Transcript Document 7258886

"... there are known knowns..."
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are
always interesting to me, because as we know, there
are known knowns; there are things we know we
know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say
we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we
don't know we don't know. - Donald Rumsfeld
Questions for Thought
Can you trust your “intuition”?
Is there a limit to “human reason”?
Are there things we cannot know? If so, how do you
know there are things we cannot know? What are
they? If you know what there are (things that you
don’t know), then do you really not know them?
Does knowledge come from experience?
Can we be certain about our beliefs?
How do you know if what you think is true is really
true?
What is truth?
Are some things true even if we don’t yet know them?
Epistemology is…
…the study of knowledge & theories of knowing.
The epistemologist wants to know how we can
distinguish between opinion and knowledge.
Can YOU distinguish between opinion and
knowledge?
How do you know if a thing is true and/or real?
LET’S PLAY A GAME…
Which of the following can you say that you know is true?
( Be prepared to be able to explain WHY you think it is true.)
You exist.
It will rain tomorrow.
The sun rose yesterday.
God exists.
It’s real if I touch it.
It’s real if I can think it.
The cat is on the mat.
Tigers are mammals.
I exist.
All fat cats are fat.
Two plus two equals four.
Every event has a cause.
It’s real if I see it.
Golden mountains exist.
No bachelors are married.
The moon is lavender.
If line A were extended, which
would be its continuation – B or C?
A. Theory: RATIONALISM
Rationalism is a theory grounded on the idea
that some things are true (whether or not I
have ever or will ever experience them) and
that I can “reason them out” in order to know
they are true.
Even if I have never seen a “fat cat,” I know
what “fat” means and what “cat” means, so I
can reason out that a “fat cat” would be “fat” –
even if I had never seen a fat cat (or even a
skinny one, for that matter).
Math problems (2 + 2 = 4) are determined by
using reason.
.
By definition, a bachelor is not married, and if he
ever gets married, he will not longer be a
bachelor. You know that by using reason.
Most Rationalists also believe that some ideas
are already built into our minds at birth, and
these innate ideas (as they are called) are
part of the hardwiring of our minds that help us
make sense of our sensory experiences.
Innate ideas are true and exist in our minds even
before our minds have developed to the point
of being able to think about them.
How do we know that innate ideas are true? By
direct intellectual intuition
. (reason).
Sensation does not tell us that “Every event has
a cause.” Reason tells us that.
Hence the Rationalist believe that knowledge is
a priori (or prior to and independent of our
actual experiences.
We know things not learned from sensation,
and we can prove things are true without
reference to sensation.
We can reason it out, and are proofs are
deductive (meaning that the conclusion
follows necessarily from our premises).
B. Theory: EMPIRICISM
Empiricism is an epistemological theory that
says the only things we can “know” (for certain)
are things that we have actually experienced
through our senses (i.e., via taste, smell, touch,
sight, and hearing).
Anything else, whether we have read about it in a
book or even a college professor has taught us
about it, can “sound” true and even “be” true,
but we cannot know whether in fact it actually is
true until we can experience it for ourselves.
Empiricism claims that prior to sensation, the
mind is empty – like a blank piece of paper or
.
blank slate (tabula rasa).
Sensation makes impressions on this slate, like
pressing a stylus into a writing tablet made of
wax or clay.
From those impressions, we learn through other
experience what is true or false, and then over
the years begin to build up a storehouse of
knowledge.
So for an Empiricist, our knowledge comes a
posteriori (after experience). We cannot
know anything is true until we have
experienced it.
If we want to be able to verify that our knowledge
is true about something, we have to look for
.
other experiences to prove it.
We also cannot say for certain that what has
happened some way over and over again in the
past will happen the same way in the future. At
best, we can say that it will “probably” happen
that way again in the future. So our knowledge
is inductive when we make conclusions about
future events based on present or past
experiences.
Of course, our inductive conclusions may be
wrong, but probability is the best we can hope
for if we want to know something about the
world in which we live.
Rationalism v. Empiricism
innate ideas
reason
a priori
deductive
tabula rasa
sensation
a posteriori
inductive
REALISM: Knowing
the “Really Real”
EMPIRICISTS
Naïve or Direct Realism – What you see is
what you get (like a photograph); our sense
put us in touch with reality
Dog in the world
Dog in the mind
.
Dog in the world
Representative or Indirect Realism (John
Locke) – The mind “represents” the external
world to itself but does not duplicate it (e.g.,
you see a shaggy dog, and the mind sees this
or this
figure)
. Subjective Realism
(George Berkeley) –
Reality exists only if
there is some
“subject” who is
perceiving it as an
idea; fortunately, God
is always perceiving,
even if we are not
Q: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to
hear it, does it make a noise?
A: Yes. God hears it.
.
RATIONALIST:
Cartesian Realism –
What you see is not
what you get (since
you’re getting
geometrical figures).
Reality is in the mind;
it’s not “out there” to
see; ideas (and
innate ones at that)
are “real.”
dog
C. Pseudo-Theory:
SKEPTICISM = Doubt
How do you know, if you know?
Take “God” for example. The skeptic would say,
“I think we just believe or we don’t, but we can’t
really know whether God exists or not.”
If knowledge is not certain (via reason or the
senses), the skeptic says that we should just
suspend judgment or doubt both sides.
Everyone is a skeptic or doubter at one time or
another in his or her life. Common-sense
skepticism keeps us from being too gullible at
times.
Scientists and some philosophers use a kind of
skepticism called “methodological
.
skepticism” in their search for truth.
In order to be certain of something (such as the
temperature at which water freezes), they begin
by doubting the original hypothesis and then
conduct several experiments under different
circumstances to see if the evidence supports
the original claim/hypothesis.
Absolute skepticism says that we can never
know anything for certain (without the possibility
of doubt), so the best we can do is act on what
seems to work (even if it’s not true).
.The sentence in this box
is false.
Everything I say is a lie.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers
exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will
instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more
bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which
states that this has already happened. - Douglas Adams
Rene’ Descartes – a French
Rationalist
Radical Doubt (and the four-rule
Method)
Cartesian Dualism 
Two Substances from God: Mind
(thought) and Body (extension)
Primary qualities (measurable) are in
objects and quantifiable; and
Secondary qualities are in the mind
Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I
am)
Four innate ideas: self, identity,
substance, and God
Descartes’ METHOD
The progress and certainty of mathematical knowledge, Descartes
supposed, provide an emulable model for a similarly productive
philosophical method, characterized by four simple rules:
1.Accept as true only what is indubitable (not doubtable).
2.Divide every question into manageable parts.
3.Begin with the simplest issues and ascend to the more complex.
4.Review frequently enough to retain the whole argument at once.
This quasi-mathematical procedure for the achievement of
knowledge is typical of a rationalistic approach to epistemology.
Descartes’ Meditations I & II
I have accepted many falsehoods as true
I am now going to doubt everything and start
only accepting back as true what I can know
for certain
Is this my hand? How do I know I have a body?
Am I a madman to accept a false reality?
Maybe I am dreaming. In my dreams, things
seem very real but are not.
Well, at least 2 + 3 = 5 whether I am awake or
dreaming. Or is it?
There are some things which seem more
reasonable to believe .than to deny, and God’s
existence is one of them
I will believe only those things about which I
have “clear and distinct” ideas in my mind
Let’s suppose that instead of God who is the
source of all Truth that an evil demon exists
who wants to deceive me
Color, shape, sound, and other external things
are just dreamed illusions which the demon
uses to ensnare my judgment; body, shape,
extension, motion, and place are fantasies
Memory is also unreliable
Although Descartes probably
.
did not say this, he could
have, since he would agree
with it.
We know that our
senses lie to us,
else how could we
say that feet smell
and noses run ?
If I don’t have a body, then it follows that “I” don’t
exist
.
But surely I must exist if it’s “me” who is
convinced that I am always deceived by the evil
demon
But whether I am convinced or deceived or just
thinking about being deceived, I must finally
conclude that the statement “I am, I exist” must
be true whenever I state it or mentally consider
it even if I am saying “I am deceived”
But what is this “I”? I’m not sure, but as long as
I’m thinking, there is some “I” that must exist
who is thinking
If I completely stopped thinking, I would cease to
exist. “I think, therefore I.am” (Cogito ergo sum)
Descartes walked into a bar and sat down on a stool.
The bartender asks, “Would you like a beer?”
Descartes says, “I think not,” and - poof - he disappeared.
But what am I then? A thinking thing. And what
is that? Something that doubts, understands,
affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and also senses
and has mental images.
It is me who seems to gain awareness of physical
objects through the senses. But these things
are unreal, since I am dreaming.
Properly speaking, sensing is just thinking
.
Take for example this
piece of wax.
The candle is hard &
round; and it
smells and tastes
sweet, as if it were
straight from the
honeycomb.
When it is heated, everything having to do with
the taste, smell, sight, touch, and hearing is
.
changed; yet the wax remains.
Let’s remove everything that doesn’t properly
belong to the wax (since those things were lost
when the wax was heated).
My idea of the wax remains real, and I have
grasped that with my mind.
Although the wax changes when heated, there
still exists some measurable characteristics in
the wax, so they must exist in the wax as well.
However, color, smell, taste, etc must exist in my
mind and not in the wax, since they did not
remain in the wax.
No! We know that we can have “clear and distinct”
ideas about the rest of the world, because we have an
innate idea of God.
God is the only guarantee that:
(1) our clear and distinct ideas are true, and
(2) we are not being tricked by an evil & wicked demon
The Cartesian Circle
CARTESIAN REALISM
(Radical Dualism)
.
GOD
(Infinite substance)
MIND (soul)
(will)
|
Thought (takes up no space)
(my true identity – “I”)
|
|
affirm
perceiving
denial
thinking
volition
understanding
etc
reason
(intelligence = natural light)
Color, smell, taste, etc are Secondary Properties;
they are in the mind, but not in the object
BODY (material)
(finite substance)
|
Extension (occupies space)
(essential attribute)
|
|
figure
size
quantity
shape
number
location
time
motion
(no mention of "force")
Primary Qualities – measurable
and can be known by reason
MIND and BODY are totally separate but work like 2 clocks keeping perfect time.
David Hume – a Scottish
Empiricist
1. First Principle: We cannot have a thought which
has not been experienced
2. Conceivability Principle: what is conceivable is
possible; if the contrary is also conceivable, then
what was first conceived cannot be an absolute
certainty
3. PUN (Principle of the Uniformity of Nature):
experienced regularities will lead to expectations
of the same regularities in the future
Analytic v. Synthetic
Hume said everything about the
world can be expressed either
as an Analytic Statement
(Relations of Ideas) or a
Synthetic Statement (Matters
of Fact)
However, only Matters of Fact
can be used to describe reality,
because they come from
experience
ANALYTIC :: Relations of Ideas
1) negation leads to selfcontradiction
2) a priori
3) true by definition
4) necessarily true
.
SYNTHETIC :: Matters of Fact
1) negation does not lead to selfcontradiction
2) a posteriori
3) not true by definition
4) if true, not necessarily true;
could be false
It sounds like Hume's a bad empiricist since he's admitting a priori
necessary truths (analytical statements), BUT he said that the
analytic Relations of Ideas are TAUTOLOGICAL (always true,
redundant, and repetitious):
All sisters are siblings
2+3=5
All bachelors are men
PQ, P, Thus Q
There is no new information about the world in an analytic
statement, only information about the meanings of words. So
they are basically useless for telling us about reality.
So the rationalistic dream of reality which is defined "a
priori" (innate ideas) and thus
must be necessarily true
.
has been shot out of the water, since "a priori" truths
aren't descriptions of anything.
Only synthetic claims (matters of fact) can correctly
describe reality, and these claims are necessarily "a
posteriori" (learned by experience which can be traced
back to the ideas when our senses first encountered
the information).
Only synthetic statements can give us true facts about
the world, but we can know they are true only by
verifying them with experience.
The only way you would know that the statement “The
cat is on the mat” is AFTER you looked to see if the
cat really is on the mat, and that statement would be
true for only as long as the cat actually is on the mat.
If he gets up, the statement is no longer true.
ANALYTIC
RELATION OF IDEAS (knowable)
mathematics, proportions, qualities,
resemblance, contrariety, quantity
.
1. can't change relation without changing
the idea
2. can't conceive contrary that ideas
are not related
3. intuition and demonstration
(measurement)
4. knowledge and certainty of
relationships
5. independent of the world (only
ideas)
6. justification is independent of
experience
SYNTHETIC
MATTERS OF FACT (believable)
experience, causal relations,
space and time, identity
1. CAN change
2. CAN conceive contrary
3. perception and causal inference
4. belief and probability
5. contingent upon existence
(Does X cause Y?)
6. justification requires experience
How do we learn/know
from our senses?
Impression: immediate sense data/element
from sense organs; sensation
Idea: reflection on sense data
(memory/recollection of impression)
Complex idea: composite consisting of
several ideas
False Ideas
False ideas come from combining unrelated
sense impressions, like “golden mountain” or
“angel”; we have an idea of gold and of
mountain (or wings and man) and then wrongly
combine them into a complex idea.
.
Hume says, “Not every event has a cause”
(think PUN).
There’s no cause and effect (just priority and
contiguity), & there is no necessary connection
between events.
There’s no personal identity or ego (just
constancy and coherence of similar ideas).
Habit causes us to “expect” certain things (e.g., that our friend
looks older after 5 years of not seeing them seems predictable);
we’re not surprised by the changes
KEY: w=woodpile
d=during fire
l=a lit fire
c=glowing coals
Continued perceptions:
r=roaring fire
a=ashes
w--l--r--d--c--a
coherence:
w--l--(leave)--a
The imagination fills in the gaps.
Habit causes us to expect that a roaring fire will end in ashes.
1. How many f ’s are in the following sentence?
Frank followed a few of the fellows toward the fiery circle at
the front of the forum, where Frank fell off the final stair and
landed flat on his back.
2. Read aloud the message in the triangle:
I
see
the sun’s
slowing dying rays
shining the colors of the
the rainbow above the gray horizon.
If you’re a good reader, you don’t look at every
.
word, much less at every letter, when you read.
Your eyes pick up a few clues, and then your
brain fills in the rest.
This is Hume’s point.
Our brain wants to believe that there is “cause
and effect,” and it wants to believe that we have
a “continuous ego” (personal identity), so it fills
in any missing details which might suggest
otherwise.
By the way, there were 16 “f”s and two “the”s.
Soren Kierkegaard – a Dane
Kierkegaard thought
Descartes was correct to
begin with "I think,
therefore I am" but that
Descartes was wrong in
equating the self with
thought.
“To think is one thing, to
exist is another."
I can think and say many things about
. I am an American;
myself: "I am a teacher;
I am a natural blonde"; but I cannot think
about my existence.
I cannot think it, rather I must live it.
My lived existence is equated with passion,
decision, and action.
Kierkegaard was NOT particularly interested in
"objective thought or truth"; he believed that
philosophy begins with "wonder" (like
Aristotle said) rather than with doubt.
Objective (also analytic) truths:
.
(1) there exists a criteria of "truth"
(2) math, science, history (2+3=5; Caesar
crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC)
(3) recognizable standards to determine truth
(4) no essential relationship to human existence
(i.e. if I found that one of them were false, I
wouldn't become a different person)
(5) Kierkegaard is uninterested in "Objective
truths”; the meaningful knowledge for the
individual, he thinks, is found in “Subjective
truths.”
Subjective truths (thought):
.
(1) there is no criteria of "truth"
(2) personal values, such as religious and ethical
claims
(Kant thought that there was something
underlying the "value" of things)
(3) subjective: if I claim "God is love" and you
challenge me, I cannot appeal to any objective
criterion of truth to justify my assertion
- You can't talk about "death," an "afterlife," or
really anything about the future (e.g. "I'll make
an A on the next test, if I'm not dead."
- If we recognize that we might be dead at
that time, we will have. grasped the
"subjective" truth about our death
- The discovery of one's death becomes a
pretext for the discovery of one's "existence"
(another subjective truth)
(4) major difference between "objective" and
"subjective truths" is that the subjective ones
are pretty much what we are and do -- the
actions we perform are the result of the
decisions that we make, which reflect the
values we have chosen
(5) subjective truths help us order our priorities,
.
clarify our values, recover the self from its
alienation into social roles, an concertizes and
intensifies our existence
(6) values are not grounded in certainty by
accepted on faith. Love and faith do not
merely happen; they must be cultivated and
formed
(7) BUT it is a kind of "faith" in the uncertain; it
takes a “leap of faith” to be able to act on a
subjective that truth that cannot be either
analytically or empirically verified
Kierkegaard once walked into the Danish
Lutheran Church and accused them of being
hypocrites, saying, “You either believe that
Jesus died and was raised again on the third
day or you don’t.”
It’s an Either/Or deal. You can say you believe
something is true then act like it is true for only
one hour each week and then act contrary to
that believe for the other 167 hours of the week.
If you truly believe it, your actions will show what
you believe. Words can be lies, but HOW a
person acts displays what he or she truly
believes.
But there is a problem. Since I (or you) am
supposed to act on what I believe, if my actions
.
are not those you would expect to see for
someone who believes a certain thing, does
that mean that I do not actually believe it if I am
not acting the way you think I should be acting?
How can you know what I believe?
This is a tricky question because it’s subjective.
What action must I do in order to “show” you that
I believe something?
And if you need to know that what I say I believe
is true (for me) before you take some action
based on what you believe is true (for you)
about me, then…….well, you can see where this is going!!!
Let’s pretend that I said “I love you.”
In your mind, a person who loves you would bring little
presents and always telling you that you are the most
wonderful person in the world.
But in my mind, being in love means spending as much
time as you can with the other person, even if that just
means sitting in the same room and not talking (and
you can forget the presents, because I believe the best
present you can get is knowing that I love you).
If I am not showing you that I am “in love” in the manner
you expect, will you believe that I am not in love with
you?
I am showing you that I love you
according to my definition of
how a person in love should act.
Because truth is “subjective” according to
Kierkegaard, “you” get .to decide whether or not
you think I am being truthful in my actions and
about whether or not you think I really love you.
And of you are trying to decide whether or not
you want to spend the rest of your life with me,
it is very important for you to be able to believe
that I really am in love with you before you act
on your belief (whatever that ends up being).
But there are some things, he says, that even if
you can’t be certain about them, it is still better
for you to choose to believe that it’s true.
Truth and Religion
Kierkegaard said that truth is "subjective." By this he did not
mean that it doesn't matter what we think or believe. He
meant that the really important truths are "personal." Only
these truths are “true for me.”
An important question, for example, is whether Christianity is
true. This is not a question one can relate to theoretically
or academically. For a person who "understands himself
in life," it is a question of life and death. It is not something
you sit and discuss for discussion's sake. It is something
to be approached with the greatest passion and sincerity.
If you fall into the water, you have no theoretical interest in
. It is neither "interesting" nor
whether or not you will drown.
"uninteresting" whether there are alligators in the water.
It is a question of life or death.
So we must distinguish between the philosophical question
of whether God exists and the individual's relationship to
the same question, a situation in which each and every
man is utterly alone.
Fundamental questions such as these can only be
approached through faith. Things we can know through
reason, or knowledge, are according to Kierkegaard
totally unimportant.
Faith is the most important factor in religious questions.
Kierkegaard wrote: "If I am capable
of grasping God
.
objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I
cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself
in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the
objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep,
over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving
my faith.“
In other words, “faith” in God is something you must believe
is true, but because God’s existence cannot be proven
empirically (or even analytically – despite what Descartes
thought), faith in God must, at best, be a “subjective truth”
– it is “true for you” and thus you must act on it.
Many had previously tried to
.
prove the existence of God - or
at any rate to bring him within
the bounds of rationality.
But if you content yourself with
some such proof or logical
argument, you suffer a loss of
faith, and with it, a loss of
religious passion.
What matters is not whether
Christianity is true, but whether
it is true for you.
PQ
QR
PR
A famous ‘proof’
for why it is
logical to have
faith in the
existence of
God is called
PASCAL’S
WAGER.
PASCAL’S WAGER
God exists
Believe
God
exists
Believe
No God
exists
No God exists
Theory: EVIDENTIALISM
William K. Clifford, a British mathematician interested in
philosophical and religious topics, wrote an essay entitled
“The Ethics of Belief.”
His argument represents an epistemological position called
evidentialism. Evidentialism holds that we should not accept
any statement as true unless we have good evidence to
support its truth.
Our beliefs about the truth of things – be they moral, religions, or
scientific – must meet the appropriate epistemic standards.
Practical standards, such as aiding me in accomplishing certain
goals or possibly resulting in my eternal happiness, will not
do.
Theory: PRAGMATISM
(here come the Americans!)
William James wrote a famous reply to Clifford, called
“The Will to Believe.” James advocated a philosophy
called Pragmatism.
James characterized pragmatism (from the Greek word
pragma, meaning “action”) as a method for settling
philosophical disputes.
The method was based on a distinctive theory of truth,
called the pragmatic theory of truth.
According to the pragmatic theory of truth, some position p
is true if and only if that “p is true” works.
.
“And what does works mean?” you ask.
James used words like “useful,” “adaptive,” “serviceable,”
“satisfying,” “verifiable,” and “agreeing with reality.”
He also asserted that for any position to “work” and hence to
be taken as true, it must be consistent with what we
already take to be true, and it must be in agreement with
our sense experience.
Thus, my belief that “my fat blind cat is on the rug by the fire”
works as long as it is consistent with my other beliefs (he
is not outside or in the kitchen eating my dinner or
swimming in the fish pond, etc.), and when I look at the
rug, I get “fat-blind-cat” type sensations.
THEORIES OF TRUTH
1) PRAGMATIC – True assumptions are those which provoke
actions with desirable results.
2) CORRESPONDENCE – p is true if and only if p
corresponds to the facts; if there is no “verifiable fact” out
there to prove p is true, it does not matter what you believe
or do. If you tell me “The cat is on the rug,” that statement
is true only if there actually is a cat on an actual rug at the
actual time you tell me that.
3) COHERENCE – p is true only if it is consistent and
“harmonious” with other true statements in a specified
system (such as math or science). For example, the truth of
the statement “My fat blind cat is on the rug” depends upon
a whole host of other statements also being true, such as “I
have a cat,” “My cat is blind,” “My cat is fat,” “The rug
exists,” and so forth.
William James, and other pragmatic American philosophers,
were tired of the rationalist and
empiricist games of the
.
European intellectuals.
Frankly, they didn’t care how many angels could dance on a
pinhead (or if you could “prove” they exist). The outcome of
such a debate wouldn’t make a difference in people’s lives.
James accused both the Correspondence and Coherence
theories of being useful only to intellectuals and related to
truths only if these “truths” existed prior to and independent of
inquiry and investigation. For example, all those “other
questions” in the Coherence theory would have to already be
true before I could even begin to ask if the statement “My fat
blind cat is on the rug.”
For James, truth is something dynamic (not static) – something
that happens to ideas when they lead humans into even more
satisfactory experiences.
Pragmatism, our American philosophers hoped, might provide
. useless things (such as
an end to empty speculation about
counting angels).
Pragmatism was a conscious rejection of what seemed to be the
stagnant methods of philosophy.
It was a turning away from abstraction and a turning “towards
concreteness and adequacy, towards fact, towards action,
towards power.”
KEY IDEA: Knowledge and action for practical living.
Knowledge is guided by our interests and values, and, thus, truth
is “value-instantiated.” Values are intelligently appropriated by
us to the extent that they satisfactorily resolve problems and
are judged worth retaining.
James wrote, “Ideas become true
. into
just so far as they help us get
satisfactory relations with other
parts of our experience.”
He rejected the traditional idea of
truth as being fixed and
unchanging – truth is the
unfolding meaning of “lived
experience” (yes, that is
William James
Kierkegaard’s phrase).
Truth becomes true, is made true, by events. It is revealed
through lived experience rather than through logical proofs
or laboratory experiments.
Grant an idea or belief to be true, what concrete difference
.
will
its being true make in any one’s actual life?...What, in short,
is the truth’s cash-value in experiential terms? (James)
Whether the earth is flat or not may not make much
difference to me, but whether you love me or not
certainly does; the latter has a “cash-value” in terms of
my lived experience.
Pragmatists care more about the results than the theories;
something is true, James says, if it makes a difference, if
its power to explain clarifies our understanding and
changes our lives.
Being an agnostic is not a choice for James; to believe or
. option.” Agnostically
not is “a live, forced, momentous
sitting on the fence is impossible.
James complained that Clifford’s Evidentalism was based on
static epistemic standards and that Clifford’s refusal to
admit practical standards not only denies the reality of
how human beings come to hold many of their beliefs but
also restricts us to a very limited number of beliefs that we
can know are true.
Clifford’s Evidentialism forbids us to have beliefs about
some of the most important matters that make human life
worth living.
On at least three different occasions, James contended that
. is justified.”
“Belief beyond the evidence
(1) When you are confronted with what he called a “genuine
option” that cannot be decided on evidential grounds,
you have a right to decide the issue according to you
“personal nature.”
(2) When faced with a situation when belief in a fact is
necessary for the existence of that fact, you have a right
to believe beyond the evidence.
(3) In a situation when belief in a true proposition is
necessary for getting the evidence of its truth, you are
entitled to believe.
In his article, James writes:
. Our passional nature not only
The thesis I defend, briefly stated, is this:
lawfully may, but must, decide an option between
propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by
its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say,
under such circumstances, ‘Do no decide but leave the
question open’ is itself a passional decision – just like
deciding yes or no – and is attended with same risk of losing
the truth...(280).
James thinks that it is better to “let truth take a chance” than, as
Clifford recommends, to believe nothing and “keep you mind
in suspense forever” rather than “incur the awful risk of
believing lies” (281). Without taking the risk of believing, there
also will be no opportunity for “the blessings of real
knowledge” either (281).
.
Any Questions?
.