Prompt: EPISTEMOLOGY

It is more harmful to compromise one's own beliefs than to adhere to them.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.

Compromise, attenuate, balance, agree to disagree, alter, change, invade, spy, compromise security, destabilize

Commit, adhere, stick with, stick to, discipline, rule following, principles, rigidity, adaptability,

The integrity of a single belief is based on its openness to change.  This is a complex topic that requires us to understand something about the nature of beliefs.  Philosophers have distinguished between two kinds of beliefs.  There are beliefs about the world and there are beliefs about beliefs.  Suppose you believe that ‘grass is green’.  This is a belief about the world.  Suppose, on the other hand, that you believe that ‘beliefs are mental states about the world’.  This second belief is a belief about a belief, and philosophers are keen on calling these types of belief, meta-beliefs.  If we begin asking questions about beliefs, and not about what those beliefs are about, their content, then we are engaged in a meta-analysis of belief.  Some people have argued that it is more harmful to compromise a belief than to adhere to it.  While this might seem plausible at first glance, a simple meta-analysis of belief will reveal that beliefs that are not open to change are, in fact, much more dangerous than are beliefs that are open to change. 

Suppose that you believe that ‘all killing of human beings is wrong’.  In that case, if you were to witness a human being brutally attacking a child, then any force you might employ to halt the criminal would, in order to not compromise your belief, stop short of murder.  But, suppose that the criminal is determined beyond all measure to kill the child.  In that case, surely, you must either compromise your belief or act wrongfully, that is, you must kill the criminal.  If your belief were from the start open to compromise, then an immediate application of force might save the child any further suffering. 

Some might argue that acting against a belief is not necessarily not adhering to a belief.  This was already mentioned.  Suppose that you kill the criminal in the previous example, but still judge yourself according to your belief to have wrongfully acted.  In this case, you have not compromised your belief, you have just acted against it.  Adherence to your belief would only entail that you judge actions as wrong that are actions that result in the killing of a human being.  But, if you judge actions as wrong that are actions that result in the killing of a human being, then you would….

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