HamiltonBrae t1_jcpqfxt wrote
Reply to comment by Base_Six in The Folly of Knowledge: why we should favor belief as the focus of our epistemology by Base_Six
Sorry, late reply;
>It's a far cry removed from JTB, in any case.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough but my point was that using that definition of belief, then I think someone should logically believe that they have justified true beliefs If they believe that some fact is true and they think that that belief is justified. If you believe in justified true beliefs then surely it undermines the paradigm which wants to get rid of knowledge. The knowledge and non-knowledge views would be indistinguishable from a person's perspective from a practical viewpoint. My point is then not so much about whether knowledge actually exists in the JTB sense but whether someone should logically believe they have knowledge in the JTB sense under your scheme. I see you have specified your definition of reasonable though. I assumed that reasonable was more or less synonymous with justification since at face value when I think of someone having a reasonable belief then I think they are justifed in it, but maybe I should have anticipated some difference. Thinking more deeply though, I guess justification is complicated and I don't think I can even define the limits too well of where justification starts and ends.
At the same time, I don't think this affects my argument too much; but again, the more I think about this, the more complicated it seems to get. We can talk about someone believing something is a true when they have no uncertainty; we can also talk about someone believing their belief is reasonable or justified. Presumably they wouldn't assent to a belief that they didn't think was reasonable but if they were open to believing that some of those reasonable beliefs were justified then I think they would again be forced to believe that they had knowledge. Neither would I think that it differs from the knowledge position you argue against since someone working unser the assumption that knowlede was possible would also not believe they have knowledge if they didn't believe their belief was totally justified. So as long as a person believe that beliefs can be justified, then they should logically believe that they have knowledge.
>This applies to most conspiracy theorists: they aren't unreasonable because they've come to false conclusions, they're unreasonable because they've supported their false conclusions on the basis of cherrypicked and/or fabricated evidence that's extensively contradicted. Ignoring those contradictions and ignoring the baseless construction of those beliefs is what renders them unreasonable.
>If someone believes the Earth is flat because they're a child in an isolated community that's been told by trusted teachers and parents that the Earth is flat, they're reasonable in holding that belief.
If someone holds a belief reasonably because they have been taught it and don't know better then why can't someone have a reasonable belief from cherry picked/fabricated evidence. I think these two sources of knowledge are blurry because on one hand, the taught knowledge in the isolated community is going to be due to error/fabrication/cherry picking/deception while on the otherhand someone who holds their views despite counter evidence is going to subjectively feel that they are being reasonable and they cannot help that. They feel that the counter evidence they are shown is inadequate just as the non-conspiratorial person would feel about the evidence they are given by the conspiracy theorist; If the evidence doesn't seem reasonable to them, how can they help that? In their logic, what they have been shown just doesn't count as counter evidence. In your words, they come to conclusions about the counter evidenceu that they feel subjectively to be most logical. These may not actually be logically sound, but they have to make do with the best they're capable of.
Now, I do think that some beliefs seem more unreasonable to me than others (like conspiratorial ones) but its doesn't seem straightforward to defeat a skeptic purely with reason. Neither does there seem to be a straightforward divide between reasonable and unreasonable. For instance, some Christians may think their views are totally reasonable and conspiracy theorists views are totally unreasonable; but then again, I might think believing God is totally unreasonable. It doesn't seem sufficient to resolve the problem of skeptical hypotheses purely by "reasonable beliefs" if a person, specifically a skeptic, thinks the skeptical hypothesis is reasonable.
Base_Six OP t1_jd49j0w wrote
You can believe that you have JTB knowledge, but at that point what we're talking about is no different than any justified belief we possess. After all, we don't hold beliefs that we consider false. I think you could even reasonably describe a "Reasonable Belief" as one in which we ought to believe is justified and true, or to say it differently, that we believe is JTB knowledge.
The difference comes in terms of how we view a belief that is false. Under a JTB conception of knowledge, we usually say that someone can't actually know something that is false. While you can believe that you know that the Earth is flat, you can't actually know it because it's round. Under a Reasonable Belief paradigm, you can have a reasonable but incorrect belief. If someone believes something that's incorrect because they've got deficient evidence, that doesn't make their belief unreasonable.
What makes something unreasonable is if the justification we use to construct that belief isn't logically sound. For instance, cherrypicking evidence to support a belief is logically fallacious, so any belief that's supported based on cherrypicked evidence is unreasonable. This is the case even if the belief is true: coming to the correct conclusion doesn't mean we used logically sound methods to arrive at that conclusion. The difference between being taught something that's based on cherrypicked evidence and doing the cherrypicking yourself is that in the former case, you don't have the evidence necessary to tell that there's cherrypicking happening. That said, if we're aware that evidence and teaching can be flawed then we logically ought to check our sources. We should understand how our sources constructed their beliefs, as much as possible, and grant credence or disbelief to those sources appropriately.
Different people ought to come to different conclusions about a belief if they start with different evidence or different premises. Conspiratorial thinking is what renders a belief unreasonable, not the conclusions it generates.
HamiltonBrae t1_jddu4gn wrote
>You can believe that you have JTB knowledge
&nsbp;
Yes, I just think that under the reasonable belief paradigm that this is a contradiction. I think the idea of believing certain things are true has to be given up or surrogated with something else like the belief that something is empirically adequate. The contradiction could just be ignored I guess but arguably that also undermines the point of doing this kind of thinking which I think is to reduce things like that; after all, why was the reasonable belief paradign asserted in the first place. I think everyone probably inevitably tolerates some level of contradiction or paradox in their views though.
>The difference between being taught something that's based on cherrypicked evidence and doing the cherrypicking yourself is that in the former case, you don't have the evidence necessary to tell that there's cherrypicking happening.
I don't think you have the evidence to tell there is cherrypicking happening when you do it yourself either though. You think your picking of evidence is completely reasonable and isn't cherry picked at all. On the contrary, you will think the opposition are cherry picking evidence and ignoring your evidence.
>That said, if we're aware that evidence and teaching can be flawed then we logically ought to check our sources.
Yes, but we have more confidence in some sources or evidence than others to the point we don't think we need to check. We would consider this reasonable yet its possible the confidence is misplaced (and often is).
>and grant credence or disbelief to those sources appropriately.
And what is appropriate will seem different to different people.
>Different people ought to come to different conclusions about a belief if they start with different evidence or different premises. Conspiratorial thinking is what renders a belief unreasonable, not the conclusions it generates.
Its hard to see what separates conspiratorial from reasonable here because they are just coming from different evidences and premises too.
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