...'the democratic process' is a complex mechanism which has virtually nothing to do with any means by which people can promote the betterment of their communities... — Isaac

A system is only as good as it's implementation. It's not the system that's broken. It's the implemenation.

First rule of public service:Provide a service to the public. What the US government has managed to provide to those with the ability to pledge huge sums of money to elected officials is nothing short of legalized government bribery. That bribe buys a transfer of the power over American citizens that elected officials bear to individuals who are not elected and whose interests are in direct conflict with the peoples'. That is a horrible public disservice.

Actual policies, however, are influenced by corporate sponsors and can be stalled, repealed or rendered toothless as required. — Isaac

Yup.

Antitrust laws - toothless. IRS enforcement capabilities - toothless. Conflict of interest concerns - toothless. Consumer protection agency - toothless. EPA - toothless. Etc.

In The States there are policies that are actually written by those who are working on the behalf of such corporations. That is to have tremendous power over a people that have not consented and whose interest is in direct conflict with the aims of the parties involved. That power has been usurped from the people and sold to those who do not act with the people's best interest in mind!


The monetary corruption pervading American government has reached levels of unsustainability.

These are some of the things that paved the way for Jan.6 to even be able to happen. These sorts of things are what underwrite the common belief that politicians cannot be trusted, or that the government is the problem, etc. Justified distrust in the government to do the right thing for the American people! In a representative form of government, that's a big problem!

...there are better things for me to do than passively consume the latest media spectacle. Even picking up trash in the neighborhood accomplishes more. — Xtrix

Do you know what the hearings have shed light upon thus far?

...this commission. Another chance for ratings... — Xtrix

It's quite disheartening for me to see Americans have such an attitude about such an important proceeding.

There were a group of elected officials and their allies who deliberately plotted and carefully planned a complex quasi-legal method for overturning a free and fair election. These people also set out to convince all their supporters that it needed to be done as a result of the election being stolen. Neither of those things were true, because the election was not stolen. They all knew the election was not stolen.



Do you understand the seriousness and the future implications of all that?

Conspiracy to defraud The United States(the big lie). Seditious conspiracy(based upon the big lie). The big lie also has been used to foment the idea that our elections are not secure enough, and thus that something needs to be done to ensure free and fair elections. That's yet another conspiracy to defraud The United States. The 2020 election was the most secure closely monitored election in our history. Those elected officials peddling the falsehood already know that. Voting laws have been under constant attack and decimated since, making it much harder for less privileged people to vote. They've used the big lie as support for those changes, and continue to do so.

No.

We are facing very serious novel threats from within the government itself. The president of the United States did nothing to protect the capital building and it's inhabitants!!! The planned insurrection involved congresspeople as well!!! Many, if not most of those still hold office!!! Allowing the public to know this information is not about ratings. It's about putting a stop to this shit while we still can!!!

It's about shedding light on a topic(Jan.6) that the involved parties were trying to ignore and basically sweep under the rug immediately afterwards. From my vantage point, there are quite a few elected officials and citizens involved, and not just those who breached the building. It is a crime to know about a planned attempt at an insurrection and not report it to the proper authorities. There was a concerted effort to foment doubt about the integrity of the election, and there is now a concerted effort to convince the public that the commission is a partisan witch hunt about ratings. This narrative is being fostered by those who are guilty of seditious conspiracy, fraud, and doing everything based upon ratings.

:angry:

The judge talked about politicians choosing personal interest over country's, and pointed to the fact that they would not admit to having done so, perhaps even believing that they had not made such a choice.<-----that's a huge problem! What's best for the country is what's best for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Neither party has done what's best for Americans(particularly poor and working class) for at least 45 years. That paved the way for Trump, for it greatly increased the distrust of government that Reagan began fomenting in the 70's.

The clear and present danger was about the attempt to overturn a free and fair election and the openly espoused plan to make a concerted attempt to do so in the future based upon legal and historical precedent. It failed in 2021, but some are actively putting in place all the pieces necessary to succeed in the future, should the circumstamces arise to do so.

There is not a single bit of evidence the election was improper. — Jackson

Agreed.

So, Trump supporters' belief that the election was stolen is not based upon evidence. What grounds their belief? What is such belief based upon?

I submit to you that such belief was based purely upon the deliberate perpetuation of the falsehood. They took Trump at his word.

If then, these people are presented with all the relevant facts, and they remain convinced that Trump won and the election was stolen, then we've got a very serious problem on our hands. Such belief is on par with the kind of religious faith that was discussed earlier in the thread.

Trump supporters' doubt about the legitimacy of the 202 American presidential election is/was not based upon the motives you've proposed are the officials'.
— creativesoul

Same... — Jackson

Do you agree?

Doubt in the legitimacy of the government, based upon what?
— creativesoul

Based on they want power and want to delegitimize all existing norms. — Jackson

Trump supporters' doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 American presidential election are not based upon the motives you've proposed.

It's worth watching in it's entirety. It's not the same old theme...

What evidence supports that belief?

a dangerous cult of personality. — schopenhauer1

Indeed. Living Color's song has been revisited by myself several times in the past few years. The lyrics are spot on. Almost prescient...

Have you already seen this video in it's enitrety?

Yes. Trump and his allies have and are continuing to foment doubt in the legitimacy of the election results. Their supporters believe that Trump won.

What grounds the belief that Trump won?

Then we can examine the specific beliefs that ground the doubt regarding the legitimacy of the election.

Specific beliefs that are commonly held by Trump supporters that have been fomented by Trump and his allies that have resulted in an increase in doubting the legitimacy of the election results. Then we can look at what beliefs that doubt is founded upon.

I'm looking for an explanation consisting of more philosophically interesting substance. Not political speech.

Doubt in the legitimacy of the government, based upon what?

Be nice for you to unpack that. Doubt of what, based upon what? That's the philosophically interesting approach, keeping in line with the OP's topic.

Since doubt has been invoked...

Doubting 'X' is doubting the truth of X. When one doubts 'X', one holds some belief or other(s) that ground(s) the doubt. Otherwise, the skepticism is groundless and/or unwarranted. Groundless skepticism is unacceptable. Radical skepticism is traditionally based upon doubting that we can be certain of and/or know anything at all, which is in and of itself - untenable - for if it is consistently applied it would undermine itself when so applied. On my view, radical skepticism is akin to overcorrecting one's front steering wheel when the rear of the vehicle breaks loose and begins to come around towards the front. It does not follow from the fact that we cannot know some things, that we cannot know anything.


The basic takeaway...

All doubt is belief-based. The pre-existing belief(s) held as relevant to X by the individual 'stands in the way' of the individual's certainty. A fine example of this is shown by the overwhelming majority of Americans not trusting that the country is heading in the right direction, by virtue of not trusting the truthfulness of elected officials, and most recently, not trusting the very institutions of American government.

The more significant idea I've been exploring is that it makes no sense to speak of knowing something that one is not certain of or believing something one does not feel certain of. To the extent that one is uncertain one does not know, and to the extent to which does not feel certain one does not believe, but rather doubts. — Janus

I get what you're saying here, but when attempting to parse belief and knowledge in terms of being certain and not, we're missing the key elements that separate belief and knowledge. Truth and/or justification/warrant. Knowledge and belief are not analogous with being certain and not. That comparison fails in all the most important respects.

I would not have any issue with someone saying that they feel certain that God exists but cannot be certain, if that means they strongly believe God exists but cannot be absolutely certain of it, especially if that person has a recent newly acquired personal standard of warrant(adequate/sufficient reason to believe) that demands verifiability, due to having serious doubts raised concerning other accompanying beliefs about God.

Oh...

Glad you like your new place. I'm with you all the way when it comes to preferring being more on the land than in the city or suburbs. Luckily, we live on an acre, so it's not so bad as the quarter acre carefully designed plots with fences between that are common nowadays. Twenty or fifty or a hundred acres would be better though!

You con fuse together "certainty" and "truth"... — Banno

All instances of being certain... ...are instances of knowing the truth. — Janus

All instances of being certain... ...are instances of knowing the truth. — Janus

That's what your notion of certainty boils down to.

I'm not concerned with knowing the truth in any absolute sense or with what truth is. I'm saying that being certain is being certain of knowing the truth — Janus

That's when you hung yourself.

If that were true, it would be impossible for anyone to be certain that "God exists" is true.
— creativesoul

it is impossible to be certain of that... — Janus

Hundreds of millions of people are certain of that.

...do you disagree that I can be certain that 2+2=4. that the Earth is roughly spherical, that vertebrates have an internal skeletal structure and so on? — Janus

Not at all. People are certain of all sorts of stuff, that stuff included.

Do you disagree that I cannot be certain that God exists, but that I can feel certain of it?

All sorts of people are certain that God exists.

You're haven't been saying anything relevant in the way of disagreement... — Janus

That's not true. I read your bits. I summarized what you were getting at. I verified the summary by asking if you agreed. You characterized my summary as "echoing" what you've already said. Thus, I concluded that being certain, being right, and knowing the truth are all the same thing on your view. So...

I first figured out what you meant. Then, I went on to the issues...

...all instances of being certain of knowing the truth, as opposed to feeling certain of knowing the truth are instances of knowing the truth. — Janus

If that were true, it would be impossible for anyone to be certain that "God exists" is true.

To borrow a bit from you(I do not like the phrase "knowing the truth", but since you've chosen it)...

Certainty is confidence that one knows the truth; that some belief or other is true; is the case; corresponds to fact/reality, etc. Certainty does not require the belief in question to be true in order for the believer to be absolutely certain that it is. One can be both certain and wrong. History is chock full of examples.

Being certain and knowing the truth are different. The former is the attitude the person has towards some belief, particularly being confident that it is true. The latter is determined by whether or not the belief(s) is(are) true.

What you've said here is irreconcilable with all this...

I'm not concerned with knowing the truth in any absolute sense or with what truth is. I'm saying that being certain is being certain of knowing the truth... — Janus

You're saying that being certain is being certain of something that you're not concerned with.

You claimed that being certain is knowing the truth and then later openly expressed no concern about what truth is. Nothing left for me to say...

...I'm not concerned with knowing the truth in any absolute sense or with what truth is. I'm saying that being certain is being certain of knowing the truth... — Janus

Given that you originally invoked "knowing the truth" as the distinction between feeling certain and being certain, if you are not concerned with what truth is, then you're not concerned with what "knowing the truth" means. If you're not concerned with what "knowing the truth" means, then your not concerned with what you're adamantly arguing over, and thus your thoughts on the matter are not worth much more of my time.

...you speak of some purported "remarkable difference" which you haven't explained as far as I can tell...

...you've said your statements "capture what I meant" which I read as meaning they agree with what I meant...

You did say that I was "echoing" what you had already said after reading my statements, despite the fact that our respective statements were remarkably different in that I added at least one term, for starters...

Contrary to what you've said, I have set out the differences between "we can feel certain even when we are not" and "we can feel certain even when we are not right". As hinted at above, the term "right" was added without subsequent objection. You offered the claim, and I added a term andchecked for your agreement. You readily offered it up. You did not object to that term being added. Rather, you claimed that I was "echoing" what you said.

So...

Given that the sounds produced by a reading is not identical, if my saying "we can feel certain even when we are not right" echoed your saying that "we can feel certain even when we are not", then I can only take that to mean that I captured your meaning, or that our different statements pretty much mean the same thing to you. All this being said...




You've just admitted to not being concerned about what truth is. If one is not concerned with what truth is, then they cannot be concerned with what "knowing the truth" means. If "knowing the truth" is central to someone who claims that they are not concerned with what truth is, well we've reached the end as far as I can help. Any further progress requires you performing a bit of damage control, because you've admitted to not being concerned with what we're discussing here.

Assange also helped to cause quite a bit of unnecessary grief to an already grieving family by perpetuating the false idea that a murder victim was tied to those emails and Wikileaks. When openly asked, he could have and should have stamped out that notion rather than being cagey and perpetuating a conspiracy theory that right wing American media fomented for months and months. Fox News ended up settling with the parents for an untold amount in the seven-figure range.

Physiological sensory perception is part of experience. Divorcing the two leads to misunderstanding both.

...we can feel certain even we are not...
— Janus

We can feel certain even when we are not right. We can feel certain even when we are not justified in being so. We can feel certain even when we're dead wrong.

We cannot feel certain when we are not feeling certain.

So, Janus, help me out here...

Would you agree to all of the above statements? — creativesoul

Why would I not agree when you are simply echoing what I've already said? — Janus

Well, to be blunt, you've said none of those things. I do think you meant them though. What you said was...

we can feel certain even when we are not...

If what I said echoes that then that is an incomplete thought filled out by my echoes. — creativesoul

The above is for a bit of context...

We need to examine the differences between "We can feel certain, even when we are not", and "We can feel certain even when we are not right". If those two statements mean the same thing, then cases of feeling certain even when we are not certain are cases of feeling certain even when we are not right. So, being certain is on par with being right. Since being right requires true belief, then being certain would as well. True belief requires truth. If being certain requires true belief and true belief requires truth, then being certain requires truth as well. Truth is not about the believer. If truth is not about the believer and being certain requires truth, then being certain is not about the believer in the sense that the truth of the belief is not about the believer. Hence, I noted that earlier...

Janus' use of "feeling certain" is about the believer, but his use of "being certain" is about the truth of the belief. — creativesoul

...but you objected...

No, you've got it wrong again. Feeling certain is feeling that you know the truth while being certain is knowing the truth; both are about the person. — Janus

Well no, I've not got it wrong at all, my friend. I've correctly understood what you meant at every turn, and you've confirmed that much on more than one occasion. The contentious matter is directly above. It's your notion of "knowing the truth". You hold that knowing the truth is about the believer, and while I would not reject that claim outright, for knowing the truth is indeed about the believer - in part at least. People do have true belief after-all, but knowing the truth is not just about the believer, and I think that you've neglected to carefully consider the rest of what it's about. So, in a very limited sense, knowing the truth is about people. However, the problem shows up when we consider what true belief(and hence *what else* knowing the truth) requires.

Knowing the truth requires true belief. Belief is true only if and when it corresponds to fact/reality. Hence, knowing the truth requires belief, fact/reality, and correspondence between belief and fact/reality. Correspondence is not about the believer(with exceptions involving claims about oneself, of course). Correspondence is the key element in knowing the truth(even in the exceptions above, one could be wrong about themselves). Thus, knowing the truth is not just about the believer. It's about correspondence as well.

Correspondence, it seems clear to me, is also the key difference between your notions of feeling certain and being certain. Correspondence is exactly what's being verified and/or corroborated after-all.

What’s so special about knowledge? Knowledge can be wrong... — praxis

Nothing special about knowledge if it can be wrong. On my view, it cannot.

So what extra is needed to go from feeling certain that God exists to being certain?
— creativesoul

You can't be certain that God exists, because being certain is knowing and the things we can be said to know are things that are inter-subjectively corroborable. — Janus

Good. That's what I thought you meant. So, according to your line of reasoning here, being certain requires things that are inter-subjectively corroborable, which amounts to saying that we can only be certain of things that can be verified. Whereas feeling certain does not require a verifiable component(thing). Hence, that is consistent with the overlap you spoke of earlier, where one can feel and be certain that 2+2=4, but one can merely feel certain that God exists. Presumably, as a result of "God exists" not being verifiable.

I'm trying to get Janus to explain what the difference is, according to his/her position, between feeling certain and being certain. Seems to me like that difference amounts to feeling certain being on par with belief whereas being certain is on par with knowledge.
— creativesoul

Feeling certain is feeling that you know the truth while being certain is knowing the truth; both are about the person. So, again I can feel certain that God exists, but I cannot be certain that God exists. I can be certain that 2+2=4. Can you spot the difference yet?
— Janus — Janus

Well, to be sure, there's more than one difference in need of careful consideration. One the one hand, there's the difference between the words you're using, and the words I've been using to say the same thing. On the other, there's the difference between how you're using the term certain. The difference you're asking about above is about the latter. The question has been answered to our satisfaction.

I'm aware of the semantic differences you're claiming that there is between your use of "feeling certain" and your use "being certain". That difference is all about what you mean when using those words(what you're doing with them). I've paraphrased several claims on two separate occasions. Your agreements regarding my 'paraphrasing' in both confirms that I've rightly understood what you're claiming.

You're invoking the difference between feeling that one knows the truth and one knowing the truth as a means for grasping the difference(by virtue of comparison) in what you mean when using "feeling certain" and "being certain". Your use of "feeling certain" describes situations of one believing that they know the truth, whereas your use of "being certain" describes situations of one knowing the truth.

Can you see how what you said above is the same, in different words, as what I said above? Also you do seem to be agreeing that there is a difference between being certain and feeling certain. If not then point to the difference you think is there between the two statements above. — Janus

Considering the differences between your statements is not enough to understand the remarkable difference in the meaning between our respective statements. You've now confirmed more than once that my paraphrasing captured what you meant. That tells me that I've correctly understood what you're arguing.

What's needed here, is a mutual understanding, not only of what you've meant, but also of what my paraphrasing meant. The differences there are remarkable enough to shed light on the problems with your particular use.

I'm trying to get Janus to explain what the difference is, according to his/her position, between feeling certain and being certain. Seems to me like that difference amounts to feeling certain being on par with belief whereas being certain is on par with knowledge. That difference is truth to some, warrant to others, and truth plus justification to some. Belief is required for all.

Clarity has not been forthcoming.

We can feel certain even when we are not right. We can feel certain even when we are not justified in being so. We can feel certain even when we're dead wrong.

We cannot feel certain when we are not feeling certain.
— creativesoul

Why would I not agree when you are simply echoing what I've already said? — Janus

Well, to be blunt, you've said none of those things. I do think you meant them though. What you said was...

we can feel certain even when we are not...

If what I said echoes that then that is an incomplete thought filled out by my echoes.

Do you agree that there is a valid distinction between feeling certain and being certain, or not? — Janus

No, but you may convince me otherwise..

I can feel certain that God exists, but I cannot be certain that God exists. — Janus

So what extra is needed to go from feeling certain that God exists to being certain?

Feeling certain is feeling that you know the truth while being certain is knowing the truth... — Janus

I can feel certain that God exists, but I cannot be certain that God exists. — Janus

"Feeling certain" seems to suggest belief, while "being certain" seems more like knowledge.

"I believe that God exists, but I cannot know that God exists".

What does your practice add to our understanding here that the quote above lacks?

No need for people to fret much over this...

Your language use is very odd. You claim that feeling certain that 'X' is true is not equivalent to being certain that 'X' is true.

So what extra is needed aside from S's feeling certain that 'X' is true in order for S to be certain that 'X' is true?

Let 'X' be "God exists"...

May not be worth fretting over. Clearing up confusion for others helps even if we fail to convince those who oppose us.

I think you hit the nail on the head. A conflation of truth and certainty. The former is about the belief, the latter is about the believer. Janus' use of "feeling certain" is about the believer, but his use of "being certain" is about the truth of the belief.