Sufficient to warrant Michael's belief. — InPitzotl

As above, this just kicks the can, doesn't answer the question of what 'sufficient' means here.

what is a community belief in the first place, if not the aggregation of individual beliefs? — InPitzotl

I don't know what a community belief could be if not the aggregation of individual beliefs.

Again, we're talking about an actual word here that people use in real language games. — Isaac

Regarding that, did not murder his wife. — InPitzotl

If I recall he was exonerated. The community carried out one of their conceivable tests (assuming you're talking about Sam Sheppard in reality - otherwise, your point is not at all clear)

The below is the claim of yours that I have been arguing against:

Hence, the 'truth' part of JTB is not distinct from the justification part. — Isaac


It is. There is a difference between "S's belief that p is sufficiently reasonable given the actual evidence that S considered when forming his belief that p" and "A community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe that p were they to comprehensively test the hypothesis that p". — Michael

Yes, well, you have me there. As I said - look hard enough and you'll find that mistake you're searching for. I've been arguing that they are of no different kind (and as such not subject to Gettier's complaint). That particular expression there appears to say that they are no different at all, which is clearly wrong. What now? Do I fall on my sword?

Even if you want to argue that they are both types of justification, it is still the case that they are different things (of the same type), and that the JTB definition requires both of them. — Michael

No, this doesn't work. The difference is one of degree. There's no 'both of them' it makes no sense. There are only justifications of better or worse degree. Knowledge requires a justification held by the subject, and a justification meeting a very high threshold held by the language community. Since the subject is also a part of the language community, these are very often one and the same. Justifications are multifarious and scalar. JTB has them (even assuming a pragmatic definition of 'truth') as of two kinds and binomial.

Im not saying that one's reasoning must be sufficient to prove one's belief, only that one's reasoning must be sufficient for it to be rational to form one's belief. — Michael

This just kicks the can. What is it to be sufficient to rationally form a belief? If you know that I can lie and fake my ID then on what grounds is it sufficient to form a rational belief about my identity from only my spoken word and an unexamined ID? It's clearly flawed.

One way to understand this distinction is to adopt the process reliabilist's position that a justified belief is one that is formed by a cognitive process which tends to produce a high proportion of true beliefs relative to false ones, and an unjustified belief is one that is formed by a cognitive process which doesn't produce a high proportion of true beliefs relative to false ones. — Michael

In what way do we have access to the cognitive process used? EEG, fMRI? I can assure you neither will be of any use. I've used both and neither indicate anything more than a strong indication that our cognition is actually a post hoc process made after the models describing the belief have already sent their various signals to the cortices determining action. I'm not sure where you'd look to find this 'process'.

how can you know that they are often almost exactly the same thing? Given that there isn't a community of epistemic peers that has access to every conceivable technology and has comprehensively tested some hypothesis there are no results to compare with what the language community actually believes. — Michael

But there is (or at least, that's my claim). For most ordinary language claims, the matter being discussed is ordinary (something we establish by touch, sight, smell - everyday stuff). For this category there is indeed an epistemic community who have exhausted all relevant tests. A tree's a tree because everyone agrees it's a tree. If it feels like a tree, looks like a tree, behaves like a tree...it's a tree. Because the language community have defined 'tree' as something which feels, looks and behaves like that. There's no God-written encyclopedia we can look stuff up in to find out what it really, really is.

We just use the word "true" when we believe something — Michael

We=a community of epistemic peers that has access to every conceivable technology would believe were they to comprehensively test the hypothesis - in most cases of ordinary language object recognition - cases such as 'it's raining'.

In advanced science, this is less the case, the community of peers is smaller, you're less likely to be in ti, and the tests are sufficiently advanced that there may well be conceivable, relevant ones which have not been carried out. Historical events are another example. Note in these two cases how rarely we use the word knowledge, in place using the term hypothesis, theory or opinion.

would you like to admit that your interpretation of meaning is an oversimplification? — Michael

I've never denied that, having consistently argued that meaning is contextual, including the meaning of 'true'. Your persistence in trying to pin me down to only one meaning notwithstanding.

It's become an odd thread. We seem to have general agreement that hell is an unjust notion, and hence a disavowal of those who would claim otherwise, including censure of those who would praise such an unjust god. At this point we pretty much have unstated agreement on the merit of the Lewis article.

But it has been combined with a claim from avowed non-christians that those who would claim otherwise do not exist in great numbers nor do they understand the bible; this last based on some notion of there being a correct, non-literal interpretation. — Banno

Yep. Napolean Phenomena. You start a thread on religion, a lot of people will think "I know some talking points about religion". Religion-bashing has become passé since the new atheists lost their novelty factor, the new vogue is to defend it. I'm afraid the actual content of the the OP stood only a little chance in such a polarised environment, but there's been some genuinely interesting discussion (for me, anyway) through the haze of apologetics, so still an OP worth writing I think, thanks.

But let's not pretend they are examples of condoned conduct. — Hanover

I'm not. I've talked exclusively about narratives, not law, not history... stories.

If you read a single page of a legal document without putting it into the context of other controlling documents and opinions and rules, then you're out of the conversation in terms of what the import of the single document is. — Hanover

Maybe, but that's because there's a fact of the matter about how legal documents are interpreted. The reason I'd have no luck is because Judges are obliged to take the legal context into account. No-one is obliged to take the theological context into account, you just decide to, and then insist I must also.

Or perhaps he doesn't see it as "molestation" at all. Maybe he read a lot about ancient Greek culture where paedophilia is regarded as a good and normal thing. Maybe he doesn't think children are automatically innocent. Maybe he himself was a victim of priestly sexual abuse as a child and is now repeating the pattern. Maybe he lost his faith and is since then in a volatile psychological state, more likely to engage in problematic or even criminal behaviors. — baker

Yep, all good possibilities too.

When you look at this in the context of Christian culture as a whole, priestly child abuse is, sadly, not some egregious special case. People can be quite rough on eachother, and Christians are no exception. Physical violence, domestic abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, ... — baker

Sadly true. One of the issues I'm trying to raise here is that there's a lot in the bible (and in Christian tradition - obedience to authority, exceptional respect for religious leaders, cruel and severe punishments...) which provide a perfect environment for abuse.

Sure, but the point is that there is a whole culture of people refusing to play by the rules. We cannot just ignore them, nor their success. — baker

OK, what is it you suggest?

Then you don't have much of a case for fairness. — baker

I don't see how. Are you saying that I can only make a case the we ought have something if it's actually indispensable. That seems like an unreasonably high threshold.

The right to freedom of speech doesn't include the right to be heard. — baker

No. Nor should it, in all cases. But again, here I'm discussing what ought to be, not what is. I think it's reasonable for people to venture an opinion on the contents of the bible as any other book, without needing to become part of some peculiar game of make-believe.

he shows the people how to defy the cruel overlord — Isaac


Well no -- the villain here is the Pharisees. — Srap Tasmaner

The Pharisees who made up the cruel laws? Or the Pharisees who misinterpreted the law so poorly written and ambiguous that it only got properly understood 1500yrs later. I can't say this new story about overcoming incompetence is better than the one about overcoming cruelty.

If the inflation persists and the economy tanks (stagflation), it might result in an out of control monster. — ssu

We'll see.

We cannot just think of the pandemic as a health or medical issue and then assume that other things, like the economy or economic policy, are totally separate from it. — ssu

Yes, I completely agree, though I suspect you and I have very different ideas about how that economy functions.

I'm sorry, I mean... I suspect I have some misinformation about how that economy functions...

...I'm still getting used to the newspeak.

I don't think it's inappropriate to caution other posters about hyperbole and misinformation, especially wrt a public health issue — frank

No, neither do I.

Good to see you joining lustily in with the new tradition of calling disagreement 'misinformation'. You do have to move with the times.

And the JTB definition is saying something like "you need a whiskey cup and a teacup" and your responses are saying something like "this is redundant, it's actually just saying 'you need a good enough cup'". — Michael

Yes, that's right (with my little addition). Knowledge doesn't require a whiskey cup and a teacup, it just requires a good enough cup.

If you tell me that your name is Isaac and show me what looks to me to be a valid driving license that says that your name is Isaac then my belief that your name is Isaac is sufficiently reasonable given the evidence I have. But unknown to me you lied to me and showed me a fake ID. — Michael

Well then the fact that I can lie and show you a fake ID makes your having taken my word and examined my ID insufficient. Otherwise what could 'sufficient' possibly mean? Sufficient for what? It's obviously not sufficient for the job at hand (establishing the truth), so what is it you're claiming it's sufficient at?

In fact, you now agree with me on this point. Instead you interpret 3 as "a community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe that it is raining were they to comprehensively test the hypothesis that it is raining." This is of course very different to what I or the language community believe in practice. — Michael

But it's not very different at all. "What the language community believes" and "what a community of epistemic peers come to believe after having exhausted their stock of conceivable tests", are very often almost exactly the same thing.

The 'community of language users' is more often than not a community of epistemic peers (in all but the advanced sciences), and in a large number of matters it doesn't take long to exhaust all conceivable tests (within the context of the sort of knowledge claim we're interested in).

Again, we're talking about an actual word here that people use in real language games. So "this table is solid" - well, it's apparently not, if you test it with techniques of advanced scientific understanding, but that's not the meaning of the claim. The meaning is something entirely more mundane than the 'true' solidity of the table. The claim is about solidity in the ordinary sense. It really doesn't require much exhaustive testing to establish this 'ordinary sense' of solidity, so the beliefs of the language community and the beliefs of a community of epistemic peers who've exhausted all conceivable tests are more often than not one and the same, for certain types of common claim.

Point me to it. — Ennui Elucidator

I did. It's the quote I pointed to. Just under the words 'the quote...'

In what way have I dismissed it? — Ennui Elucidator

It's in the quote.

If you aren’t willing to engage with the material on that level (be it as “because this is the unerring word of god as related to *** and then written down, copied, and translated from then till now under the guidance of god” or “because that was a cultural creation story of the region of the people who told the story and the editors/codifiers of the book had to include to maintain legitimacy” or any other such attempt to understand the material), you aren’t having a conversation with the people that find meaning in it. — Ennui Elucidator

If I don't engage with the text in the way they want, I'm out of the conversation.

And again...

If you wish to address yourself to those communities, you need to do so in a way that suggests you understand what they are saying. — Ennui Elucidator

If you can think of a third way to get to Banno's offered conclusion (that is exclusion from a conversation not based either upon 1) individual judgment or 2) group judgment based upon communal threat) using Lewis's article, go ahead an offer it up. — Ennui Elucidator

That, to my mind, is what I've done, so there doesn't seem much point in doing so again.

If you show both, you show not just an answer (Rubric 15 in The Little Book of How to be Perfect — memorize by Wednesday), but how solution and problem fit — which is, what having a solution looks like, and what solving a problem looks like. — Srap Tasmaner

Which is problem and which solution? If the antagonists presents a problem and the hero solves it, we have ourselves a classic myth showing how to solve problems. If the protagonist (A) does X and another protagonist (B) shows a way to get around X, which is the problem and which the solution? Is A the good guy and the conniving B keeps dodging the law, or is B the hero showing how to do the right thing despite the difficulties A seems to have arbitrarily created?

I like the idea of Jesus the hero showing people how to be good (without strictly breaking the law) even when the law is barbaric, but...

There's nothing in the book to say it's this way round, and not, say, a very highly contextualised and historically specific Jesus showing how - in that unique historical circumstance - one could get around God's law, which in most other cases should be interpreted literally.

I think you've got a great story there. Cruel laws laid down by a vengeful, but all-powerful being, a populous in terror, horrified by their own barbarism, but powerless to defy the lawmaker - along comes a carpenter, with nothing but patience, compassion and his wits he shows the people how to defy the cruel overlord without actually bringing on another famine/thunderbolt/hailstorm. In a classic scene he's defies the Lord's will that a girl be stoned by turning one of his own constitutional edicts against him! In the final death scene, in a brilliant twist, it turns out he's the cruel overlord's son! Cut to credits

A fantastic plot which you should definitely sell the rights to to some major Hollywood studio...but it's not the bible.

You have reduced the Bible to a single passage you do realize, as if the entire book goes on and on about stoning girls. — Hanover

Only for shorthand. There's lots of atrocities in the bible.

http://www.realbiblestories.com/10-biblical-atrocities-that-go-overlooked-part-two-2/

https://thechurchoftruth.org/god-committed-unspeakable-heinous-crimes-against-humanity/

https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html

I'm trying not to make this about "isn't the bible terrible", but you force my hand by trying to make out that I'm cherry-picking a single incident. You know there are atrocities in the bible, we all know that, so let's not pretend my shorthand example is a lone aberration.

In any event, we don't have a single instance of a stoning you can cite to in the past 2,000 years in those nations that have adopted the Bible as a guiding document (although I'm sure there were some somewhere). — Hanover

Again, this is going to go smoother if we don't first have to get over the stage where we pretend that my specific issues can't be generalised. We know that there are a number of atrocities and other less horrific, but still dodgy, aspects in the bible. We also all know that numerous horrific atrocities have been carried out in the name of Christianity, from witch trials and crusades to child abuse and Calvinism.

I have many times on this thread and others. It’s all over the papers and polling. Republicans, Trump voting districts, evangelical Christians, etc — all much more likely to refuse the vaccine. — Xtrix

A majority of Republicans believe these things, yes. — Xtrix

Yet...

Why do you think doctors are recommending the vaccines so much? We're in a pandemic and we have safe and effective vaccines, and so those who are eligible should take them. Fairly simple — Xtrix

So here's a conundrum for you.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-relationships/physicians-in-these-14-specialties-more-likely-to-vote-republican.html

Doctors in Family Medicine are more likely than not to vote Republican. even if you take the data direct from Campaign contribution data from the FEC, it's about 50/50 across Physicians in general.

So most Republicans are mislead by the media - we know they're being mislead because they deny the truth. The truth that has been told to us by our physicians...most of whom are Republicans, the ones who are mislead...

Err?

I just remembered, Gödels' incompleteness theorem. Didn't he combine language and math to prove that math was finite or something like that? — john27

Outside my wheelhouse I'm afraid. I believe there was some overlap, but it'd be the blind leading the blind if we tried to see how it might impact belief independent truths. Might make an interesting thread though.

You're changing your position again. You were saying that the truth is what a community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe were they to comprehensively test some hypothesis (and which can be inaccessible, hence why we can be wrong). That's not the same thing as what I believe (given whatever limited evidence I have available to me). — Michael

Different thing ≠ Different kind of thing. My Whiskey cup and my Teacup are different things, but the same kind of thing.

When the JTB definition says that a belief must be justified it is saying that the individual's belief must be sufficiently reasonable given the actual evidence they considered when forming their belief. — Michael

Yes. The trouble is that the word 'sufficiently' there has no measure other than proximity to 'truth' which it's already used. To say X's justification is 'sufficient' but X's belief is false is a contradiction. His justification was clearly not sufficient because the resulting belief was false and the sole purpose of justifications is to get closer to truth. If a justification so utterly fails to do that as lead to a belief which is actually false, then it, by definition, was not a sufficient justification.

S knows that p iff:

1. S believes that p,
2. S's belief that p is sufficiently reasonable given the actual evidence that S considered when forming his belief that p, and
3. A community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe that p were they to comprehensively test the hypothesis that p — Michael

Yes (barring my concerns above about the use of 'sufficiently reasonable' in cases where p turns out to be false). Pretty much how I opened when I talked about the role of the beliefs of the community in establishing the truth of "John is a bachelor". But you insisted that...

Nothing about the JTB definition of knowledge has anything to do with what I or the language community believes. — Michael

...hence I'm struggling to understand how this new definition fits in with your approach. In this new definition it has everything to do with what I believe and what the beliefs of the language community - those are literally the only measures you're using.

I have many times on this thread and others. It’s all over the papers and polling. Republicans, Trump voting districts, evangelical Christians, etc — all much more likely to refuse the vaccine. — Xtrix

That doesn't constitute an argument that the numbers are 'significant'. For that you need a negative effect and evidence of causation. You've given neither. Negative effects are abound these days, unfortunately, so we'll take that as given - your evidence that these 'irrationals' are causing any?

A majority of Republicans believe these things, yes. Both statements say the same thing. — Xtrix

They very clearly don't.

According to Gallup, 40% of Republicans “don’t plan” to get vaccinated, versus 26% of Independents and just 3% of Democrats.


Brookings

So a large minority of Republicans are unvaccinated — Xtrix

Assuming those figures are mutually exclusive and exhaustive (everyone is one of those three options), you have 69% of people not planning to get vaccinated. That's obviously untrue since over 70% of people have been vaccinated.

Your figures don't add up. You've only around 25% of the entire population to play with, even if all of them were Republican 'irrationals'.

You've repeatedly been corrected about this. — Xtrix

We've been through this. You giving an opinion to the contrary is not 'correcting' someone, it's disagreeing with someone. I'll draw a diagram.

Your opinion about what is the case ||| What is actually the case

Do you see how they're two different things?

No, they are not the same corporations. Believe it or not, but media conglomerates and large pharmaceutical companies have different interests, despite both being part of corporate America. — Xtrix

Your evidence?

I'm talking about the last 30 years of undermining the institutions of academia, science, medicine. That has mostly come from conservative media, accelerated in our time by social media. — Xtrix

I disagree. I think it's come from those institutions themselves being demonstrably untrustworthy.

If you don't think 70 million people is significant, you're not paying attention. — Xtrix

None of the population is significant. Government policy is dictated by corporate lobbying. the views of the population have a vanishingly insignificant effect.

In order for herd immunity to be achieved, the numbers should be in the 80s at least. — Xtrix

Your evidence?

given that you already accept that vaccines are safe and effective, I don't understand what you're driving at. — Xtrix

A point I've made before. The vaccines they tested and the vaccine they're about to put in your arm are not the same (obviously). In order for their tests to be meaningful in terms of global effect, we have to trust that they take no future shortcuts, or malpractice. Seeing as whistle-blowers have already shown that they do exactly that, and that pharmaceuticals are now taking steps to legally curtail whistle-blowing, I think we've cause for concern.

See above. The more people vaccinated, the better. Less people get sick, less people spread the disease, the symptoms are milder, less hospitalizations, etc. Good for everyone. — Xtrix

Again, you've provided no evidence of this. Qualified experts in the field disagree on that.

Why do you think doctors are recommending the vaccines so much? We're in a pandemic and we have safe and effective vaccines, and so those who are eligible should take them. Fairly simple — Xtrix

Well...

Media influences many people. — Xtrix

and

https://scri.siena.edu/2018/04/22/most-responsible-for-opioid-abuse-mds-over-prescribing/

Or do you think doctors are magically immune from media influence, zeitgeist, personal bias? What a obscenely bourgeois way of thinking. The clever professional above all the media circus, pities the poor stupid proletariat who can't tell the difference. Will we have have to step in and save them from themselves, the poor things? Us enlightened, unbiased academics with the wisdom of Solomon, coming to the rescue of the the poor dumb plebs. How noble.

I don't think this is the appropriate place for this discussion (which is purely about economics). I've given a very brief case, as have you both.

The point I was making - with regards to the topic - does not depend on whether the poor get poorer or not. The point I was making was that it's ridiculous to suggest that this crisis is a 'monster out of control' when it's yielded exactly what those in charge wanted - more power and more money.

Does that sound like an out of control monster?

I’m saying that a belief being true isn’t sufficient for it to count as knowledge. A lucky guess isn’t knowledge. A true belief brought about by a Tarot card reading isn’t knowledge. Knowledge requires that one’s actual reason for holding the belief is sufficiently good (whether you want to understand “sufficiently good” as a scale or not). — Michael

Yes, I agree with that, even with my 'epistemic peer' definition of truth. If a person isn't aware of that justification (despite the fact that it exists) but rather uses another, flawed, one, then they can't be said to have knowledge. This doesn't change the fact that both are forms of justification.

especially given that we almost never have access to the beliefs of a community of epistemic peers that has comprehensively tested the hypothesis — Michael

No you're using the same 'access' argument you dismissed earlier. We don't have access to your version of truth either. You didn't see that as barrier to using it then. Why now has it become a problem?

the fact remains that I only know that your name is Isaac if I believe that your name is Isaac, if my belief is sufficiently reasonable given the actual evidence I consider when forming my belief, and if your name actually is Isaac. — Michael

I don't dispute that. I'm disputing that 'actually is...' is any different kind of thing to 'I believe'. There's no sense to 'actually is...' that's not about beliefs (in this case the beliefs of a community of epistemic peers after exhaustive testing). It's not a different kind of thing, just a stronger version of it.

Naturally then you'll equate 'false' with not or very poorly or weakly justified. — Srap Tasmaner

Not quite. It takes something else to be false - a contradiction, a surprising result which can't be accommodated. I don't actually think false is always the opposite of true (but that's not going to be popular either).

It's consistent, but way off the reservation for talking about Gettier, which assumes you can have, in your circumstances, what anyone would consider very good reasons for your belief, which happens to be false. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think I need deny that assumption. Part of what I've been arguing with @Michael is that the notion of 'well-justified' is an artificial one entirely confined to these kinds of discussions in JTB. No-one thinks like that, of two bins marked 'well-justified' and 'not well-justified'. It's of very little significance that a belief is well-justified (but false) because any belief is well-justified to some extent but not as well-justified as it could be. It's always somewhere on the scale measuring the quality of justification. Right at the top of that scale is "my epistemic peers have exhaustively tested it and it still yields unsurprising results". Very few beliefs can claim that justification, but a large number can assume it (the earth is round, gravity pulls downward, this table is solid,...etc)

I know you describe your position as a kind of realism, but it's not a kind anyone wants. — Srap Tasmaner

Hey now! There was a colleague I spoke to about it some time ago who didn't entirely reject it...although he was drunk...no... you're right, no-one wants it.

That makes it hard even to state your position. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's been a consistent problem. I use the words 'true', 'fact', 'actually', 'in fact' to mean what I mean by them (not as Humpty-Dumpty I should stress, I'm not literally the only person who thinks this way), but my interlocutors will keep thinking "Ha! you said "x actually is..." showing that you agree with correspondence theory because you acknowledge that some things 'actually are' the case". An argument which only works assuming I was using 'actually is' under a correspondence understanding of what that would mean. Perhaps a more careful language would help - but as I said, this is just a 'trivial' internet discussion forum, people can always ask.

when an argument is at loggerheads like this, I tend to think both sides are wrong (and right, in their own way) and try something else. — Srap Tasmaner

Not a bad idea.

how does an individual Christian decide where to sit under the big tent? Why would an individual Christian choose to sit among stoners or non-stoners? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I think that's where @fdrake and I were going in asking "why 'interpret' this, but take that literally?"

My answer would be that we have better narratives which make 'stone those girls' sound awful, but 'love they neighbour' sound good. The social token of 'being a Christian' gets re-interpreted to fit the more powerful social narratives we have these days around tolerance and moderation.

On the other hand, we might look at what Jesus did here as an example of the technique. There’s the law that authorizes and even requires the stoning of the adulteress. Jesus does not question the law or those calling his attention to it. Elsewhere he even says that he comes not to destroy but to fulfill the law, so what’s the deal? Our question now might be, why doesn’t Jesus agree to join in an afternoon’s stoning? And further, how does he get away with it? That is, how does he not stone the adulteress and still manage not to be accused of impiety? — Srap Tasmaner

This is interesting, given my beliefs above. It's entirely possible that the narrative offered by the New Testament is the manner by which the narrative offered by the Old Testament is 'interpreted' without falling into stoning girls. If so, Christianity as a whole is somewhat rescued by being both problem and solution. It provides a dangerous narrative in which various xenophobias can turn very nasty indeed, but then also offers a solution narrative by which we can re-interpret all those.

Maybe, but I'm not sure offering both problem and solution is better than offering only solution. Maybe a kind of deep psychological game whereby we're shown the false way only the more to feel the redemption. God's a bastard so that his son can show us how not to be?

A succinct summation. — Banno

Thanks. I thought maybe it might be veering off topic to get into 'risk' as well as just 'actual Christians right now', but I think there's still sufficient overlap with what Lewis is saying.

it just isn't clear how to spell it out without making it so loose and arbitrary anyone can be construed as believing anything. Not a criticism of the approach or an attempt to block it, I'm trying to inquire how it could be done.

What characterises a tendency? How do you use actions to evaluate a 'tendency to act as if' on those states? What scope of behaviours does any particular tendency require for its evaluation? — fdrake

Right. Starting from the beginning. No-one has access to our beliefs-as-models, not even we do. If we say "I believe that..." it's a post hoc story to make some unified sense of the behaviour (or intended behaviour) which actually results from a whole set of, often completely contradictory, models in various separate cortices (and yes, before I get ripped to shreds, this model I'm describing is itself a post hoc justification for the behaviour I enact - such as writing this post, and, no, I don't think the circularity is a problem - I've yet to have anyone sufficiently explain why it might be).

So when we talk about 'beliefs' as in "that priest believes that X" we're already in the realm of post hoc storytelling. If we wanted to go deeper than that, we could (although still storytelling) look into what the various models in his brain might be outputting that could provide a better story. Or, we could choose any level in-between for our story.

The point I'm making is that a story which says "When in context A the priest believes Y, but when in context B the priest believes X' is... a) more complex than necessary (but this point could be argued, I agree), and b) superfluous - because we're going to have to come up with a story anyway covering what it is about A and B which causes such a shift.

Let's say that A is 'in church' and B is 'in the vestry'. We could say the priest believes "it's OK to molest boys" when he's in the vestry but believes "we should protect the innocent" when he's in the church - two belief-stories which are contradictory, but never meet. Or we could say the priest believes "it's OK to molest boys when in the vestry and we should protect the innocent when in church" (note the changed quotation marks). So the second story captures the effect of the context within the belief. Then we can interrogate that belief-story because there'll be a hidden belief about the vestry and the church that might yield a better story (less painful dissonance). The vestry is private, the church isn't so maybe it's "it's OK to molest boys when hidden but we should protect the innocent when in view".

I'm not claiming here to have uncovered why priests molest children and then preach protection of the innocent in church, it's just an example. I don't doubt it's much more complicated than hidden/public, but I don't see the complication as a barrier to producing a non-(or less) dissonant story which helps better understand the behaviour.

And finally - how does the answer to those questions interface with the argument? — fdrake

When people are looking for these stories, they'll more readily pick one off the shelf than make one up themselves. The myths and narratives that a society offers matter a lot to the kind of society that results because of this. It' my belief that a contradictory mythology such a Christianity offers - with the sort of contradictions Lewis is highlighting - offers a narrative which allows for such horrors as priestly child abuse, much more readily than better mythologies might, precisely because of these underlying themes (that God's actually something of a git himself. That he sees the rites, cassocks and prayers as more important that the behaviour...).

It's not just the bible. I feel the same way about, say, gangster culture which offers a hero-narrative that's become detached from any need to protect the innocent. I've argued extensively about the effect this has had on criminal behaviour, particularly on stripping away narrative choices from the young men in many of our inner-city neighbourhoods.

The best I can see is that you find the interpretations farfetched, but shouldn't effectiveness be the determinant for preservation as opposed to lack of farfetchedness? That is, shouldn't we look at the value the current institution has on people's lives, as opposed to whether you personally find it preposterous? — Hanover

Possibly, but - and this seems to be something that's consistently missed, so I'm going to emphasise it - I'm talking about risk, not necessarily just contemporary issues. Using a book which has to be carefully interpreted in order to avoid the conclusion that stoning girls is OK, as a guide to moral behaviour and community living - that's a big risk. In contemporary America, it may not be causing any problem at all (though I'd argue the contrary), just as the unexploded WWII ordinance might not have caused any problems for the last 80 years. You still wouldn't want one in your back garden would you?

As for evidence that it's a risk, that it has caused problems in the past, that it causes problems in other parts of the world? Do you still need to ask?

My point is that I know the myth is factually false and I would have no motivation to create a factually false myth that leads to a negative result, so obviously it's positive. — Hanover

Indeed. Nor would anyone here I suspect. Unfortunately we live in a world where we cannot rely on the quality of upbringing that's given you the moral sense to see that 'stone girls' is obviously wrong, and 'love thy neighbour' is more like it.

One reason that the Bible gets such positive interpretation (i.e. special pleading) is precisely because it's the narrative we use for positive effects in our society. It's the "good" book. It is therefore specially interpreted that way by definition. — Hanover

Now I'd ask you in turn for empirical support. Christians are no more charitable than average, no more compassionate than average. Highly religious societies are no more equitable than secular ones, no more happy, give no more development aid... I'd be interested in what measure you're using to determine the 'positive effects'. Possibly an historical one? But this fails on historicism. There aren't any societies which haven't been effected by Christianity, so you've no control group.

It's like you're running around telling me that George Washington really wasn't a perfectly honest person and that he did not really confess to chopping down the cherry tree. Yeah, I get none of it happened. I think the myth being advanced in that narrative is that America was founded by the most honest of men, explaining its higher sense of morality than all other nations. — Hanover

Yes, but confessing to chopping down a cherry tree is a 'good' thing. So it was put in the myth. Stoning girls is 'bad' thing. We're talking about why 'bad' things are in the myth. Can you think of a similar myth in which the main protagonists advocates stoning girls to death, punishing people for eternity who don't worship him, killing the babies of non-believers... What the fuck kind of myth is that?

You are welcome to provide me with quotes that you find troubling and I will address them. — Ennui Elucidator

I gave the quote...

The argument is not about what it says, but what it means; what the value is in including that story both on its own and within the greater context/s of the book. If you aren’t willing to engage with the material on that level... — Ennui Elucidator

You're dismissing my engagement (the current one) on the grounds that I've not met some arbitrary threshold of contextualising that you consider necessary. That's the special pleading. Maybe you do, in fact, make exactly the same demands for contextual embedding of everyone who expresses an opinion on any subject, but I've not seen such a tendency in your posting history... yet here you are.

I can't help that you confuse advice about how to speak to a particular language community as somehow depriving you of your entitlement to an opinion — Ennui Elucidator

Ah. You'll forgive my misunderstanding, but in my defence I neither asked for such advice, nor is the giving of it anything to do with the thread topic so it was a bit left-field to hear that this is what you're doing. I appreciate the concern, but I'm fine with my current approach, thanks anyway.

What’s the difference between saying that a belief be well justified and saying that one has good reasons for a belief? Splitting hairs on this wording is missing the point. — Michael

It's the exact point. You're' treating something as binomial which is, in fact scalar. There's not 'well-justified' and 'not well-justified' there's better justified and worse justified. So all your examples of the sort "I can have a justified belief..." or "I can have a well-justified belief..." are just nonsensical. No-one treats belief as if they only fell into one of two categories with regards to justification.

Knowledge isn’t just hypothetical. We have it in real situations where we don’t have access to the beliefs of some community of epistemic peers who have comprehensively tested a belief. — Michael

Knowledge is JTB right (for you)? You agreed that T could be that a community of epistemic peers have exhaustively tested the hypothesis and found it sound, right? Now you're saying we can have knowledge outside of needing that latter condition. So how?

That we can sometimes use the truth to justify a belief isn’t that a belief being true is the same as a belief being justified. — Michael

But it is. Unlike the Old/Blue/Borrowed example, truth is nothing else but the justification that my epistemic peers have exhaustively tested the hypothesis and found it to yield the expected results. Blue things are sometime not borrowed things, borrowed things are sometimes not old things. Truth is not sometimes not as I've described it (under pragmatic or deflationary understandings).

You seemed to be assuming the world's money supply is fixed so that if billionaires get richer, it must have been a transfer of wealth from poor people. Did you not assume that? — frank

Yes, to a degree.

https://mises.org/library/how-inflation-helps-keep-rich-and-poor-down

Even the formal model, the Nairu (the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) allows that people begin to expect prices to keep going up so you get an inflation in the general level of prices that undermines purchasing power.

So no, inflation is not free money.

I'm trying to see where there's a problem here — Hanover

Put simply. People select narratives to make sense of their lives, these narratives have a gravitational pull toward certain interpretations. some narratives are better than others. A narrative which has to be 'interpreted' carefully to avoid the impression that stoning girls to death is OK, is not one of the better ones.

By the scientific and medical communities, and by the general public. I've yet to hear anything significant in this regard. I asked for what you were referring to and got nothing, so there's that as well. — Xtrix

I've cited stuff dozens of times, I'm not going to just repeat it all, it's your view I'm interested in here. If you don't know about the stuff I've posted I want to know why. You're clearly a well informed person in general. Has the whole debate passed you by. It was all over the editorials of the BMJ for months. The Editor in Chief there wrote directly to the FDA about it...but for you, a non-story?

Yes, they do — Xtrix

For God's sake man! Have you no humility at all? Do you really think that "Yes they do" is supposed to suffice as an answer at the level of conversation we should be aiming at here? If you want to support an argument that the numbers are significant, then give me the numbers. Without them you're just a loony on a soapbox. Where are you getting your numbers from? 'A significant number of people are rejecting the vaccine on irrational grounds because of what they read on Facebook etc' you say. Only 20-30% of the population are rejecting the vaccine at all. At least some of them are rejecting it on rational grounds, just plain fear, just plain procrastination. so than leaves you something in the low twenties at best. Hardly a policy-changing force to be reckoned with.

And no, 'the majority of vaccine deniers are Republican' is not the same as 'The majority of Republican's are vaccine deniers'.

Your claim that "a majority of people, who identify with one of two major political parties, believe these things" is not supported by your evidence that "unvaccinated, and those polled who say they will never or probably not be vaccinated, are mostly Republicans" Do you see the difference?

I think you're underestimating the percentage who are refusing for irrational reasons because of the information they consume. — Xtrix

OK. Why do you think that? Is it just something you 'reckon' or have you read something that tells you so (read in your scientific journals of course, since we're not trusting corporate media).

I'd say it's no coincidence that those who profess vaccine "skepticism" or refusal, and those who claim the election was stolen, happen to be majority Republican — Xtrix

No, I very much doubt that's a coincidence either. Republicans are generally less well educated and so tend to be more easily persuaded of daft positions.

There's no mystery as to why that is, all you have to do is take a look at the media they consume. Which was my point. — Xtrix

Again, your 'point' is flawed. The media they consume is wholly owned by rich corporations. The same rich corporations who have made more money than they've ever made out of this crisis including the profits and share hikes from the vaccine. Either they've suddenly become massively incompetent overnight, or the division serves their purposes. Now what purpose could possibly be served by promoting a vaccine heavily to one group and then promoting fear of it in another...? Why, that would only work if the group who'd been fed the pro-vaccine line spent all their time focussing on the group who'd been fed the anti-vaccine line so that the people in charge of both messages can bring in even more money without anyone paying them the slightest attention at all. But hey, who'd be daft enough to fall for that...again?

I'm against the private medical and pharmaceutical companies, etc. But that has nothing to do with whether the product, no matter if it's Viagra or the vaccines, are safe and effective. — Xtrix

Of course it has. They're the people telling you it's 'safe and effective'. If they can't be trusted it throws the whole thing out.

You're downplaying the significance of vaccine refusal, which is significant. You're downplaying the role of social media-drive irrationality, which is significant. — Xtrix

Well, then show me the significance. Your word obviously isn't good enough. Where are your numbers and measures of effect?

you're trying to find something that simply isn't there when it comes to these companies which have produced the vaccines. — Xtrix

Yet earlier you were saying that you might have missed it. Which is it? It isn't there, or you haven't looked?

I think the bigger issue, until evidence points elsewhere, is the large number of unvaccinated people refusing vaccines because of their information bubbles. — Xtrix

What problem is it causing? (and yes, I mean for you to provide evidence of the problem it's causing, not just tell me again that you 'reckon' it is)

If you think there'd be this level of refusal 30 years ago, prior to the anti-vax movement and prior to Facebook/Twitter/YouTube, etc — Xtrix

I don't. I think Facebook/Twitter/YouTube are responsible for an enormous amount of the problem we face. I'm just not so stupid as to think they only stoke one side.

Have you read Gettier’s little paper? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, some time ago. Have I misrepresented it somewhere? It didn't leave a particularly strong impression on me. I've here been mostly talking about how alternatives to correspondence theories on truth interact with JTB and whether it captures ordinary language use. I suppose I've been a bit contumacious in veering so far from Gettier...sorry.

There's a lot I like about this. A thorny story which makes the reader think about right and wrong, certainly an improvement on the Disney version. But...

I think 'thorny' can go too far. If we feed our kids with tales of rapists and marauders just basically doing what they like and having a great time, would you not think we'd overdone the thorns? Would not a part of you worry that our hope that the children would simply see how 'bad' the protagonists were of their own accord may be a little 'high risk'?

So there's "think for yourself", and there's no guide at all. There's Wittgenstein writing a book full of really good questions but only pointing you in the direction of the answer, and there's Wittgenstein writing a book full of misdirection, tricks and outright contradictions, and then saying "work it out for yourself".

I think a book in which the main object of worship advocates stoning girls to death within the first 28% of the book (better @Ennui Elucidator?), is laying the thorns on pretty thick, with the whole love and compassion redeeming theme makes a very late and understated entrance by comparison.

But we needn't take my word for it. Has it worked?

Do Christians give more to charity? Maybe a bit, but depends on how you measure charity, and even then not by much. https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2014/06/bbc-poll-shows-that-religious-people-give-more-to-charity-than-non-religious-maybe

Are Christians more compassionate? Maybe a bit, but comparable to just age or education https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2006/03/30/americas-immigration-quandary/

Meh. It's not not worked. Maybe it doesn't matter at all.

Personally, as far a themes go, I think we could do better, even if our 'better' version has a few prickly thorns and Wittgensteinian standoffishness.

It is entirely possible that my belief is well justified but also false. — Michael

No. If a belief is false then it clearly was not well-justified. The justification must, logically, have been insufficient, since whatever test our epistemic peers used to determine it's falsity was clearly necessary but lacking, hence an insufficient justification.

No, it’s a belief that isn’t true but that I have a good reason to hold. — Michael

You're just repeating the same error without addressing what I've said about it. Do we routinely define reasons as only either 'good' or 'not good', or do we, rather, grade reasons being able to see that some are better than others whilst others are even better still? If yes, then why insist on this odd language where everything scalar is treated binomially?

the justification condition is referring to the reasons the person believes what he does. — Michael

Yes. I'm saying there exist a high quality justification (hence we can say it's true), of which the believer is unaware (hence unjustified). In this instance, you could indeed say the belief was unjustified but true, but this doesn't get around the fact that if the believer became aware of the high quality justification they would have a belief which counted as knowledge on the basis of justification alone (just now justification of a sufficient quality), so JTB fails.

S knows that p if S believes that p, S (1) has one or more good reasons for believing that p, and (2) a community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe that p were they to throw every conceivable test at the hypothesis that p. — Michael

Yes. That's the position I started from.

(2), if S were to be aware of it, would be a justification. Hence it's possible for S to merely hold (1), and still have knowledge where his (1) is "that a community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe that p were they to throw every conceivable test at the hypothesis that p."

In my previous post I gave clear examples of a justified true belief, an unjustified true belief, and a justified false belief, and explained that the first can count as knowledge but that the second and third can’t. Do you disagree with that analysis? — Michael

To be clear.

What you're calling a justified false belief is just a belief whose justification isn't good enough.

What you're calling an unjustified true belief is a belief whose (high quality) justification is not known to the person holding it.

Returning to Gettier...

The person who believes it's 12 o'clock (when it is, in fact 12 o'clock), but believes so on the basis of a broken clock does not have knowledge. His justification (the clock says it's 12) is insufficient - clocks break. A sufficient justification would be that all his epistemic peers have tested their clocks, and checked with the sun, and radioactive decay, and yes, it is indeed 12 o'clock. Then he would have knowledge. Then his justification would be sufficient. JTB can't handle the situation precisely because JTB makes this completely unwarranted assumption that a belief must be either justified or not and does not properly allow for the grading of justifications we use every day.

if you want to argue that the distinction is irrelevant with respect to knowledge then you must argue that both justified false beliefs and unjustified true beliefs count as knowledge. — Michael

Not at all. The JTB definition assumes there's a definable status 'justified', that something might binomially either have or not. Likewise 'true'.

But this is just an assumption (and a flawed one). We do not, in general, consider beliefs to be either justified or not. We consider beliefs to be more or less justified. Better or worse. We can (and frequently do) grade justifications from better to worse. You did so yourself in your previous post.

So there's absolutely no sense in saying that in leaving off 'true' we're somehow magically obligated to pretend we no longer grade justifications and instead treat them as binomials, either in or out.

Beliefs which are well-justified can be treated as knowledge, those that are poorly justified not.

Your examples (of justification but not knowledge), are just examples of poor, or insufficient justification. Had they had much better justification (such as the survival of multiple tests by epistemic peers), they could unproblematically be treated as knowledge.

Canonical texts: Homer, Dante. Shakespeare. Goethe, Walt Whitman, other religious texts, texts with a long historical tradition of interpretation. — Janus

Plato is described as advocating a censorship of Greek texts such as Homer.

Guido Vernani, called Dante's poetry "a poisonous vessel of the father of lies, covered with false and fallacious beauty, by which the author, with poetic phantasms and figments and the eloquence of his words, his siren songs, fraudulently leads not only the sick and ignorant but even the learned to destroy the truth which might save them"

Walt Whitman - https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/venerate-walt-whitman-200/

...

The point was rhetorical anyway. I've no doubt the Bible has its avid critics. It was to ask if this constituted special pleading. It may do so for Shakespeare too.

The forum is positively suffuse with threads where someone has read a paper or watched a video on some aspect of physics, mathematics, neuroscience, economics, politics, psychology... and there's a generally lusty enthusiasm on the part of our lay membership to get stuck right in. Are any entreated to only provide constructive criticism in deference to the years of expert analysis that has gone into these various topics? No. And nor should they, this is an internet discussion forum, not a peer-reviewed journal. We'd like to hold ourselves above Twitter (or at least I would), so expect sources, citations, proper diligence..., but refraining from comment outside of a complete immersion in the text and its interpretors? That strikes me as ridiculous.

If you can’t maintain a consistent argument - if you continually say contradictory things - then your argument has failed. — Michael

Indeed it has.

There's three options here;

1. I'm constantly saying contradictory things for some reason - stupidity, stubborness, mental instability...

2. I'm saying perfectly consistent things, but I've either made a trivial mistake, or you've misunderstood what I'm saying.

3. I'm saying perfectly consistent things and you're deliberately seeking out any contestable inconsistencies to avoid having to actually address the argument.

It takes a fairly substantial ego to rule out (2) as even being a possibility, yet, being the most charitable of (1) and (2), one would need a good reason to rule it out, unless one were choosing option (3).

This isn’t the same thing as the fact that a community of epistemic peers with access to a time machine would believe that it rained last night were they to throw every conceivable test at the hypothesis.

Therefore my belief being true isn’t the same thing as my belief being justified.

This is why the JTB definition has separate conditions for truth and justification. If in another scenario I believe what I do because it’s my interpretation of a Tarot card reading then my belief would be true but unjustified, and so not knowledge. If in another scenario the community of epistemic peers would believe that it didn’t rain but that a fire truck passed by with its hose on then my belief would be justified but false, and so not knowledge. — Michael

Just repeating the claim doesn't progress the argument at all. I've argued that 'truth' is a type of justification (specifically that one's epistemic peers would believe it if it survived all the tests they could throw at it).

I know it's raining because...

The cars outside are wet.

I can hear it on the roof.

The cows are lying down.

My tarot cards say it's raining.

My community of epistemic peers have thrown every test they can at the hypothesis 'it's raining' and it's withstood every test.

I act as if it's raining and I'm not surprised.

I make predictions based on a model of it raining and my predictions work out.

My epistemic peers have exhausted all the predictions they can make and every single one has worked out as expected.

All justifications for my belief that it's raining. None are of some special genera.

So, in checking if some belief is 'knowledge', we're just looking for some specific justification, not something else in addition to justifications. "My tarot cards say it's raining" is not good enough for 'knowledge', but "My epistemic peers have exhausted all the predictions they can make and every single one has worked out as expected", may well be.

It’s not the only justification — Michael

No.

So, no, we cannot simply treat truth and justification as the same. — Michael

I didn't say we could. We also can't treat one justification as if it were the same as another, but it's not J1, J2, J3, J4, J5, TB is it?

And now you’re contradicting yourself yet again:

At the very least you finally understand that truth is distinct from the actual justifications we have. — Michael


I've never said anything to the contrary. If I have, I'd rather you quote me than attribute positions to me I've never held. — Isaac


You were accepting that truth can be inaccessible and that’s how we can be wrong. Presumably you wouldn’t say that justification is inaccessible? — Michael

Still playing gotcha?

Your proposition refers to "the actual justifications we have", mine refers to "justifications" sensu lato.

If you think something I've said is inconsistent, you could just ask, rather than playing this childish game of trying to catch me in a contradiction. As I said, one day you will win that game, I don't proof read my comments that accurately. I don't see what you think you're going to gain by it though.

Corpoate malfeasance doesn't surprise me. In this case it would, because of how heavily it's been scrutinized. — Xtrix

By whom? You think government agencies are impartial in this?

When a majority of people, who identify with one of two major political parties, believe these things...that's not a minor issue anymore. And not very funny. — Xtrix

But they clearly don't. The figure for non-vaccination is hovering around 20-30%. You've agreed that there are some rational reasons for not taking the vaccine (though you equally rationally disagree with them). Many people are scared, many confused, many just incorrigible procrastinators. The list of those actually going along with the sort of irrational misinformation you're referring to is vanishingly small and, most importantly, have virtually no power at all.

So why are so many hung up on this group? Why is so much hatred being stoked up for a small, easily defeated straw-enemy which never had any real power, whilst those with real power continue to rake it in whilst you look the other way?

It's distraction tactics 101. If you're looking for dangerously irrational behaviour it's people like you falling for the oldest trick in the book as if you were toddlers at magic show.

There are properly powerful people making enormous amounts of money at the expense of oppressing an increasingly subjugated working class. They don't give a shit about a few nutjobs, but they sure as hell give a shit about making sure that's the only thing you're thinking about.

I don't think so. The money for the COVID-19 response came out of thin air. And now we have inflation. That's how that works. — frank

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/07/covid-19-crisis-boosts-the-fortunes-of-worlds-billionaires

It's not all to do with government stimulus and investment money.

But "truth" does not (generally) describe justification in the first place. It describes a state of affairs. — InPitzotl

So are you arguing that deflationary, coherence, and pragmatic positions on truth are wrong, of that they just don't even exist?

a trivial social media forum — Isaac


Hey now — Srap Tasmaner

Oh, I meant 'trivial' in the early 15c use of the term to refer to the trivium - the first three liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric and logic).

Obviously!