or belief is enough to secure one the right to freedom of expression. But the legitimate and important right to the freedom of expression is exploited to detract attention from the equally important responsibility we have to ensure that our beliefs are obtained ethically. Put simply, no one has the ‘right’ to believe whatever they want.
Let me be clear about what I mean by ‘belief’ and ‘opinion’. Both are mental states to be contrasted with ‘desires’, ‘attitudes’, likes and dislikes. A belief or an opinion is a mental state which can be either true or false. Compare my desire for a glass of wine with my belief that there is wine to be had in the kitchen. It makes no sense to say that my desire is true or false. Nor is my fondness for wine true or false. But it does make sense to say that my belief is true or false. Because the kitchen either has, or does not have, wine in it. If it does, then my belief is true. If it doesn’t, then my belief is false.
This distinction is crucial because in ordinary talk opinions are often thought to be more like attitudes than beliefs. But opinions can be true or false, so they are beliefs, not attitudes. Of course very often our attitudes and desires make sense only because we hold certain beliefs (eg, I have a negative attitude to malaria because I believe it to be a serious illness. If my belief about malaria changes, then so will my attitude to it). But this only goes to show how important it is to be careful about what you believe.
Because we tend to accept uncritically the beliefs of our parents, teachers, peers and journalists, beliefs that we express now are bound to be taken on by our children, and these beliefs in turn will guide their actions as well.
That there is an ethical dimension to belief was well understood during the Enlightenment. Evidence: that is what morally underpins belief. But the ethics of belief have become so flabby that we think we have a ‘right’ to believe what we want, and a right to express it regardless of how well-founded it might be, or of its consequences. William Clifford called for moral seriousness when forming our beliefs, claiming that ‘it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’.
The core of his case is counter-intuitive: that no-one’s belief is a private matter because it is not possible to sever belief from action. What we believe is a moral matter because our beliefs guide our actions, he said. And sure enough, no one doubts that we cannot act in any manner we please or that some actions are clearly morally unacceptable. But since our actions stem from our beliefs, and because beliefs cannot be severed from actions, there is a responsibility to make sure that our beliefs are as sound as they can be.
You might object by saying that some beliefs have no connection to action (at least not directly), and so, since these really are a private matter, you can accept them indiscriminately. Clifford would disagree and is worth quoting:
‘If a belief is not realised immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organised and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest… No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leaves its stamp upon our character for ever.’
So, it is not just that our own actions and character are influenced by our beliefs. Our beliefs ‘help to create the world in which posterity will live’. Because we tend to accept uncritically the beliefs of our parents, teachers, peers and journalists, beliefs that we express now are bound to be taken on by our children, and these beliefs in turn will guide their actions as well. Clifford again:
‘It is not only the leader of men, statesmen, philosophers, or poet that owes this bounden duty to mankind…No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.’
What if I simply do not have the time or the ability to investigate the evidence for my beliefs? Clifford’s answer is uncompromising:
‘Then you should have no time to believe.’
To investigate the evidence before believing should be the journalist’s job description. Instead, any questioning in terms of evidence is too often regarded as curtailing freedom of expression. Let’s hope Leveson knows the difference.
Eileen Reid is head of widening participation, Glasgow School of Art,
writing here in a personal capacity. She is one of the daughters of the late great Jimmy Reid
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