No, you don't, on your very own account — Banno

You got that D = (A and ~B and C) where C = ~(A and ~B), so D = (A and ~B and ~(A and ~B)) and so is flatly self-contradictory, right? That's why we can know that ~D.

Anything goes. It didn't rain because the third violinist hit a bum note, or because the chorus girl's mum was a non-believer. — Banno

In which case the simple belief that dancing makes it rain is false, and needs to be modified with something else that takes into account the violinist's performance or people's beliefs too.

Anything goes. — Banno

Then "not just anything goes" goes too.

Why are you even arguing if you think there's no such thing as any opinion being wrong? It's not like you think I'm wrong or something then, is it?

The idea seems to be that we start with every possible belief.

A, ~A, B, ~B, C, ~C... — Banno

Yes, but an important thing is that some beliefs are about the relations between other beliefs. If C = "A implies B", then you can rule out the possibility of belief D = "A and ~B and C". You still don't know whether C, and if C, whether A or ~B, but you know for sure that ~D.

The obvious thing to do is to take on board Popper's grand conjecture; take something as true - anything - and then see if you can disprove it. — Banno

Yes, that's the idea.

The trouble is, if you are going to show that the grand conjecture is false, you are going to need something that is both incompatible with that conjecture, and true... — Banno

No, you only need to show that the grand conjecture contains inconsistencies.

I gave this example in the other thread but I'll repeat it here. Say it seems to you that doing a certain dance causes it to rain. Why it seems like that to you isn't important, that's just your "grand conjecture", it's the possibility out of the infinite possibilities that you've initially picked for whatever non-rational reason. Then one day you think you did the dance, at least you sure tried to, but then it doesn't seem to rain, at least not like you expected it to. So now it seems to you that A implies B, but also that A and ~B, which aren't possible together. So you have to revise your beliefs somehow or another.

You could just reject that A implies B: give up the theory that dancing causes it to rain. (But you don't have to, and actual sophisticated Popperian falsification never said that you do have to; you're arguing against the strawman of dogmatic falsificationism).

You could instead reject that ~B: insist that it did rain in a way consistent with the rain dance theory, but for some reason it just didn't seem to rain to you.

Or you could instead reject that A: figure that you must have done the dance wrong somehow.

In any of those cases, you're also going to have to rearrange the rest of your beliefs somehow or another to accommodate whichever of those you chose to revise. There's going to be many, many ways you could revise the rest of your beliefs to accommodate any of those. But somehow or another, you've got to change something, on pain of inconsistency, since you can't consistently believe that dancing makes it rain, you danced, and it didn't rain.

Your process isn't 'sorting beliefs'. It's pointing out that you ought to do some choosing between those that are contradictory. — Isaac

I think this highlights a possible source of confusion between us here. When I'm speaking of sorting beliefs, I'm speaking of sorting between entire systems of belief, not merely between atomic propositions. You can always save some atomic proposition by sacrificing others instead, but every time something seems to happen contrary to what your complete system of belief says should happen, you've got to make some change or another to your complete system of belief, and the repetition of that gradually sorts out subsets of the set of possible systems of belief.

Repeating it doesn't just make the counter-arguments go away. Lack of proof is not the starting point. It is neurologically impossible to derive a belief without proof and extremely difficult (read impossible for all but the severely mentally ill) to maintain one contrary to all proof. — Isaac

I think you're confusing me with @Philosophim here, and also conflating "proof" with "suggestion".

It was Philosophim who was saying that you could come to some belief completely at random, and I agree with your criticism of that (as did he, in the end). I'm not saying everyone starts out with a blank mind. We start out with some ideas or others about how things are, but those ideas aren't proven yet (and that's fine), they're just our intuitive impressions of things, and different people may have different intuitive impressions of the same things (and that's fine).

What I'm saying is that by default, none of those differing intuitions has the burden of proof against the other; they're all equally fine interpretations of the limited available information, so long as they have all accounted for the same available information, and it's not until new information can be found to rule one or another out that there's any epistemological difference between them.

Thus one can never in any way positively confirm any beliefs to be true — Pfhorrest

I don't think that's shown, or right. — Kenosha Kid

Finally, someone comments on what I expected to be the controversial aspect of this (the "liberal" part), and not the boring generally uncontroversial aspect of it (the "critical" part).

If I believe Jon has blonde hair, I can positively affirm this. — Kenosha Kid

Can you really though? I mean, pragmatically speaking, in an ordinary sense, sure you can: you can look at Jon and see his hair is blonde. But in a technical sense, in the way Banno and Isaac are on about, it's always possible to instead revise a bunch of other beliefs to account for why it seems to you like Jon has blonde hair but somehow he really doesn't.

For this reason, I prefer a default position of scepticism for want of a good cause to entertain the idea. — Kenosha Kid

There are two kinds of skepticism to distinguish here. I am completely supportive of one of them, the kind I call "criticism" (whereby it is possible to show reason to reject a belief), which Banno and Isaac are arguing against; but the other, which I call "cynicism" (whereby it is necessary to reject any belief until reason is shown to accept it), is what I'm arguing against, and which you seem to be arguing for here.

The most archetypical kind of cynicism, in this sense, is justificationism, of which most theories of knowledge are a form, though usually only tacitly, without their proponents realizing it. Justificationism is just the position that rationality means only holding opinions when you have reason to hold them.

But a famous trilemma, known by various names such as Agrippa's Trilemma or Munchausen's Tremma, illustrates how this principle leads directly to cynicism in the sense I mean here, or else to something tantamount to fideism (the rejection of what I call "criticism") instead. For any reason put forth in support of some opinion is itself another opinion, for which the justificationist must then, if consistent with this principle, demand yet another reason. But that in turn will be some other opinion, for which the same demand for justification must be made. And so forth ad infinitum. This can only lead to one of three outcomes:

- The most typical one is foundationalism. This abandons the principle of justification at some point by declaring some step of the regress of demands for justification to be self-evident, beyond question, without need of further support. That is transparently tantamount to fideism. Nevertheless, as I will soon explain, I have sympathy for the need to hold some opinions without them being rigorously supported from the ground up. I simply reject holding them to thus be unquestionable.

- Another possible outcome is coherentism. This appeals at some point to an earlier step in that regress as support for a later one, establishing a circular chain of reasons that together can then support other reasons. I am sympathetic to the coherency criterion employed here, as surely all of one's opinions must be consistent with each other, and finding inconsistencies is a good reason to rule out some opinions. But while that is a necessary feature, I think it is not a sufficient one: mere consistency is not enough to justify opinions in the sense demanded by justificationism, without again falling to fideism. For as that whole circular chain of reasons is then collectively unsupported and held as needing no further support besides itself, it is then, as a whole, tantamount to one big foundational, and therefore fideist, opinion.

- The last possible outcome, and the most honest application of justificationism (in that it never breaks from the demand for reasons, to hide instead in fideism), is infinitism. This accepts the infinite regress of demands for justification, leaving the initial opinion, any and every initial opinion looking to be supported, forever insufficiently supported. That leaves one unwarranted in holding any opinion, and so is transparently tantamount to nihilism. Self-avowed infinitists do at least nominally hold that knowledge is still possible, and therefore conclude that it must somehow be possible to have an infinite chain of justification, even while acknowledging that it would be impossible for anyone to ever complete one in practice. While I am again sympathetic to this unending search for deeper and deeper principles to underlie our opinions, as I will soon elaborate, this infinitist position seems to me simply incoherent when framed as a form of justificationism: if you cannot ever complete the chain of justification, and you must have justification to have knowledge, then you cannot ever have knowledge.

Most theories of knowledge are either foundationalist or coherentist, and most of those who reject both of those conclude that therefore knowledge is impossible, seeing infinitism to be as incoherent as I do.

But a few philosophers, including Immanuel Kant and Karl Popper, have instead rejected the justificationist principle tacitly underlying all of those positions, and instead say, as do I, that it is not necessary to reject every opinion until you can find reasons to justify it; it is only necessary to reject an opinion if you find reasons to reject it, and it is acceptable to hold any opinion, for no reason at all, until such reasons to reject it are found.

Like with coherentism, contradictions between different opinions are good reasons to reject some or all of them; and like with infinitism, this process of whittling away incorrect opinions is unending. But because both coherentism and infinitism tacitly accept the justificationist principle, neither of them quite adequately escapes the dilemma of either following it into nihilism, or else abandoning it for fideism.

When considering reasons to intend something rather than reasons to believe something, this anti-justificationism seems largely uncontroversial. Most people will accept that it is acceptable to do something simply because you want to do it, for no particular reason, so long as there is not a good reason not to do it. We don't demand that everybody stop doing anything at all until they can show that what they want to do is justified by the need to do something that is justified by the need to do something that is justified by the need to do something... ad infinitum. We instead just accept that they're free to do whatever there's no reason not to do.

My rejection of justificationism includes that kind of freedom of intention, and to deny such freedom of intention, as in to insist that nobody does anything until it can be shown that there is a good reason to do so, would also qualify as a form cynicism in the sense that I am against here. But my rejection of cynicism also extends equally to a freedom of belief like that put forth by philosophers such as Kant and Popper. I say that it is not irrational to hold a belief or an intention simply because you are inclined to do so, for no reason; it is only irrational to continue to hold it in the face of reasons to the contrary.

But in rejecting justificationism, I am not at all rejecting rationality, or the importance of reasons. I am still against fideism, against irrationally holding opinions in the face of all reasons to the contrary of them, or asserting them to others with no reasons to back them. I only hold, for the reasons I have shown, that such an anti-justificationist position is the only practicable form of rationality, the only one that leaves us with reasons from which to reason.

Justificationism, if true, would make it impossible to ever rationally hold an opinion, instead insisting either that we hold no opinions, or else hold some core opinions to be, quite irrationally, beyond question.

In rejecting justificationism, we make room to hold some opinions, still open to question, that can nevertheless serve as reasons to hold or reject other opinions. We do lose any hope of ever having absolute certainty in any of those opinions, as they all remain constantly open to question and revision, but justificationism never offered any hope of rational certainty anyway, only the irrational false certainty of fideism (or else none at all), and with justificationism out of the way we can at least begin to compare our tentatively held opinions against each other and progress towards gradually better sets of opinions.

Cause it’s actually lizard people from inside the hollow earth, right?

Yeah, it is the same topic — Banno

It's the same topic you derailed the other thread into, it's not the same topic as the OP of the other thread.

ETA: Actually it's not even the same topic you derailed the other thread into, because you derailed the other thread into an attack on rationalism generally, not even critical rationalism specifically.

In all of these cases, I've already argued for "A" elsewhere, and I usually link back to earlier threads where that was the case. I'm slowly stepping through every subtopic of philosophy and my views on them, which each hinge on earlier views already argued for.

In this case, the foundational arguments underlying this point of view that is the topic of this thread are to be found in this thread, but I've stopped linking back to that because you derailed the entire thing into an attack on one tiny facet of the general view espoused there, so that thread didn't end up actually being about the general principles I'd like to refer back to, but just about your objections to moral objectivism, which was not the point.

Again, as much as I hate comparing myself to religious people: if someone wanted to discuss a theistic view on ontology, a theistic view on epistemology, a theistic view of mind, a theistic view of ethics, a theistic view of will, a theistic view of politics, etc... and every single time they tried to discuss some specific view on a specific topic that presumes theism, the thread became just a big general free-for-all about the existence of God in general... that's kind of derailing the thread.

And now you're derailing this thread, like you have many before, by complaining about its very existence, since you've already been (analogously) "arguing about the existence of God" in another thread where that wasn't the topic, and now you're offended that I appeal to that same thing as a foundational belief in another thread about another topic.

I'm trying to move that discussion to this thread so that people who aren't interested in the OP of the other thread don't miss out on it, because the other thread did not begin as being about this topic, it wandered to this topic.

The point of that thread was not to discuss critical rationalism generally, but just about defining knowledge, especially in light of Gettier problems, in the context of that viewpoint. I have a bunch of things about epistemology -- my kind of critical rationalist epistemology -- that I want to talk about, but rather than one enormous post with all of my thoughts about everything to do with epistemology all at once, I'm trying to break it down into bite-sized pieces. I've had the OP of this thread written for a while and have just been waiting for that other thread to die out to move on so that I don't have more than one active thread on the front page at a time.

@StreetlightX, @fdrake, I started this in lieu of asking you to split the tangential discussion out of there for me, so as not to create more work for you, but if you really want to do something about it, feel free to split the argument about critical rationalism more generally out of that thread and move it here. Or not, if you don't care to bother, it's fine by me.

If a religious person started a thread about a particular narrow philosophy of religion topic, and a proposed solution to that narrow problem specifically from a theist viewpoint, and that thread devolved into a general "existence of God" argument rather than the narrow topic it was supposed to be about, would that not call for splitting off into a new thread?

You can't have all three together? Is that what you're getting at, that we must choose one and so we've narrowed it from three to one because all three together were contradictory? — Isaac

Yes, that is the kind of narrowing I'm talking about.

Who doesn't think like this already? Or are you simply describing normal mental activity? — Isaac

As I said above, there are two parts to this view as I construct it, a "critical" part whereby we can somehow or another find limits to possibilities and separate things that are possible from things that are not, and a "liberal" part which says that you're free to hold beliefs without yet justifying them from the ground up.

The "critical" part is just rationalism generally, and I think that that is mostly a normal and uncontroversial thing, which I'm only talking about because it seemed like you and Banno were questioning that, implying that there is no way of sorting beliefs at all, them all just being held non-rationally and so immune to any rational process of comparison.

The "liberal" part is the thing it seems many people, especially many philosophers and generally self-identified "rational" people, get wrong, and so is the main thrust of the "critical rationalist" / "falsificationist" viewpoint under discussion here. (The point of this thread was not to discuss that viewpoint generally, but just about defining knowledge, especially in light of Gettier problems, in the context of that viewpoint. That's why I started another thread just before you responded, to talk about that topic more generally, for the sake of people who don't care about Gettier etc but might care about this).

The traditional, justificationist form of rationalism treats lack of proof as itself a disproof, which critical rationalism like mine rejects. Lack of proof is just nothing, the starting point, and in absence of proof one way or another, any view is tentatively acceptable, under critical rationalism. Unlike justificationism, which would (a la Descates) demand you reject anything that might possibly not be true, find something at the bottom that is definitely true, and build everything from there, which things like Agrippa's/Munchausen's Trilemma show to be impossible, which would leave you rejecting everything out the gate to begin with and then having no ground to build up from, forever.

Either you don't really mean "best", and satisficing is fine — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. “Seems best” was speaking loosely. Jump out of the way of that car, in any direction you want, unless you’d be jumping into the way of something else instead. Just get somewhere clear.

To recap: your theory isn't falsification a la Popper but Quine's web of beliefs — Srap Tasmaner

Can you quote me somewhere that Popper says anything contrary to this, because I read Popper first, came away with the impression that he supported what I’m arguing here, then read Quine later and thought “well duh, this is already obvious from a falsificationist point of view, but yeah good points against confirmationism/justificationism anyway.”

ETA: Some quick Googling suggests that later writers like Lakatos have commented on the supposed conflict between Popper and Quine, and Popper himself may have as well (it's not clear from what I'm finding if they're quoting Popper or writing something original), saying that the "falsificationism" that is supposedly destroyed by Duhem-Quine is "naive falsificationism" or "dogmatic falsificationism", and that those are not the falsificationism of Popper himself. So it seems that like I thought, this Quinean attack on falsificationism is an attack on a strawman.

and the way you select what to disconfirm when your web becomes inconsistent is -- as yet unclear. — Srap Tasmaner

And not that important on my account. Just move your position to somewhere not in the way of any incoming problems, where exactly doesn’t matter, just so long as you keep doing that and so keep moving into more and more secure positions.

ETA: Of course, you could always try using falsification itself as a method for deciding. You've got several options, test them out, see if any of them have problems you can find, maybe at least narrow down the options you have to choose between via some other means.

I’m not a fan of Feyerabend (though I’d think you and Isaac would be), but in the case of picking which belief to tentatively hold until you’re obliged to revise again, yeah pretty much anything goes. There’s a reason that in my own terminology critical rationalism is called “criticoliberal epistemology”: it’s the combination of my principles of liberalism and criticism, as applied to belief. It seems to be the principle of criticism that you take objection to, which leaves you with uncritical liberalism, which is just fideism. You don’t think all beliefs are articles of unquestionable faith, differences of which cannot be rationally resolved, now do you?

So when does the actual whittling down happen? As far as I can tell, knowing that you're entitled to eliminate something or many somethings from an effectively unbounded set but not knowing which something -- that might be necessary but it's not the same as actually whittling down. — Srap Tasmaner

It’s not so much entitled as it is obliged, on pain of inconsistency. Like a car coming at you, you’ve just got to get out of the way somehow, it doesn’t matter which way. Whichever changes seem best fit to make to you, go ahead and make those.

As you say, later observations will require further revisions anyway, so if it turns our you should have revised differently before, you’ll find out eventually.

Can you give an example, real or imagined, but not schematic? — Srap Tasmaner

Say you think that doing a certain dance (A) causes it (if A then B) to rain (B). You do that dance, or at least you try to do it right, but it doesn’t seem to rain, at least not when and where you expected the dance would cause it to.

You must either conclude that it did in fact rain in a way consistent with your rain dance theory even though it does not seem like it did to you, and rearrange whatever beliefs are necessary to accommodate that conclusion;

or else conclude that dancing does not cause it to rain, and rearrange whatever beliefs are necessary to accommodate that conclusion;

or else conclude that you did not do the correct dance to cause it to rain, and rearrange whatever beliefs are necessary to accommodate that conclusion.

There's no algorithm for deciding what to believe. If you agree with that, in the face of what you have said here, then we have no disagreement. — Banno

I don’t know if what I’m describing is “algorithmic” in the sense you mean or not.

But it doesn't do this, either; as pointed out. — Banno

But it does, as I pointed out without refutation in turn.

Bayesian analysis works better. — Banno

That is compatible with a falsificationist approach, as I'm going to elaborate in another thread soon, as soon as this one dies. But here's a preview of that part:

Beliefs not yet shown false can still be more or less probable than others, as calculated by methods such as Bayes' theorem. Falsification itself can be considered just an extreme case of showing a belief to have zero probability: if you are frequently observing phenomena that your belief says should be improbable, then that suggests your belief is epistemically improbable (i.e. likely false), and if you ever observe something that your belief says should be impossible, then your belief is epistemically impossible (i.e. certainly false).

Now I'm wondering what the fallout would be if some horde of crazy Trumpers ended up "accidentally" killing Biden himself. (I'm picturing Biden himself was on that bus). This late into the election, with so many ballots already cast for him. Was Harris on that bus too?

I'm at a loss to see what your view is. You appeared to set up a thread in defence of falsificationism. You then accepted that falsificationism does not provide a path to belief. — Banno

My understanding of falsificationism is that it is founded on rejecting the very concept of conclusively proving any one particular belief, in favor of only on narrowing down the range of possible beliefs, which always remains a range, no matter how narrow you make it. Instead of starting with a blank slate of no possibilities and trying to build something up from that tabula rasa, you start out with every possibility live, and then for every argument or bit of evidence you encounter, every relationship between certain ideas you find, you whittle down some possibilities, where your complete belief set can't include this or that kind of feature (e.g. you can't have A and not-B), but there are always still infinitely many ways to avoid that kind of feature (you could reject A to allow not-B, or affirm B to allow A, and in either case rearrange all the rest of your beliefs however is necessary to accommodate rejecting A or affirming B, any way that will enable that, of which there will always be infinitely many).

Saying in response to that "but you never end up forced to accept any particular belief that way" is not a rebuttal of that, it's the whole point of that.

It's like setting upper and lower bounds on some value. That's actually a particular case of this process, but also serves as an analogy for the whole process. You never pin down one actual value, but you can narrow down the range that the actual value might fall within. And that's a kind of knowledge-that. Knowing what combinations of things cannot be so is still knowledge compared to thinking absolutely anything goes because you have as yet no basis to tell what won't work out.

Well, no, it doesn't. — Banno

Contradiction is not argument.

You keep claiming things I already agree with somehow refute my views and it’s getting tiresome. All it shows is that you’re arguing against the strawman of what you think I think, not against me.

If Pf doesn't get Quine, Hemple won't help. — Banno

I’m quite aware of Hempel and the good points he makes against confirmationism, which I am also already against.

So falsificationism doesn't work — Banno

Only of you ever thought falsification was supposed to prove one particular belief (or set of beliefs) as the sole unique correct one. That was never its point though. It only narrows down the possible sets of beliefs that are still viable. And even if you reject some apparent new observation instead of using it to rule our previously held beliefs, you still have to change other beliefs to accommodate the rejection of that new observation, so you’ve still narrowed down the possibilities, which again is all that was ever supposed to happen.

The new belief that ~B itself requires justification - that is, underdetermination suggests that there is never sufficient reason to accept that ~B. — Banno

I covered that already:

You could reject not-B, on the grounds that A and that A implies B, and then make all of the subsequent changes to the rest of your beliefs that are required to not demand you accept not-B. — Pfhorrest

Rejecting the new observation is always an option. But then there are other things you would have to reject in order to be consistent about rejecting the new observation. One way or another, you end up having to modify something about your belief system. It's underdetermined what you have to modify but NO DUH it is, and I never said otherwise.

I think it is more likely that theism is the source, not the result, of excessive optimism. To gain that optimism, in the face of the pessimism that might attend the realization of inevitable suffering, loss, injustice and annihilation, some people are drawn to the idea of a transcendent reality. I believe the same impulse is there in the case of Hinduism and Buddhism and most other religions too. — Janus

That's basically what I meant. It's wishful thinking. It would be terrible if X therefore it's not X. How could it be not X? Come up with something, then believe that, because it would be too terrible if that weren't the case and so X could be the case instead.

That's basically straight from the mouth of my devout mother when pressed on the issue. God must exist because it would be just awful if he didn't.

The people you are talking about probably care about their eternal life and well-being. You don't care about that because you don't believe in it. — Janus

I do care about that, I just don't think that they are successfully optimizing their (albeit slim) chances of attaining it, but are instead believing something that tells them it's much easier and more likely for them to attain it because believing that makes them feel good.

If they really don't care whether or not it's actually true, they just want to feel good right now, that's fine with me. I'm not actually very concerned at all with whether people are theists or atheists. Things like that are, to me, merely a sign of a deeper "disease", an indication of probable flaws in reasoning that can have much worse effects (like the mismanagement of COVID-19, climate change, general political and economic injustice, etc) than just allowing someone to reassure themselves in the face of their fears, which is harmless.

So long as those other worse effects aren't manifesting, then I don't especially care about people having their flawed reasoning privately either. But if they care about being technically correct in their thinking -- i.e. if they're interested in philosophy -- then I have some opinions on that topic and arguments to support them. And as a way of forestalling the other worse effects of such flawed thinking, I generally try to encourage people to care about that, i.e. to think philosophically.

Yes, but what happens if you apply this, for example, to theism? — Janus

I was thinking of theism as I wrote that, as one of those "specific big beliefs".

There are many scientists who are also theists, and this apparently doesn't hamper their ability to do science just as well as an atheist scientist. — Janus

I think they're compartmentalizing their work from the rest of their thought, and so being inconsistent.

If they don't care that they're inconsistent, then there's nothing to do about it.

Also there are studies that purport to show that theists live longer, are healthier, and so on than atheists. — Janus

That has no bearing on the truth or falsity of (a)theism, and in principle it should be possible to suss out exactly what it is about a certain kind of belief (or what correlates with that kind of belief) regardless of its truth or falsity that's contributes to health and long life, and replicate those effects for atheists too. (My first hypothesis would be that theism is a common but not necessary consequence of excessive optimism, broadly speaking, in one's thought patterns, and that optimism generally has health benefits).

What if you can't find any? Say, for example, that someone believes that scripture is the ultimate evidence that outweighs all other sources? How are you going to find something in common to work back up from with such a person? — Janus

If they really believe scripture above absolutely everything else, and there is nothing that they care about more than conforming their beliefs to scripture, then they're a lost cause. Like the scientist above who doesn't care if they're inconsistent, if they really just don't care, then I don't care to struggle pointlessly trying to convince them otherwise.

But I think that's probably pretty unlikely, for most people. They probably have reasons for believing scripture, that stem from deeper concerns, which may stem from deeper concerns, and so on. Probably most people care more about their life and well-being than they do with just agreeing with some book just because, and the reason why they agree so vehemently with the book could easily be that they think it will contribute to their eternal life and well-being. That's an avenue to start looking for some common ground, because I also care about their life and well-being, even though I don't believe in their scriptures, and if they had to choose between abandoning the scripture of abandoning their life and well-being (and were convinced that that actually was a choice between two different things, not tantamount to the same thing), I'd suspect (and hope) that they'd pick their life and well-being over the scriptures.

How can you ever falsify either position, unless the starting assumptions about what constitutes a plausible reason for belief are shared? — Janus

You have to work your way down through the networks of supporting beliefs until you find something in common to work back up from. This may take you a long way from where you started into far more abstract territory, and odds are they won’t want to go on that long journey with you, but that’s how you’d have to do it.

For example my whole belief network is grounded in my philosophical principles which are grounded in pragmatic reasons that anyone worth talking to would share: basically, “You care about something right? There’s something or another you’re trying to do in your life that you would rather succeed at than fail at, no? Well, here’s why being able to discern truth from falsehood is important for succeeding at all other things, and here’s why these principles are important for succeeding at the task of discerning truth from falsehood, and here’s some broad implications of those principles, and here are some specific big beliefs that run counter to those implications, so if you care about anything then if you’re really consistent you’ll reject those particular beliefs and then make whatever adjustments necessary to the rest of your beliefs to accommodate that.”

This seems to be suggesting that all beliefs, until and unless they are ruled out, enjoy equal status. — Janus

Yes. Nobody's beliefs have a particular burden of proof over anyone else's. If you want to push your beliefs over someone else's, you've got to show that theirs are wrong, and more so that all the other alternatives besides yours are wrong; and saying "you can't prove they're right" is not showing they're wrong.

What happened to the reasons we hold beliefs in the first place? Are you not leaving degrees of plausibility (themselves determined by social, cultural and psychological influences, out of the picture? — Janus

Everyone thinks they have good enough reasons to hold their beliefs. Those degrees of plausibility can factor in to your own evaluation of what seems most likely to you, but if someone else disagrees with the plausibility of a certain belief, if it just doesn't seem the same to them as it seems to you, then you have to agree to disagree until one of you can definitively show that the other is actually wrong.

What about beliefs that cannot be definitively ruled out; for example beliefs in compassion, love, sacred beauty, or ethical virtues. — Janus

I'm not sure what you even mean by "belief in" compassion, love, or sacred beauty. That sounds like a different sense of the word "belief" that means "support". I don't think there's any practical controversy over the fact that people sometimes are compassionate, or loving, etc. But if there were any question about those things, it would be an empirical question.

Ethics is a good question though. I do think that ethical views can be definitively ruled out, but that the method for doing so is not quite "empirical" in the usual sense, though it is analogous. This is a huge can of worms I don't want to open with Isaac in the room though. In any case, critical rationalism in general is not specifically about empirical beliefs; the specific subset of critical rationalism about empirical beliefs is falsificationism. The critical rationalist methodology can be used on any kind of belief though, not just empirical ones.

Can you perhaps give an example? "...and you can show that B and C are contrary to each other"; the point of underdetermination is that you can't show this. There are innumerable reasons why A and B might appear to be contradictory, and yet not. — Banno

Can you give an example to the contrary?

I'm talking about scenarios where you have a belief system like "A" plus "A implies B", and then a new belief that "not-B". That is straightforwardly just a logical contradiction, and you have to change something about it on pain of inconsistency. At this point we're not even talking about observational evidence, just pure abstract logic. Whatever your reasons for believing that A, that A implies B, and that not-B, something somewhere in some of those reasons must be wrong, because you just can't have all of those at once.

What's underdetermined is what exactly went wrong where:

You could reject not-B, on the grounds that A and that A implies B, and then make all of the subsequent changes to the rest of your beliefs that are required to not demand you accept not-B.

Or you could reject that A implies B, on the grounds that A and not-B, and then make all the subsequent changes to the rest of your beliefs that are required to not demand you accept that A implies B.

Or you could reject A on the grounds that A implies B and that not-B, and then make all the subsequent changes to the rest of your beliefs that are required to not demand that you accept A.

As I understand Quine, his point was that things aren't as simple as just one of those scenarios. It's not like you just observe that not-B and boom, there you go, we know for sure that not-A. The implication from A to B is also up for revision, as is the observational implication that not-B in the first place. You can change any of those to salvage the consistency of your belief system.

And I have no problem with that, that's a big "no duh" to me.

A "reason why you can't" will still be underdetermined... — Banno

I addressed underdetermination specifically in the very post you quoted:

That inconsistency, that ruling-out, does not compel any specific alternative belief, only that you revise something or other in your belief system to avoid that inconsistency — Pfhorrest

Critical rationalism does not find undertermination a problem; you're never trying to justify one specific possibility, only narrowing the range of possibilities, so there are always a range of possibilities remaining.

methods of distinguishing knowledge from belief - it is the assumption that there exist methods of distiguishing knowledge from belief at all at the ontological level you want them to exist — Isaac

That you think I'm trying to distinguish knowledge from belief or that this has anything to do with ontology shows a complete misunderstanding of what I'm talking about at all. On my account, knowledge is a kind of belief, not something separate from it, and what we're discussing in epistemology generally is how to (practically) revise beliefs, in a way that avoids various problems that might otherwise arise in that activity. Epistemology is about identifying what problems might arise in that activity of belief-revision, and seeking out ways around them. Knowledge is just the subset of belief that can make it through such a process.

it being "not yet ruled out" is itself another belief — Isaac

Except it's not, at least not on the same order as the beliefs under discussion. If anything, it's a meta-belief, an axiom of the method of belief revision. Being not ruled out is the default state of any belief under critical rationalism; it's not something that calls for justification. Critical rationalism turns the entire idea of justification on its head: rather than needing to have some belief to justify having some belief to justify having some belief, you may have whatever beliefs you like, until you encounter a reason why you can't.

That "reason why you can't" is not itself some other belief external to the rest of your preexisting beliefs, it's some inconsistency within your complete network of beliefs. That inconsistency, that ruling-out, does not compel any specific alternative belief, only that you revise something or other in your belief system to avoid that inconsistency.

And sure, when it comes to synthetic a posteriori beliefs, one usual element of that complete network of beliefs is that one's senses reflect something about the actual world, which is equivalently to say, a rejection of the notion that there is some "actual world" aside from the world accessible to the senses. One could always reconcile any observation with any beliefs if one just disbelieved that observation conveyed any truth. But I think there are, and have stated extensively elsewhere, reasons to reject that kind of disbelief in observation; which is to say, inconsistencies that would inevitably arise from accepting that kind of rejection of observation.

And yes, the methodology of critical rationalism itself, which is equivalently to say the rejection of justificationism, could also be considered a belief on the same order as that reliance on observation, a kind of meta-belief if you will. But there are, again, reasons to reject justificationism, which is to say, inconsistencies that arise from the acceptance of justification, which I have also already detailed elsewhere. And since even justificationism itself accepts proof by contradiction as justification within its paradigm, that should be sufficient to disprove justificationism itself from within justificationism, and so compel critical rationalism.


But this thread in particular is not supposed to be an argument for critical rationalism in general. It's just supposed to show that the Gettier problem does not apply within a critical rationalist paradigm, because it hinges on justificationist assumptions. If you already reject those assumptions, because you already reject justificationism, because you're a critical rationalist, then the Gettier problem means nothing. And existing responses to Gettier, like Nozick's, already hint at that, without (so far as I know) coming out and saying it outright.

you don't actually think knowledge is best defined in terms of critical rationalism. — Banno

I do, but that is not in conflict with anything Quine has said, or that you or Isaac have said along the same lines as Quine.

What is so inadequate? He’s basically stating confirmation holism, as you pointed out, and I’m saying “no duh”. You rule out a complete network of beliefs, and replace it with something else that is not yet ruled out. Beliefs aren’t free-floating atoms, they’re all tied to other beliefs.

But of course pragmatically you’ll make the minimal necessary revision to your belief system, which will usually be just that one small belief, unless you happen to be on the threshold where your whole system of belief already needs so many exceptions that with this latest one it’s worth it to switch to something altogether more parsimonious.

But that’s going to be the topic of my next thread (parsimony and scientific revolutions), and I’m just waiting for this one to die down before posting it.

The point being, you have not here addressed Quine's point, but merely said you disagreed with it. — Banno

I never said I disagreed with it, I said it’s not contrary to my views, i.e. I agree with it.

Good; it's always better not to let new information undermine your pre-existing view... — Banno

If you tell me the sky isn’t always blue, sometimes it’s orange or even grey, that’s not something surprising I need to revise my beliefs about, that something obvious that I always took for granted.

knowing that is a type of knowhow — Banno

I also agree with this, as a pragmatist.

I'm not ignoring Quine at all. When I first read Quine I thought his point about confirmation holism was trivial under my pre-existing falsificationist view.

Induction is not the recognition of patterns. Induction is drawing a conclusion that does not necessarily conclude from the premises, or evidence involved. — Philosophim

That's not induction specifically, that's just any invalid inference. Induction is not technically valid, because validity only applies to deduction to begin with. Induction is all about patterns: you see things that fit a pattern and take those things as evidence that the pattern holds, even though that's not deductively valid because the pattern could always break at the next observation.

So there are two kinds of criticisms that can sometimes and sometimes not be made about the same beliefs:

formed with minimal "input" from the environment and considerable input from your other beliefs or "gut reactions";
"insulated" or "protected" from possible revision.


Philosophers don't like either of these but will let the first slide so long as you are open to revision; the second is more or less sinful. Are there good general-purpose ways of talking about these things? — Srap Tasmaner

:up:

How can it be that people are "uninterested in checking your beliefs against the senses" and yet at the same time you acknowledge that all belief are the result of interpretation of input from the senses? — Isaac

It’s the “checking” part that makes the difference, between acting like the observations you happen to have made so are plenty (and possibly even being averse to makings further observations that might compel you to change your mind), and actively seeking out more observations to make sure that they continue the pattern.

Also, one can form beliefs in a top-down way as well, hearing the beliefs of others expressed first, being told that something is so, and then perceiving nothing to the contrary (or else doubting the reliability of those perceptions) and so affirming the belief, without having yet observed anything that would have organically compelled one to believe.

The point I was making as counter to Pfhorrest's argument here is that it is impossible to generate a belief which is not based on some interpretation of the evidence (input from the outside world). — Isaac

That's not contrary to my views at all. (I've just been saying in the past few posts that a "belief" as I mean it is formed from a "perception", which in turn is exactly some interpretation of evidence). I think maybe you're reading in more than I intend to say.

However, that still leaves the problem that both inductive and deductive beliefs are counted as knowledge. — Philosophim

I don't see why that's a problem. Induction doesn't give you certainty like deduction does, but noticing patterns (which is all induction really amounts to) is still a way to form beliefs, and so long as you would not hold those beliefs if they were not true (i.e. you have made observations that would have falsified them, if they were false), then you know the things you believe.

So if you still hold to something even when it has been disproven, it then becomes something separate from knowledge, and becomes a belief. — Philosophim

I don't see how this related to the previous sentence, and also, knowledge is a species of belief, so something doesn't become a belief after previously having been known, or anything like that. I think maybe you're not following the relationship between perception and belief on my account: to perceive something is for it to seem true to you, just intuitively. Your friend seems like the kind of guy who probably had a date last night.

It's not until you wonder to yourself "is that really right though?" and then either agree or disagree with your perception that you form a belief, either a belief in the thing you perceived (if you agree), or a belief to the contrary (if you disagree; say you're aware of something adversely affecting your perception, so you don't trust it).

You may not necessarily have thoroughly vetted the idea yet, so that belief may not count as knowledge. If you have thoroughly vetted it, such that you would have already found that it was false if it were false, then you know it.

At that point, we believe things that we know aren't true, and we know things that we can't believe are true. — Philosophim

I also don't see how this follows from before, and even by itself it doesn't make sense to my understanding of these words. To believe something just is to think that it is true, and knowledge is a species of belief, so to know something is in part to believe it which is to think that it's true. So you can't believe things you know aren't true, nor can you know things that you don't believe are true, because knowing them implies believing they're true.

I think allowing inductive beliefs to be counted as knowledge is where the sticking point it. What if you held deductive beliefs that have not been disproven yet as knowledge, and inductive beliefs as mere beliefs? — Philosophim

Beliefs themselves aren't inherently deductive or inductive, those are just means of arguing for a belief. If you have a deductive argument, that is a disprove of the contrary, and so is certain knowledge. Inductive beliefs cannot be certain, sure, but that's beside any point I'm making here.

If I have an unexamined belief (which has nothing to do with the technical neurological process of how that belief was formed) and it just so happens to be right, was my unexamined belief knowledge? — Philosophim

If counterfactually you would not have held that belief if the world were different such that that belief would have been false, then yes. On my account, at least.

ETA: I guess technically on my account there is no such thing as an unexamined “belief“, because that would just be a “perception”: belief are what you get when you examine your perceptions and either affirm or deny their accuracy.

The whole question is why they should be able to make us do it. And, since they only are able to do it because we allow and enable them to, why do we collectively do that?

E.g. if you could take whatever rich or powerful person and magically erase all memories and records of them, but leave them unchanged, they would suddenly be powerless, with no way of proving that they are owed the obedience they usually get. That shows how their power is entirely a function of people agreeing that they should have power. So we can always ask, why agree to that? Why do they deserve the influence we let them have?

Because they have the power and you have not, is the short of it. — ChatteringMonkey

That's an answer to why we are required, not why we should be.

Also, given that who has the power is always in the end a question of who has the greatest differential of support minus opposition, the really relevant question is why should we let them have it? Why should most people stand with or at least not against a certain social power structure? "Because they have the power" is no answer to that, because they only have that power because of what people think the answer to that is.

the philosophers mistake (also not meant as an insult btw) that everything can and needs to be justified — ChatteringMonkey

When you tell someone else that they must do (or think) something, it absolutely does call for justification. Xtrix isn’t saying that people need justification for voluntarily participating in the social structures we have, but that the compulsive participation in them needs justification.

E.g. why shouldn’t I just be allowed to keep living where I live unless I pay someone to “let” me? Why should they get to decide that? Not why I should have the permission to pay them to let me, but why I should be obligated to do so.

Not much to add but :100: