Glad you like the idea. :smile: I look forward to seeing your answers.

Cool to have another local on here. :cool:

I’m glad reading Wittgenstein was emotionally helpful to you, even if I end up not agreeing with his philosophy much. (I take pretty much the same attitude toward religious texts, for what that’s worth).

I’m not so much asking for people to put together a coherent systematic philosophy, as I am just wondering what people’s present answers (however un-thought-out they may be) to this range of questions are, both just out of curiosity to see how answers to one question relate to answers to others, and as kind of a learning exercise or guided meditation opportunity (so to speak) for those who maybe haven’t considered all of these questions, a chance for them to think about how answers to one question should relate to answers to others.

Thanks for the compliment, and for sharing your history. I’m curious to hear your answers to the full set of questions (if you feel like answering them), since I can only infer answers to a few of them from the history you’ve given.

I don’t mind a small digression into Platonism vs nominalism vs mathematicism, as a Tegmarkian mathematicist myself and yet also an anti-Platonist, who finds it weird that some consider mathematicism an extreme form of Platonism while I consider it more like the opposite. For analogy, if Platonism is like Cartesian dualism, mathematicism seems more like idealism to me, contrasted to both that and to nominalism/materialism. Anyway if this digression gets too long we can always fork it, and right now it’s no worse than the Wittgenstein digression (and more interesting to me).

I was about to embark on that, bearing in mind I'm snatching opportunities whilst at Daily Grind.

The Meaning of Philosophy
What defines philosophy and demarcates it from other fields? — Pfhorrest

General truths, reflections on the human condition and the existential quandaries specific to human beings. I see the Platonic corpus, in particular, The Republic, and The Apology as being foundational to philosophy and indeed to Western culture proper.

Of course it is true that philosophy quite rapidly became desultory, wandering across topics, questions and subjects. But there is a constant undercurrent of questions, or a characteristic attitude, which animates it.

Pierre Hadot:: 'The goal of the ancient philosophies was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos. This cultivation required, specifically, that students learn to combat their passions and the illusory evaluative beliefs instilled by their passions, habits, and upbringing. 1'

I find that a satisfactory definition. This definition is also quite agreeable from a Buddhist perspective.

What differentiates philosophy is its general nature. It is not concerned with techne or with politics as such, but first principles and ultimate ends.

The Objects of Philosophy
What is philosophy aiming for, by what criteria would we judge success or at least progress in philosophical endeavors? — Pfhorrest

The difficulty in this question is that modern culture and society has no ready equivalent for the kind of intellectual illumination which classical philosophy sought. Nowadays progress is nearly always judged in economic, technical or scientific terms - this is what has been criticized as the 'instrumentalisation of reason'. I suppose one attempt to answer the aim of philosophy in contemporary literature would be something like Eric Fromm's Man for Himself:

'In Man for Himself, Erich Fromm examines the confusion of modern women and men who, because they lack faith in any principle by which life ought to be guided, become the helpless prey of forces both within and without. From the broad, interdisciplinary perspective that marks Fromm's distinguished oeuvre, he shows that psychology cannot divorce itself from the problems of philosophy and ethics, and that human nature cannot be understood without understanding the values and moral conflicts that confront us all'.

Note that this is a psychology text, but I think there's an unbreakable connection between philosophy, psychology (in the broad sense understood by Fromm's) and cultural anthropology.

So the objects of philosophy need to be holistic, to provide an ethical compass, and to be rational in the sense of addressing all human needs, and not just those envisaged by materialist philosophy which invariably reduces mankind to a means rather than an end (i.e. a means by which the evolution executes its basically meaningless algorithm.)

The Method of Philosophy
How is philosophy to be done? — Pfhorrest

The first and practically only rule is: know thyself. Anyone can say it, very few advance in it, hardly anyone masters it.

One of the critiques of Platonic idealism that I haven't seen is what is sustaining these entities in some dimension? — Wallows

I don’t mind a small digression into Platonism vs nominalism vs mathematicism — Pfhorrest

Numbers (etc) are not existent or phenomenal but inhere in the intelligible realm ergo represent a different mode or level of reality than material particulars. See Augustine on Intelligible Objects for a start. Also this paragraph in SEP.

I’m glad reading Wittgenstein was emotionally helpful to you, even if I end up not agreeing with his philosophy much. (I take pretty much the same attitude toward religious texts, for what that’s worth). — Pfhorrest

I get that some people might find him as a philosophical fanatic; but, he really changed the whole field of philosophy with not one but two works. Have you ever entertained the idea of the linguistic turn in philosophy?

https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/linguistic-turn/v-1

Use lib-gen or sci-hub and insert the DOI for the fulltext.

Yes I’m quite familiar with (and generally aligned with) the linguistic turn generally, and I’m not outright rejecting everything about Wittgenstein (as I said I’m only passingly familiar with the specifics of his work), just with the supposed conclusion of quietism. I think philosophy is still something with something to say, something worth doing, even if what you’re doing is mostly clarifying language and concepts and making clear what fundamentally doesn’t make sense to try to do in other endeavors. Just like I hold the sciences to ultimately be about ruling out possibilities and narrowing in on what is still possible, so too philosophy is largely about ruling out the ways of thinking and talking about various things that don’t work, but those are still both worthwhile endeavors. One might as well prescribe quietism about the natural sciences and say to stop investigating things and just accepted the world as it is; that would be absurd of course, but quietism about philosophy is equally absurd.

Bonus question:
What is the meaning of life? — Pfhorrest

This begs the question. Before asking what the meaning of life is, it should first be asked whether there is a meaning to life.

For all of these questions, if I’m asking “what is...” whatever and you think there is no whatever, “nothing” is an acceptable answer. Otherwise I’d have to double the questions by first asking “is there any...” and then “what is...”.

One might as well prescribe quietism about the natural sciences and say to stop investigating things and just accepted the world as it is; that would be absurd of course, but quietism about philosophy is equally absurd. — Pfhorrest

But, Wittgenstein postulated, that the majority of philosophy is language on holiday. We tend to find the answers we seek in a pragmatic method nowadays, and as someone who would rather lean towards pragmatism on issues that science can address, then all the better. Then, what remains are rather psychological issues, which the existentialists tried fiercely to address, yet end up mired in their own misery or satisfaction (if any can be attained from existentialist thought).

Aighty. I suppose I'll pick out ones I can formulate an answer to then.

The Importance of Philosophy
Why do philosophy in the first place, what does it matter?

Because it is pleasurable.

Bonus question: How do we get people to care about education and knowledge and reality to begin with?

We do not get people to care. This is not how care works. People care about what they care about -- and to know what they care about all you need to do is listen to them.

The Importance of Knowledge
Why does is matter what is real or not, true or false, in the first place?

To the extent that one's desires are frustrated knowledge is important. Knowledge is a tool or a toy and nothing more.

The Institutes of Justice
What is the proper governmental system, or who should be making those prescriptive judgements and how should they relate to each other and others, socially speaking?

There is no such thing as a proper state or governmental system. Any one state is relatively good to the extent that they help people -- and not just citizens -- satisfy their needs. If they fail in doing that they are relatively bad. It is not easy to describe or sum up the relative worth of a society -- there are relative goods and bads within every society that we have to judge individually. Not all needs are congruent or comparable. And the ones who should make the judgments are the one's effected by said judgments.

Meaning what?

The first and practically only rule is: know thyself. Anyone can say it, very few advance in it, hardly anyone masters it. — Wayfarer

Classic passive-patronising. So how would you know this (the bolded bit)? If the thing I'm supposed to be knowing is 'myself' and the thing doing the knowing is also 'myself' then how exactly do you know whether I've made any progress in it?

My problem with Wittgenstein's account (at least as you tell it, corroborated by the bits of him I've seen elsewhere) is that even if the thesis of one's philosophy is "just do natural science", there is still philosophy to be done there: why do natural science and not anything else, what makes something natural science and not something else, how do you do natural science, etc. A third of my set of questions in the OP (the ones under the heading Philosophy of Knowledge and Reality) are basically those questions, and my answers to them amount to "just do natural science", but they're still questions someone can ask and that deserve an answer, and giving them that answer is doing philosophy.

Even if we get those final answers concretely settled, we'll still have to teach them to every new person who comes along who doesn't already know them perfectly, give answers to all of those questions and justify those answers. That was the point of my comparison to a hypothetical quietism about the natural sciences. Suppose we eventually come up with a perfect theory of absolutely everything, and there are no more scientific discoveries to be made. All you need to do from that point on is just run with that perfect theory, right? No more need to do natural science anymore. Except... for all of the people who don't know that perfect theory perfectly yet, or who doubt or question it. You've got to answer their questions, show them the evidence, go back over all of the natural science and prove to them that your perfect theory is perfect... or perhaps, if their questions are particularly insightful, discover that it isn't. The same is true of philosophy: even if the perfect philosophical theory of everything is "just do natural science", you still have to answer everyone's questions as to why and how to do that, and possibly adjust for flaws in the theory discovered along the way. And that is doing philosophy.

But also, "just do natural science" doesn't even attempt to answer the last third of my set of questions, because the natural sciences are not in the business of prescribing at all, and so give no answers to questions about what prescriptions mean, how to judge them, etc. At best, saying "just do natural science" to that is merely saying they're meaningless and can't be judged, etc... which is just avoiding the question.

It's obviously not an objective matter. When I enrolled in Philosophy 101, the anecdote of Socrates and the oracle of Delphi, from which this is drawn, was discussed in one of the first classes. Considering what else I was going through at the time, it really a struck a chord. And I think it's still greatly under-appreciated.

So if it's not objective, what prompted your conclusion that "very few advance in it"?

Read the thread title. It didn’t request a peer-reviewed paper, it asked ‘what is your philosophy?’

I consider myself lucky to have encountered people who understood and taught self-knowledge. There might be individual teachers who understand its importance in any school you go to, but then, there might not. The world today seems highly populated with un-self-aware individuals, even in high office. And it’s a hard kind of knowledge to come by.

it asked ‘what is your philosophy?’ — Wayfarer

Yes, and I'm just asking you, personally, what factors have lead you to believe that some people have not progressed in obtaining knowledge of themselves. If they are both the location and the subject of the knowledge, where do you get in?

Okay, I'll buy passage on Neurath's cruise and sing for my supper! - though only one song per course, trusting that the dessert table or wine rack alone will be worth the price of my first-class ticket. :yum:

1.0

Metaphilosophy

The Meaning of Philosophy
What defines philosophy and demarcates it from other fields? — Pfhorrest

1.1 Philosophy, as I understand it, consists in contemplating, critically exposing, and even shaming foolery (i.e. failing to learn from failure, due to 'answering' pseudo/irrelevant questions or 'solving' pseudo/irrelevant problems, because one doesn't know that one doesn't know what one needs to know in order to adaptively judge one's circumstances, which in the long(er) term tends to adversely affect either oneself or others).

1.11 Nonphilosophical fields (e.g. sciences, arts, politics), on the other hand, tend to be invested in applying domain-specific answers and solutions and not in reflecting on how or why questions and problems are framed (i.e. paradigmatic assumptions for posing questions and pragmatic implications from working out problems) and whether or not they are relevant questions to be asked or fecund problems to be tasked. Domain-specific fields tend to be specialized, or instrumental, to the point of being blind to foolery (which also includes normative misuses, or maladaptive practice, of domain-specific knowledge & techniques).

1.12 Philosophy critiques ignorance - illusions of knowledge - which persist due to (indoctrinated? ideological? expedient?) ignorance of ignorance, or what I mean by "foolery" "folly" "unwisdom" ...

1.13 Nonphilosophies, however, produce knowledge, techniques & applied practices in ways, more often than not, oblivious to the foolery with which these productions are (usually) framed.

The Objects of Philosophy
What is philosophy aiming for, by what criteria would we judge success or at least progress in philosophical endeavors? — Pfhorrest

1.2 Philosophy's horizon, at which it's always been aimed, is wisdom - habits of 'thinking well' (free mind) and 'living well' (free body) acquired through reflective inquiries & reflective practices. (By reflective I mean 'self-examining'.)

1.21 The criterion is internal to thinking & living since philosophizing - the exercise itself - is its product, unlike e.g. chemistry which produces new & improved formulas or industrial materials; or painting which produces new expressive styles & artworks; or politics which produces new movements & social arrangements. To the degree, at any moment, a philosophical discursive practice has filtered-out pseudo-questions & pseudo-problems as well as marginalized the irrelevant/trivial, this counts as "progress" of an evanescent kind, achieving topic-specific clarity.

The Method of Philosophy
How is philosophy to be done? — Pfhorrest

1.3 In Marx's or Dewey's sense of praxis:

1.31 (a) Reflective inquiry into concepts used in, or to construct, e.g. scientific, technical, artistic & political theories.

1.311 Taxonomy of questions: definitions for filtering out irrelevant, trivial & pseudo-questions.

1.32 (z) Reflective practice of applying e.g. sciences, technologies, arts & politics in ways useful to persons & communities for surviving and flourishing despite social conflicts, martial catastrophes or natural disasters.

1.321 Taxonomy of problems: (See 2.51, 2.511, 2.512, 2.513, 2.52)

The Subjects of Philosophy
What are the faculties that enable someone to do philosophy, to be a philosopher? — Pfhorrest

1.4 Courage. Sapere aude. Amor fati. Solitaire et solidaire. No doubt intellectual courage is needed, but only moral courage suffices for philosophizing with 'skin in the game' (i.e. fat's in the fire), or like Freddy says "with a hammer", and not just to sound out "hollow idols" but to build anew in (or bricole with) the rubble our hammering makes of (the last) old prisons. Otherwise, without courage, philosophers amount to little more than idly vacuous, tenured twats - either p0m0 scholastics of "wokeness" or think-tank rationalizers of the status quo ante.

The Institutes of Philosophy
Who is to do philosophy and how should they relate to each other and others, socially speaking? — Pfhorrest

1.5 Dead philosophers (via primary sources whenever possible and/or excellent translations): they alone "do philosophy". We living fools merely need to relate to - philosophize with - each other like children at play in the world's minefields precociously engaged in the most tragicomic of dialectics.

The Importance of Philosophy
Why do philosophy in the first place, what does it matter? — Pfhorrest

1.6 The same reason an alcoholic or drug addict goes to rehab and learns how to soberly live a 'life of recovery', I philosophize in order to rehab my own foolery and live as lucidly as a recovering fool can live, as they say, one day at a time

Next: 2.0

Philosophy of Knowledge and Reality

My problem with Wittgenstein's account (at least as you tell it, corroborated by the bits of him I've seen elsewhere) is that even if the thesis of one's philosophy is "just do natural science", there is still philosophy to be done there: why do natural science and not anything else, what makes something natural science and not something else, how do you do natural science, etc. — Pfhorrest

Then you haven't read much from the pragmatists', have you?

Thank you for that excellent reply! I mostly agree with your answers so far, and I look forward to the rest of them. :-)

I have, and from what I've seen they give generally excellent answers to those questions, doing philosophy well in the process. I don't see your point.

So, I'll readdress the following:

But also, "just do natural science" doesn't even attempt to answer the last third of my set of questions, because the natural sciences are not in the business of prescribing at all, and so give no answers to questions about what prescriptions mean, how to judge them, etc. At best, saying "just do natural science" to that is merely saying they're meaningless and can't be judged, etc... which is just avoiding the question. — Pfhorrest

Prescriptions of what exactly? This strikes me as the same effort made by Frege and Russell in the Principia Mathematica, as to prove in some foundationalist sense the meaning of some proposition, when in fact the meaning cannot be determined by the very method or attempt at the proof.

Prescriptions of what exactly? — Wallows

Any kind. Whenever someone says "this should be this way", including "you should do this", what exactly are they saying (I would paraphrase that question as "what is the function of that speech-act?" but you don't necessarily have to rely on speech-act theory for your answer), and how are you to decide whether or not to agree with that, whatever agreeing with that ends up meaning? (And who is to do the deciding? And why? Etc.) The answer doesn't necessarily have to be foundationalist in any sense, and there doesn't have to be one single answer -- you can say that there are different kinds of prescriptions that mean different things and are to be judged in different ways -- but the natural sciences generally are not in the business of making or evaluating "should" (or "ought") statements, just "is" statements, so "just do natural sciences" ignores that question entirely. Unless you want to try to equate "ought" statements to some subset of "is" statements and then say we can do natural science to that, but then you need to philosophically justify that position still, so you're still doing philosophy, and you still might be wrong. (I think you would be, but I'm not here to preach my philosophy).

FYI I've compiled a couple of the clarifications I've made throughout this thread into the OP.

I forgot to say thank you for your beginning of a set of answers, and I think I generally agree with much of what you have to say so far too, though I expect our agreement will diverge greatly as they go on. I expect to disagree with @180 Proof in due time too though, and it's all good.

Unless you want to try to equate "ought" statements to some subset of "is" statements and then say we can do natural science to that, but then you need to philosophically justify that position still, so you're still doing philosophy, and you still might be wrong. (I think you would be, but I'm not here to preach my philosophy). — Pfhorrest

Yes, give us your reasoning for deriving an is from an ought here if you would.

Regards.

I don’t derive “is” from “ought”, or vice versa. I was suggesting that maybe you (or Wittgenstein, or someone answering these questions) might want to do vice versa, and saying you’d need to try to justify that, and I personally think you’d fail, but in any case that would still be doing philosophy to try to justify it (and to counter-argue against that, etc).

Meaning what? — A Seagull

I suppose meaning that if you know what meaning is you can recognize its abundance. Unfortunately, it's uncommon to examine what meaning is or how a desire for it might best be approached.

For most of my life I found the question of "what is the meaning of life?" paradoxically meaningless, in that I couldn't for the life of my figure out what exactly it was that people asking that wanted in an answer.

I eventually decided to translate "meaning" to "purpose" and "purpose" to "what something is good for", so asking "what is the meaning of life" is just asking what is good, so just an account of morality answers that already. People didn't seem satisfied with that (although most of those people also rejected that there could possibly be any account of morality, too).

More recently I've decided that the question such people are really asking actually is meaningless. It's a phantom question. People have non-rational feelings of meaningfulness or meaninglessness, and people asking "what is the meaning of life?" are just looking for someone to say something to assuage the uncomfortable feeling of meaninglessness. There isn't any actual philosophical answer to that "question" because it's not a question at all, it's just a feeling, and the correct response to it is to somehow assuage that feeling, and cultivate the opposite feeling instead. I'm not completely set on how to do that, but I've got some ideas.

I am not too sure what you mean by 'meaning', but for me the 'meaning' of an idea comes through being able to incorporate that idea into one's model of the world.

Philosophy of Knowledge and Reality

The Meaning of Reality
What do descriptive claims, that attempt to say what is real, even mean? — Pfhorrest

The human condition is in some sense a predicament, in that, unlike creatures, humans are blessed/cursed with self-awareness (which is itself the condition for the possibility of folly. Animals generally are incapable of foolishness although the higher animals might display behaviours plausibly like it. But being able to be deceived is part and parcel of being an intelligent, self-aware being. ) Some ancient said, and I can't remember the exact quote, that were man not gifted with the possibility of transcendence, then he would be the most miserable of creatures. And this is because s/he is gifted with the knowledge of the transience of existence, that time devours all, that all we hold near and dear will fade and die.

I think the sense of this predicament is part of the emergence of human kind, a fundamental aspect of the human condition. It animates the quest for something which is not thus doomed to transience, death and decay - the quest for immortality or as Ernest Becker put it 'the denial of death'. That can be understood in a secular sense as the idea that after our death, we live on in our works and our progeny. But it can also be understood in the religious sense of identification with or as 'spirit' that transcends the vicissitudes of mortal existence. This is especially evident in Indian philosophy (e.g. Advaita Vedanta) where the individual is understood to be an incarnation or instantiation of the supreme being (which sounds heretical from a christian p.o.v.)

Going back to the Greek tradition, and Platonism in particular, key to these disciplines was the 'philosophical ascent' accomplished by metanoia, the 'transformation of perception'. This was subsequently incorporated into (some would say purloined by) Christian theologians, so for us moderns, it is all nowadays unacceptably near to religion, which is a great pity. The original ideal was always the quest for the imperishable behind the shifting sands of temporal existence but at the same time it was relentlessly rational (bearing in mind that traditional philosophical rationalism started with Parmenides and is far nearer to mysticism than modern empiricism.)

So in those forms of philosophy, the point was to dis-identify with the physical or material, and to realise an identity through spiritual or intellectual illumination (noesis, in Platonist tradition). And indeed it wasn't until the aspirant had achieved that state of being, that what was real was even known; up until then s/he had been living, according to Vedanta, in the illusory domain of māyā. (I interpret that to mean that they misconstrue the meaning of things, not that the natural world is itself an illusion.)

So in such 'unitive' philosophies, discerning reality is a matter of 'seeing with new eyes' - not, as it is now, something which could be solely described in terms of mathematical hypotheses. In those schools, philosophy is always a kind of catharsis, a purification of the mind from the underlying ignorance embodied in the natural condition of 'self and other'; indeed a kind of spiritual awakening or meta-cognitive transformation.

The turning point in the advent of modern thought was the abandonment of any philosophy of 'union' (theosis, mokṣa) because of the focus of Enlightenment rationalism on what is objectively the case and the tools and techniques which could be applied to the objective domain. And that in turn was partially as a reaction against the way that the mainstream Christian churches had appropriated the transcendental elements of pagan philosophy and made their acceptance conditional upon reciting the Nicene creed. This was also associated with the suppression of gnostic elements in the early tradition. (Incidentally there's also a very interesting stream of counter-cultural or underground scientific philosophy, such as Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and so on, which is generally not acknowledged by either science or mainstream religion.)

This understanding is in accordance with my understanding of philosophy as a spiritual or noetic discipline, rather than a utilitarian or instrumental skill.

Bonus question:
What do mathematical claims, about numbers and geometric shapes and such, mean, and how do they relate to descriptive claims about reality? — Pfhorrest

My view is that number, logical laws and the like, are the constituents of the rational intellect, but that they are prior to, and transcend, the division of the nature of experience into the subjective and objective domain. So it's a gross error to believe that numbers are 'in the mind'. But they're also not 'in nature'. So 'where' are they? My inclination is to say that they inhere in the 'formal realm' which is the domain of laws, numbers, and principles which are ‘discerned by reason’. So they don't exist in the sense that particulars exist, however they are real. And this is what doesn't fit with most current naturalism, within which 'existence' has a univocal meaning. I suppose you could say that naturalism wants to insist that the domain of phenomena contains its own rationale, whereas traditional philosophy located the 'reason' (logos) for being on a level other than the sensory. But the mathematical-mystical tradition originating with Pythagoras (and perhaps originally from Egypt) was, as Russell notes, one of the factors that differentiated Western philosophical and scientific culture from the Orient - a factor which is barely appreciated, now that all such abilities are deprecated as mere adaptation.

Thanks for continuing your responses! I'm seeing an interesting kind of yin and yang between you and @180 Proof so far.

I notice that you skipped a few questions, the latter half of the Metaphilosophy section: Subjects, Institutes, and Importance of Philosophy. Were you planning on revisiting those later, or just don't feel like you have anything to say on them that wasn't covered already?

Also, I don't really see how this post answers what the meaning of descriptive claims is, so maybe you can elaborate on the connection between your answer and that question?

2.0

Philosophy of Knowledge and Reality

The Meaning of Reality
What do descriptive claims, that attempt to say what is real, even mean? — Pfhorrest

2.1 They stipulate, or assign, objects (their) predicates which lose warrant when they are inconsistent (e.g. mind without brain) or incoherent (e.g. colors hair bald).

Bonus question:
What do mathematical claims, about numbers and geometric shapes and such, mean, and how do they relate to descriptive claims about reaity? — Pfhorrest

2.2 They track, or infer, patterns in logical space, which can, in some instances, be used as formal scaffolding for the constructing maps (of territory) or models (of e.g. physical transformations).

The Objects of Reality
What are the criteria by which to judge descriptive claims, ... — Pfhorrest

2.3 LNC ...

... or what is it that makes something real? — Pfhorrest

2.4 (a) Ineluctability. (b) Inexhaustable with respect to mapping or modeling. (c) Subject-perspective-agency, or language, or gauge invariant. (d) A necessary non-necessary state of affairs.

The Methods of Knowledge
How are we to apply those criteria and decide on what to believe, what descriptive claims to agree with? — Pfhorrest

2.5 Evidence is - public, or pov-invariant - the truth-maker (territories, facts of the matter) of truth-claims (maps, models). Truth-claims consisting of inconsistencies, incoherence, invalid (or unsound) inferences and/or contradictions negate, or exclude, positive truth-values. And insufficient, or uncorroborating, evidence functions as grounds for doubt (i.e. positing variables with indeterminate, or undecidable, values).

2.51 Anything (i.e. woo, gossip, fiction) can be 'believed'; however, only true beliefs (or not-yet-falsified conjectures) are known:

2.511 • know-How (methods, practices) ...;

2.512 • know-That (determinate state of affairs, facts of the matter) ...; 

2.513 • know-What (explanatory theories) ...

2.52 Expectations based on knowledge, not mere belief or hope or prejudice, more often than not align - converge - with the real (see 2.4, also re: actuality), and thereby 'avoid, minimize or relieve' frustration (à la Buddhist dukkha, Epicurean/Stoic pathê, Spinozist bondage - also: see 3.1, 3.11).

The Subjects of Reality
What is the nature of the mind, inasmuch as that means the capacity for believing and making such judgements about what to believe? — Pfhorrest

2.6 (where "nonmind" = brain+body+biosphere):

(a) Nonmind is mind-invariant.

(b) Mind is nonmind-dependent.

2.61 Mind is constituted by mind-mediated (i.e. self-reflexive) interactions with nonmind except for the blindspot, or gap, wherein 'mind's nonmind-dependency' happens (re: brain-behind-mind is blind to itself); therefore, filling this gap*, mind confabulates a self-serving/flattering mirror-image inversion of "nonmind's mind-dependency" (i.e. mind as if it is nonmind-independent/invariant (contrary to evidence of altered brain-states (e.g. drunk/stoned/tripping, addiction, love-attached/fixated, PTSD, efficacy of psychiatric medications, personality changes due to aging/injury-related neuropathology, etc))), thus projecting "(my) soul" ... "spirits" ... "g/G".

2.62 (c) Nonmind enables-constrains Agency, which is an agent's (i.e. mind's) "capacity" to judge and adapt to opportunities, adversities or hazards with which, through the mind-nonmind blindspot/gap*, nonmind constitutes (the oblivious) mind as mind correlationally • perspectivally • self-servingly interacts with nonmind (pace Kant).

The Institutes of Knowledge
What is the proper educational system, or who should be making those descriptive judgements and how should they relate to each other and others, socially speaking? — Pfhorrest

2.7 (See 3.7 re: stakeholder - counter-shareholder - education ... business, government, etc)

"Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger." ~Freddy Zarathustra

(variation - "I believe whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you ... stranger." ~Joker, "The Dark Knight" :joke: )

Probably doesn't answer the question because I don't grok what you're asking. Maybe reformulate? :chin:

Bonus question: How do we get people to care about education and knowledge and reality to begin with? — Pfhorrest

2.8 (Same as previous my answer.)

The Importance of Knowledge
Why does is matter what is real or not, true or false, in the first place? — Pfhorrest

2.9 It matters because we depend on the latter to make sense of ourselves, each other and our prospects, and ignoring the former, at least where I come from, usually is a shortcut to an early grave.

:death: :flower:

Next: 3.0

Philosophy of Justice and Morality — Pfhorrest