Acting on your belief, for instance by asserting it, carries risk, and we can naturally extend the above: the greater your confidence the greater the risk you are prepared to take; the greater the risk you expect to face, the greater your confidence in your choice of action must be. Thus, following consensus or authority is generally, but not always, so low-risk, you barely need any reason at all. — Srap Tasmaner

But following consensus, or authority, is a reason for confidence, a very good reason. So when you follow authority it's not that you do not need a reason, you already have the reason, and a very good one at that. This gives us confidence.

And I don't get what you mean by "the greater your confidence the greater the risk you are prepared to take". This seems contradictory. If you are confident, then you don't see yourself as taking a risk. So the higher the confidence, the less the risk, because taking a risk is to proceed with low confidence.

For example, we may be faced with a choice between saying, "I think it's going to rain," and saying, "It's going to rain," or "I know it's going to rain." We have described these before as less and more confident versions of the same belief. (That's not quite true, of course, because the first could actually express greater confidence by means of understatement.) — Srap Tasmaner

So in this example, if one has much faith in the weather forecaster who predicts rain, that person will say "it's going to rain". But a person who hasn't listened to the weather forecast, but is still quite skilled in forecasting the weather by looking at the clouds and the wind conditions, might say, with less confidence, "I think it's going to rain".

Pretty sure I didn't say certainty is "inherent within assertion"; I said it could function as a reason for you not to fear being held accountable for what you say, but there may be other reasons. For instance, just following consensus or authority is probably all the reason we need much of the time. — Srap Tasmaner

Consider the example now. One person has listened to the weather forecaster, and asserts with certainty "it's going to rain". Are you saying, that if that person turns out to be wrong, the person will just pass off the accountability to the weather forecaster? So the person makes the assertion, as if with certainty, but the person really does not have certainty and is just passing along the certainty of another, because the accountability s passed along in the same way.

Is this an acceptable way of speaking though? Is it acceptable to assert something as if you are certain of it, when you really are believing that if you're wrong you can just pass off the accountability to someone else? We could be making assertions as if we are certain all the time, pretending to be certain, but knowing all along that we really are not certain, and it doesn't matter if we're wrong because the accountability can just be passed along.

If you are confident, then you don't see yourself as taking a risk. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's not really how gambling works.

But following consensus, or authority, is a reason for confidence, a very good reason. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, it could be, and you may have reason to think consensus or authority are right in the case at hand.

My point is this: actions have consequences. Making an assertion is an action and has consequences. Your audience may rely on your assertion in choosing a course of action, so you will bear some responsibility for the outcome. But there's a class of consequences that's slightly different, that you might think of as the social consequences for your assertion being considered right or wrong. What you say on a test determines your grade, for instance. In such cases, following consensus or authority is pretty safe, more or less by definition.

As science skeptics will tell you, going against the establishment entails risk to your reputation. If you are very confident of your results, you can risk this, believing you will be proven right in the end.

Is it acceptable to assert something as if you are certain of it, when you really are believing that if you're wrong you can just pass off the accountability to someone else? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know why you think this is my position but it isn't.

Suppose I'm about to climb a ladder, and someone I consider an authority assures me it's safe. If the ladder fails and I get a broken arm, I'm still the one who suffers the consequences. On the other hand, that person's assertion having proved wrong, I will be less likely to trust their judgment, so they suffer some consequence as well, just a slightly different sort. I might also suffer that same sort of consequence, if others think it was my mistake in trusting him.

ADDED: I should also have said here that he suffers the natural consequences for his role in my suffering an injury: guilt, remorse, whatever.

If consenus or authority are wrong about something, then everyone who just goes along with the socially acceptable view will bear some responsibility for the natural consequences that follow. There may never have been any consequences of the other sort (what I had in my mind as being held accountable, as a social phenomenon).

By the way, I would have thought it obvious that we all assert things all the time on the basis of consensus and authority alone. You could call that trust if you like, but the fact is I think the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066 because that's what I learned in school, and that's what everyone says.

How many planets are there in our solar system?

At some point we should probably shift to talking about reward as well as risk. There are obvious social payoffs to asserting what everyone else asserts, for instance.

Also, I feel like I'm not presenting assertion clearly enough. I want to maintain a distinction between a belief you hold and the act of asserting it. (In the ladder example, for instance, the authority figure is making an assertion and I am acting on a belief, like the authority, but by climbing not talking.) We have to keep in mind also that there is an audience for an assertion. I'm not quite sure how to treat the case where the audience is only the speaker herself. Is that really assertion?

You wrote:

I'd start here: if you believe that Jerry is under the box, you believe something about Jerry (and the box and so on), not something about the sentence "Jerry is under the box," such as it being true.

When we describe your belief, we use the sentence, "Jerry is under the box," so we're also talking about Jerry (and the box and so on), not the sentence "Jerry is under the box."

I would concur.

If you want to say that the sentence "Jerry is under the box" is true, I'd say you're talking not only about Jerry (and the box and so on) but also about English. Truth is for sentences, really, not beliefs, although it may do no harm now & then to call a belief that something is the case when it really is a "true belief." I expect I've done it somewhere in this thread, but that's speaking loosely.

That ambiguity is not the basis for my claim that the content of Tom's belief can be the same as the content of our report of his belief: the basis for that is that Tom has a belief about Jerry (and the box and so on), and that's exactly what we say he has. We're not talking about language and truth anymore than Tom is.

So, "Jerry is under the box" qualifies as a belief, a sentence, a statement, Tom's belief, and the content of our and Tom's belief.

That seems to be quite a stretch, doesn't it?

Tom doesn't think in statements. Our reports of Tom's belief(and our own) are in the form of a statement. If we both form and hold the belief that Jerry is under the box, and we attend to the fact that Toms doesn't think in statements, then it must be the case that Tom's thought/belief doesn't consist in/of statements. Yet we have the same belief about the same events.

I say that it is because all thought/belief consists in/of mental correlations drawn between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or the agents' own mental state.

Suppose I'm about to climb a ladder, and someone I consider an authority assures me it's safe. If the ladder fails and I get a broken arm, I'm still the one who suffers the consequences. On the other hand, that person's assertion having proved wrong, I will be less likely to trust their judgment, so they suffer some consequence as well, just a slightly different sort. I might also suffer that same sort of consequence, if others think it was my mistake in trusting him. — Srap Tasmaner

I think I've lost track of the point your trying to make. But if your boss tells you to climb the ladder and assures you that it is safe, then the boss is the one liable to pay compensation when you get hurt. In any case, you seem to have missed my point. We use "the authorities said so" as an excuse, to pass on the blame, when we are caught making an assertion which turns out wrong. This allows us to nonchalantly make assertions when the information comes from an authority, knowing we will not be held accountable if the assertion proves wrong. So I can assert "it will rain today" when the weather forecaster says so, knowing that if I am wrong, the weather forecaster is due to get the blame, not myself.

So this is a type of confidence, which is real confidence because we have confidence in the authorities, but at the same time it isn't a true confidence, because we are just letting someone else make the decision for us. It is confidence in another person, not self-confidence.

But with the confidence mechanic, things can get weird, because students can collude to move the answer. As I tried testing this, it looked like it only took two students out of ten so colluding to make a noticeable difference, and three was overkill. (The idea is for the conspirators all to confidently select the same answer; they'll pick up some help from whoever believed this answer actually to be right, and often enough swamp other answers, including the right one, selected with only random confidence. Thus their choice tends to win more than it should.) — Srap Tasmaner

Stumbled across this today while working nearby:

Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute[1] have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. — Wikipedia

Holy crap. My little Excel "simulations" weren't quite this scary.

X-)

Says something about leaders and followers, amongst other things, if it's true...

But if your boss tells you to climb the ladder and assures you that it is safe, then the boss is the one liable to pay compensation when you get hurt. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah, sorry, by "authority" I didn't mean someone in a position to order me to climb, but someone I considered an expert, whose opinion I trusted.

So this is a type of confidence, which is real confidence because we have confidence in the authorities, but at the same time it isn't a true confidence, because we are just letting someone else make the decision for us. It is confidence in another person, not self-confidence. — Metaphysician Undercover

I get why you're saying this, but I don't see any justification for it. Not the right kind of confidence? You're just defining your way to the conclusion you're already committed to.

I think I've lost track of the point your trying to make. — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay, so backing up: trying to clarify the relation between a belief held with some degree of confidence based on certain reasons, and acting on that belief by asserting it. We've been looking at the different sorts of consequences an assertion can have, which should factor into the decision to make an assertion or not. (For instance, the sort of common-sense view here would be you make an assertion with the intent of "inducing" a belief in your audience. I haven't really addressed this yet because this vaguely causal way of putting it doesn't feel right and I don't have an alternative yet.)

I'm now reading Ramsey's "Truth and Probability" which deals with at least some of this. He gets from Peirce the idea that your degree of belief is the extent to which you are willing to act on it, which for me would include making an assertion. There's something obviously right about this, but it misses out some other things. (For instance, with my story-telling example, the princess not existing is indeed a reason for asserting that she won't do anything, but there are other reasons for not making this assertion that are usually better. If you were dealing with someone who actually thought, incorrectly, that the story was true, you would say things like this. This is what happens in Toy Story.)

One other thought on bosses and ladders: his ordering me up is in itself interesting. Giving a command based on a belief -- we can suppose he honestly believes the ladder is safe -- is another way of acting, just like making an assertion that the ladder is safe.

Ah, sorry, by "authority" I didn't mean someone in a position to order me to climb, but someone I considered an expert, whose opinion I trusted. — Srap Tasmaner

Oh, well I consider the boss on my job to be the expert, whose opinion I should trust. Isn't that the case for you?

One other thought on bosses and ladders: his ordering me up is in itself interesting. Giving a command based on a belief -- we can suppose he honestly believes the ladder is safe -- is another way of acting, just like making an assertion that the ladder is safe. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think the boss would order you up the ladder if he didn't think it was safe, unless he's practising some form of deception. Safety is the boss's responsibility.

An order doesn't necessarily require the speaker to have well grounded belief about the order...

It could be the case that the boss hasn't even considered the safety aspect.