The Principle of Distrust to Thoughts

Abstract

This article examines and defends the principle of distrust to thoughts (pomysly). According to this principle, it is morally justifiable for the agent to ignore any evidence for some belief if he has sufficient evidence that this belief will cause him to act in a morally wrong way. To justify this principle I employ a number of ideas developed in Wittgenstein's “On certainty”. In the first section, I sketch the account of knowledge and belief from “On Certainty” and narrow the scope of my defense of the principle of distrust to the particular system of beliefs, namely the beliefs of Orthodox Christianity. In the second section, I show a variety of senses of the word “pomysel” in Synodal Bible Translation and explain the relevant sense of “pomysel” using the vocabulary of analytic philosophy. In the third section, I discuss a number of basic beliefs of Orthodox Christianity that substantiate the principle of distrust: the belief in God and his angels, the belief in original sin, the belief in the existence of passions in the human soul, the belief on the existence of evil demons that try to manipulate the agent by generating thoughts in his consciousness. These beliefs are discussed and explained in the context of the principle of distrust. In the fourth section, I defend the principle of distrust and show its superiority to the other Clifford's principle formulated by P. van Inwagen. Finally, in the fifth section, I provide a reader with a brief thought experiment involving good and evil neuroscientists in order to illustrate the meaning of the principle of distrust in naturalistic system of beliefs.