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Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: Madej on January 17, 2013, 04:44 am

Title: Epistemology
Post by: Madej on January 17, 2013, 04:44 am
In this piece of writing, I seek to illuminate the relevant epistemological differences between faith, belief, justified belief, and knowledge.

The act of believing is at the heart of a rational subject’s awareness. In everyday events we spontaneously find ourselves believing things, facts about trees, the grass, the sun, the sky, etc., but alongside all of this are introspective beliefs about how all of this seems to us, such as details relating to the psychological intricacies of believing in the afforementioned entities. In a sense, a belief is strictly propositional, that is, it is an internal conviction that P where P either directly represents a proposition or else is a propositional containment of some non-propositional referent. For example, to say that “I believe that I am feeling pain” is equivalent to saying that “I believe that it is true that I am feeling pain,” and to say that “I believe that I am feeling pain” but then to go on to say, “and it is not true that I am feeling pain” is nonsensical. A belief is epistemological-ly neutral in its own self-contained sense but it is, for the subject, an important and necessary medium to knowledge. To say that, for example, “I know that it is raining today but I do not believe it” is paradoxical.

A belief is justified if it fulfills some necessary internal condition that, in virtue of such, is a reason to see that the belief is likely to be true. Another conception is that a belief is justified if the subject fulfills some deontological epistemic duty in regards to it, that is, they do at least what is required by a rational subject in any such belief-forming (and maintaining) event. I don’t see much force in this alternative for it loads the epistemic virtues of obtaining truth and avoiding error entirely on the negative. There is no clear benefit to radically revising our epistemology in the reverse of truth seeking. On the other hand, an externalist view of justification would not be so concerned with the subject’s reason to believe that something is true, rather a subject’s belief would obtain justificatory status in virtue of some external condition — something that does not hold in face of how a reasoning subject has hauled her resources in the midst of an epistemic poverty. Imagine a brain-in-a-vat who, for some reason, has had all of her life a perfect ability for clairvoyence. Let us suppose that in her mental world she encounters a dog running down the street and stops to pet it, but in the process of this she psychic-ly senses an incoming meteor strike. Well, her innate psychic abilities are perfectly reliable and functional, however the sources of her perceptual beliefs are not — it’s all based on virtual simulation of some sort. The conclusion that would follow is clear, and It seems absurd for the reliabilist to insist that a perfectly rational mind could disband their belief in the dog and retain their belief in the meteor strike. What would it seem like for this person to announce that, even given the perceptual evidence for the dog and the equally convincing extra-sensory evidence for the meteor strike, that she does not believe in the existence of dog but believes in the incoming meteor strike — despite her having no reason to? For the reliabilist, she is perfectly justified in doing so. I am assuming that the externalist and the reliabilist are one in the same because, for the moment, no clearly defined alternative has been forthcoming.

In light of this, faith can be seen as an unjustified belief. This could theoretically coincidence with the popular tradition of defining faith as “belief without evidence”, but only if two of the following are true: (i) a justified belief is a belief with evidence supporting it, in which case our thesis is self-defeating, or to escape this: (ii) that ‘evidence’ can be so broadly defined as to include “epistemic-ly justified”, in which case “evidence” is quite a useless concept. A true adherent to dogma will hold their unjustified believe regardless if justification is available or if its whole-y absent. We can either slice the issue by saying that to have faith is to believe something regardless of it its epistemic status, or we can say that its strictly an unjustified believe where, in the presence of a justified belief in the same entity, is something that persists underlying this. For anyone’s purposes, it shouldn’t matter.

Knowledge is a sufficiently constituted acquisition of truth, where “truth” is what corresponds to reality. It is not a mental state as such, but it is a process that supervenes on certain mental states (such as belief). What ultimately constitutes knowledge, however, is when certain conditions are met between the subject and reality, and that might initially appear to be a belief that is both true and justified. However, it isn’t clear that it is sufficient for this criteria to met for us to have obtained knowledge. We might imagine scenarios where certain events gives the subject a justificatory status in a belief that P, and P is in fact true, but the subject still certainly does not gain knowledge because of subterfuge. If a sufficiently complex hologram of a friend enters the room, then you form the belief that your friend is in the room and are justified in believing that your friend is in the room on the basis of your perceptual evidence, and in reality smith is indeed in the room, but he is actually just hiding a under a table, out of your sight, and is quietly reading. I propose that the acquisition of knowledge might just an unanalyzable process that we can only intuit exists and that we at least sometimes have it. It could be the case that “justified true belief” is a fallible but useful referent to the conditions of knowledge that by themselves cannot be separated from the terms of knowledge itself. Alternatively, the breakdown of the traditional definition of knowledge could be, in effect, be just revealing to us what non-epistemologists have embodied in practice for so long, which is that the conditions for having knowledge that P may not be so static and rigid (as traditional assumed) so as to eliminate the epistemic foundations of people using only primitive methods of commonsensical truth seeking.
Title: Re: Epistemology
Post by: dreams189 on January 17, 2013, 04:46 am
This could have been like 25 posts. NEWBBBBB ;) ;) ;) ;)
Title: Re: Epistemology
Post by: Madej on January 17, 2013, 05:07 am
It's a copy and paste from something I had already written some time ago anyway, so it's not like I wasted time with it. Oh, then again, I could have separated the text regardless. Whatever I guess.
Title: Re: Epistemology
Post by: motek on January 17, 2013, 06:14 am
bro/ette I dunno what drugs you were on when you wrote that, but I seriously hope you dont think it makes any 'sense'  :o

Let's clarify a  few things .... the "truth" is something that does not change, and it cannot change, and remain the truth.

A  "belief"  on the other hand, is just that, a belief, and  'beliefs'   ARE NOT FACTS   and are 'personal and subjective', and often unable to be 'proved' (i.e. the existence of God ::))  and so remain 'beliefs'

It's possible to "believe the same things" as other people  but "having the same beliefs" is a completely different thing!     

 Many people might share the knowledge of mathematics,  and would believe that 2+2 = 4, no matter what, and COULD PROVE to other people this IS so, as well as being able to teach other people how to come to the same conclusions  BECOZ ,  their  'belief were based on facts'


whereas, with a "belief, like believing in an 'afterlife'  or creationism, this is a belief NOT established in FACT, but in fantasy,  it CANNOT be proven, and so it is "open to interpretation"  becoz it ISN'T based on FACTS, and so becomes an 'emotive issue' where EVERYONE HAS AN OPINION!!

   and while it is possible to try and  'share these beliefs'  with  'other people', it's pretty clear that the  people who "share these beliefs  DONT  come to the same conclusions" 

which is demonstrated by the constantly warring religous factions around the globe,  muslim against muslim, christian against christian  et al ad nauseum  ::)

 i.e  the Taliban are a faction of moslems who "believe 'sharia law' should be the law EVERYONE MUST OBEY"    (sharia law is the most strict form of islam that bans almost anything 'liberal' ... they "believe" everyone SHOULD LIVE like they did 1000 years ago, and are prepared to seriously punish those  who disagree with them

IF  you dont  "believe" as they do, and don't hide this fact,  you'll probably die at their hands when they find out ..... WHY  are "their Beliefs"  MORE VALID than ANYONE ELSES? 

dunno about e pist e molo gy   but if this wasn't a joke it ... e kinda pist me off with illogical  ::)
 



 Sadly,  many  follks have 'beliefs' indocrinated into them as children before they know how to make logical decisions about the veracity of what all "religions"  teach .... which is to "believe in" something NO ONE has ANY  PROOF  for .... purely the 'support' of others in their congregation who "believe the same thing"

This is actually very frightening when you think about the kind of thing people DO endocrinate their children with!   Think the kids  of people who "believe in"  the Westbro church :o  poor kids   Or a scientologists kid (lucky sury for her mum)  or  'believers' in the book of mormon, the LDS!  ffs! calling themselves "saints"  when shit!  whn did that wally "find"  the golden plates only He could understand and  'wot disappeared'  before any scrutiny  :o

Yep  P.T Barnum was right about 'there's a sucker born every minute'  and it saddens me to see me fellow humans being conned and tricked by a (relatively) small group of megalomaniacs and or "institutions" like the RC church/vatican/pope business' for that is what they REALLY are!


Title: Re: Epistemology
Post by: Madej on January 17, 2013, 06:32 am
Your definition of truth is consistent with mine. And incase your post was implying otherwise, I never said that beliefs were facts - I just said that they were inherently propositional. The Taliban's beliefs are not more valid than anyone else's but only for the fact that they have no reason to hold that their belief is likely to be true. I think you fundamentally misunderstand what epistemic justification, but I can't see how I could have made it clearer to you. The fact that thee is no external proof for a deity could be overcome if (i) it could be shown that theism is a properly basic belief (i.e. if it is axiomatic), or (ii) if theism could be established by inference to the best explanation (i.e. arguments from design, first cause, etc etc.). I am not a theist and I think these arguments fail, but it's not as simple as what you can prove. You can have an epistemic-ly justified belief in God if you can show a reason for you to consider your belief in God is likely to be true.

I appreciate the input, but it seems like we are speaking past each other here; on completely different terms.
Title: Re: Epistemology
Post by: maybejustonce on January 17, 2013, 06:34 am
isn't your belief that a "belief is just a belief", a belief?
Title: Re: Epistemology
Post by: CompSci on January 17, 2013, 06:37 am
"Who has time to manually spam web sites? That can't be very cost effective." -Eric Cheng

Apparently Mr. Cheng hasn't been to the SR forums.
Title: Re: Epistemology
Post by: boomtemple on January 18, 2013, 10:52 pm
I believe this post was dug up from page 12, therefore I am.
Title: Re: Epistemology
Post by: Palmergbl on March 12, 2013, 08:57 pm
yeah iterrestig