Timeline for How does fallibilism not collapse into skepticism?
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11 events
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| Oct 27, 2023 at 5:11 | comment | added | user21820 | I disagree with genes though. The vast majority of people do not reliably form beliefs. The few that do are very often freely choosing to do so despite their ingrained genetic tendency to just go with their 'gut feelings'. | |
| Oct 27, 2023 at 5:10 | comment | added | user21820 | Perfect answer... Well, fallibly perfect but good enough. =P | |
| Oct 26, 2023 at 20:11 | comment | added | causative♦ | @Numa But in the moment, in the present, the evolutionary history is largely irrelevant to us. We find ourselves in possession of mental faculties that work a certain way, and that's simply the hand we're dealt, and we reason and make choices from there according to what suits us. I find it suiting to put more trust in reasoning methods that have usually worked for me and others in the past, so that's what I do. If you don't find that suiting, feel free to do otherwise. | |
| Oct 26, 2023 at 20:06 | comment | added | causative♦ | The causal reason you grant trust to such processes is that you are the result of an optimization in your genes and culture that led you and others like you to that trust-granting tendency. Ultimately this is simply a descriptive fact of how we operate; we choose to grant trust to certain (tested, usually reliable) methods of reasoning, and not to others, as a result of the fact that our ancestors who did the same were more successful. | |
| Oct 26, 2023 at 20:03 | comment | added | causative♦ | @Numa You look at the track record. If in the past, your belief forming process reliably (i.e. most of the time) assigns high numbers to beliefs that are rarely defeated, then you can have warranted confidence that a belief with a high assigned number is less likely to be defeated. Another way to look at it is from a reinforcement learning perspective. You select for belief forming processes that have steered you towards high rewards in the past. The better the rewards a belief forming process has - most of the time - steered you towards, the more trust you rationally grant to that process. | |
| Oct 26, 2023 at 19:37 | comment | added | Numa | That some belief is more certain or that some method is more reliable is precisely what I dispute. Imagine your belief forming processes as calculations with different numerical results. Belief A got a value of 4 belief B got a value of 6789. Belief B has a much higher value, and is therefore seemingly much more certain. But all results have a variable with unknown value attached, this is the unknown defeater. This variable could radically alter the results and you have no idea to what extend. How could you say, that any belief is more or less certain, justified or whatever? | |
| Oct 26, 2023 at 19:25 | comment | added | causative♦ | The degree of warranted certainty derives from the method used to produce the belief. If the method used to produce the belief produces very reliable results in general, when used in the way we use it to produce the belief, then we may say that we are very certain of the specific belief. If the method produces less reliable results in general, then we may say we are only fairly certain of the specific belief, or just moderately confident. Probabilistic reasoning is an example of a method that is able to evaluate its own reliability. Other methods are typically evaluated by their track record. | |
| Oct 26, 2023 at 19:19 | comment | added | causative♦ | @Numa I said "rationally perfectly certain." If you could ever have a rational justification for being perfectly certain (you can't), then there cannot be any unknown defeaters. If there could be unknown defeaters, then it wouldn't be rational to be perfectly certain. Moving on, when you talk about beliefs being "more or less certain," we should understand this as being about f-certainty (fallible certainty) rather than perfect certainty. Two beliefs may be defeasible, but one may be much more certain, because the chance of each belief being defeated is not the same. | |
| Oct 26, 2023 at 19:03 | comment | added | Numa | Thanks for your response. Two things to that: I understand that we continue these weaker concept of knowledge under the same name as the "original" concept for practical reasons. But I asked for a theoretical justification. I think it is especially problematic, as the weaker concept borrows much of it's authority from the original concept. Second is that it's not even really about absolute certainty. EVERY belief, no matter how certain, is threatened by unknown defeaters in just the same way that includes the degrees of certitude we ascribe. So really no belief is more or less certain. | |
| Oct 26, 2023 at 17:54 | history | edited | causative♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 26, 2023 at 17:46 | history | answered | causative♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |