Justified True Belief: can anyone tell which beliefs are true?

[BestGuessYet]

@j_j

As a “belief is action” pragmatist, I’d frame this as our reluctance to change our approach. It’s like we are ashamed to back down and try something else.

Years ago I read a Woody Allen book and only remember one joke from it.

A staid gentleman goes to a play and trips and falls from the upper level into the crowd below. He goes back every night for a week and falls again, just to prove it wasn’t a mistake.

@j_j

And yet this is the great intellectual virtue. Step back, be creative, try something else. Modify your approach in terms of feedback. And so on.

Yes, I agree. Epistemic humility works well in both the world of thought and the world of meat. The best business people are those who toss aside unproductive behavior and search for new ways. They are focused on profit, not married to a particular way of reaching it.

Same with my horizon. If I make a mistake and look foolish, well, that’s just an unfortunate event that happened. The horizon is the goal. Let me figure the best way of moving toward it.

@j_j

I look back now and see how many times a new thinker knocked me sideways. Or just feedback from others.

Oh, yeah. When I began debate years ago, I got my teeth kicked a lot. Still do from time to time.

@j_j

Usually it takes a while for the feedback to sink in. Especially the more our ego is involved and the more it’s an ugly vibe.

Right. Our beliefs are part of us. It took me a while to realize that I needed to be gentler and more accommodating when attacking other beliefs, and I appreciate it when people do that with me. A guy who attacks me out of the gate is going to get casually swatted or else ignored unless/until he starts taking the fight seriously.

@j_j

I try to just excuse myself when the vibe gets ugly. But there have been times that I lost myself in it in the usual way. Futility. Waste.

Oh, yeah. I have definitely been there. But I’m an ape, so….

@j_j

Yeah. To me this simple point is a deep one. It’s not so easy to stand up and speak from the “I” without leaning on something “magical.” This is one reason I find it frustrating that thinkers don’t acknowedge the “I believe” implicit in their assertions. Like the words aren’t coming out of a particular hungry mouth.

It’s a hard thing to face, that we are each building our personal understanding of this place. We want to believe there are Holy Words or some Prophet who really did know what was going on.

I’ve noticed that even Plato can serve for that. Apparently, he can be The Answer I Need.

[Frank]

@BestGuessYet

I’m curious if anyone disagrees.

No, but there’s a reason people don’t regularly accept that they have no criteria for determining if what they’re seeing is real. Let me lay out the mechanics of the reality crisis:

As you armchair philosophize, skepticism is an intellectual toy. It’s a vastly different situation if you’re under threat. That’s because in response to threat, you try to tell yourself not to panic, and just think things through. Rationality becomes a weapon in your arsenal, and a powerful one. The paralyzing power of fear is diminished in the face of the almightly intellect.

But imagine that right as you’re being threatened by the greatest of all monsters, which we call the Unknown, you realize that rationality can’t really help you, because it can’t deliver reliable facts to you. You very well may be buying drinks from a bartender who can’t possibly be there (as Jack Torrance does in the Shining).

The pending crisis involves paralysis in a state of fear. The will to live should be allied with restrictions on the intellect.

[BestGuessYet]

@Frank

No, but there’s a reason people don’t regularly accept that they have no criteria for determining if what they’re seeing is real.

Hi, Frank. That’s nowhere near my position. I have all sorts of criteria for determining my best guess about reality. We all do, or we couldn’t survive.

@Frank

As you armchair philosophize, skepticism is an intellectual toy. It’s a vastly different situation if you’re under threat.

Yes, we are meat creatures, forced to our decisions.

But I don’t see the philosophizing as an intellectual toy. It teaches us humility, and I consider that a very fine thing to possess. It helps us navigate this place more surely.

@Frank

But imagine that right as you’re being threatened by the greatest of all monsters, which we call the Unknown, you realize that rationality can’t really help you, because it can’t deliver reliable facts to you.

I don’t really believe in facts. They are just ferocious claims by apes that they own reality itself.

I work by best guessing.

@Frank

The pending crisis involves paralysis in a state of fear. The will to live should be allied with restrictions on the intellect.

Well, when I see an apparent bus hurling toward me, I do not sit down in the street and try to work out the finer points of its existence. I just move out of the way.

Practical armchair philosopher here.

[Frank]

@BestGuessYet

Hi, Frank. That’s nowhere near my position. I have all sorts of criteria for determining my best guess about reality.

That’s exactly what every deluded person says.

@BestGuessYet

Yes, we are meat creatures

You’re not a very good skeptic. You’re fairly certain you know what’s going on.

[BestGuessYet]

@Frank

That’s exactly what every deluded person says.

Ah. Now I see you. Thanks.

@Frank

You’re not a very good skeptic. You’re fairly certain you know what’s going on.

There you are again. Thanks.

[Frank]

@BestGuessYet

Ah. Now I see you. Thanks.

What does that mean?

[BestGuessYet]

@Frank

What does that mean?

Words are the windows to our soul.

You sent me some words.

So now I see you better than I did before.

Now. How about asking me questions about my OP?

That would be great.

[Frank]

@BestGuessYet

How about asking me questions about my OP?

I took the OP to be asking about skepticism. You start by allowing that an apparent reality presents as intrusive, but from your position in a “black and silent cave,” you see that people make opposing statements about the world they supposedly share. Then you posit that we can’t see outside our caves.

You move to JTB, which you assume relies on a correspondence theory of truth. Since you don’t believe we see outside our “caves,” you must conclude that we don’t have access to the truth about the world. Our propositions may be correct, but we don’t know.

Do I understand you correctly?

[Nightingale94]

Hello BestGuessYet, I’m new to the site and still getting my bearings so apologies in advance if I’ve made any mistakes in responding to your original post. Reading through the discussion to date has been fascinating.

I tend to agree with what I understand your position to be in the original post, as further explained in your responses to other posters.

I concur that any one individual in a population is incapable of knowing, in any real way, what is capital “T” truth. I think perception is the best we get.

The point of departure (and perhaps not even, we may be aligned in this, I won’t know until you say so) may be that I see that in order for us to even have this conversation, there has to be a confluence of perceptions of reality to make this so. We have to accept something as “true” even if it isn’t quite what we understand “true” to be in a literal, textual sense.

In order to function, we need to perceive that some modicum of what we sense (e.g., see, touch, hear, feel, taste) is “true” or “real”. So, while an imperfect assumption, this perception substitutes for “truth” to allow us to build societies, bodies of law, and artful debates.

I think in the interest of humility and progress as a species, it behooves us to acknowledge that our perception is not infallible and to engage in a continuous process of improvement of this substituted truth through trial and error from the most mundane aspects to the most complex.

The history of human ingenuity is riddled with examples of accepted “truths,” that have propped up the species, been found fallible after their time, improved upon, and propped up the species again.

I certainly favor the convergence of Kuhn’s paradigms in science with Popper’s requirement for falsifiability. I think, taken together, with a view toward history, we can see the paradigms shift when humility takes hold and we question enshrined “T” truths in the interest of improving the lot for mankind. In addition, save for notable examples (i.e., the Middle Ages and the decline in the late Bronze Age), each time we’ve questioned the paradigm, the species has experienced a boon in quality of life and longevity.

I think there is certainly a benefit to staying curious about where our perceived reality may be at odds with our own self interest, as individuals and as members of species, and to remember that our “truth” is only a tool to engage with and not perfect.

[Scorpion]

@BestGuessYet

Beliefs are generally supported by evidence. So we believe there’s a place called NY because there’s evidence - you could go there, there are pictures of NY, there are mementos people bring back from NY and so on. We don’t believe the claims of religion because there’s no evidence to support them.

[BestGuessYet]

@Frank

I took the OP to be asking about skepticism. You start by allowing that an apparent reality presents as intrusive, but from your position in a “black and silent cave,” you see that people make opposing statements about the world they supposedly share. Then you posit that we can’t see outside our caves.

That’s quite close, although I might quibble with ‘intrusive’.

I don’t find apparent reality so much intrusive as confining, restrictive. It is a thing against which it does no good to deny or ignore. Not unless apparent maiming and death are our goals, I mean.

As for positing that we can’t see out of our caves, I might have agreed with that wording a year or two ago, but I’ve read enough popular neuroscience now to see it as simply an apparent fact of our condition. We get all sorts of sensory signals, but the brain seems to take and organize them and show us some kind of movie about it all. I’ve had lucid dreams (or sleep paralysis—still not sure of the terminology) in which my brain reconstructed my bedroom and convinced me I was lying in it, even though my eyes were closed. I only figured it out because it happened again and again and I began studying it and found discrepancies between the waking room and the dreaming one. A fake nightlight in a corner of the dream room, for example.

@Frank

You move to JTB, which you assume relies on a correspondence theory of truth.

Well, I have to assume. The JTBers I’ve encountered so far seem pretty shy about confirming that for me.

@Frank

Since you don’t believe we see outside our “caves,” you must conclude that we don’t have access to the truth about the world. Our propositions may be correct, but we don’t know.

Yes, that’s how I see it. We have no way to tell in the moment, not as God can supposedly tell. It could be our brains showing us hallucination or showing us reality. Then there’s the whole mess of language. A proposition is made of words and those are gooey.

[Frank]

@BestGuessYet

As for positing that we can’t see out of our caves, I might have agreed with that wording a year or two ago, but I’ve read enough popular neuroscience now to see it as simply an apparent fact of our condition.

There appears to be a contradiction here. You feel confident that you can rely on neuroscience to show that you can’t rely on neuroscience. How do you address that?

@BestGuessYet

Well, I have to assume. The JTBers I’ve encountered so far seem pretty shy about confirming that for me.

JTB is a stab at specifying the proper use of “know.” It just doesn’t make sense to say that Jeff knows that 2+2=8. When we use the word “know” we mean that the object of knowledge is true. We don’t actually have to have access to the Truth though, as the SEP explains:

Relatedly, the idea that a proposition is true does not require that anyone can know or prove that it is true. Not all truths are established truths. If you flip a coin and never check how it landed, it may be true that it landed heads, even if nobody has any way to tell. Truth is a metaphysical, as opposed to epistemological, notion: truth is a matter of how things are, not how they can be shown to be. So when we say that only true things can be known, we’re not (yet) saying anything about how anyone can access the truth. – SEP on JTB

Whether one uses Correspondence or something more deflationary doesn’t really make much difference. Correspondence theory is about defining truth. JTB is about setting out the rules for using “know.”

@BestGuessYet

We have no way to tell in the moment, not as God can supposedly tell.

And here, you aren’t really pinging the Truth part of JTB, it’s justification. A skeptic might argue that that no one has access to justifications for beliefs.

@BestGuessYet

A proposition is made of words and those are gooey.

Strictly speaking, a proposition is an abstract object. It’s not made of words.

[BestGuessYet]

@Nightingale94

Hello BestGuessYet, I’m new to the site and still getting my bearings so apologies in advance if I’ve made any mistakes in responding to your original post. Reading through the discussion to date has been fascinating.

Hi, Nightingale. Good to meet you. And your prose. Well-formed.

@Nightingale94

I concur that any one individual in a population is incapable of knowing, in any real way, what is capital “T” truth. I think perception is the best we get.

Oh, that’s gonna piss some people off. Don’t let them get you down, is my advice.

Most of us seem quite fixated on believing there is a Truth out there, apart from us.

@Nightingale94

The point of departure (and perhaps not even, we may be aligned in this, I won’t know until you say so) may be that I see that in order for us to even have this conversation, there has to be a confluence of perceptions of reality to make this so. We have to accept something as “true” even if it isn’t quite what we understand “true” to be in a literal, textual sense.

I call it the Best Guess Yet and suspect that my own are the finest of them all.

(But doesn’t everyone.)

@Nightingale94

In order to function, we need to perceive that some modicum of what we sense (e.g., see, touch, hear, feel, taste) is “true” or “real”. So, while an imperfect assumption, this perception substitutes for “truth” to allow us to build societies, bodies of law, and artful debates.

Yep. We are apes. We have no choice but to act. When AI gets big enough, though, I’m going to petition to be transferred into the machine. It will make thought so much easier, I think.

@Nightingale94

I think in the interest of humility and progress as a species, it behooves us to acknowledge that our perception is not infallible and to engage in a continuous process of improvement of this substituted truth through trial and error from the most mundane aspects to the most complex.

Yes. That is my sermon in a few words.

@Nightingale94

The history of human ingenuity is riddled with examples of accepted “truths,” that have propped up the species, been found fallible after their time, improved upon, and propped up the species again.

Right. But then there are religion and politics. All sorts of tribalism and certainty. Dangerous, in my view.

@Nightingale94

I certainly favor the convergence of Kuhn’s paradigms in science with Popper’s requirement for falsifiability. I think, taken together, with a view toward history, we can see the paradigms shift when humility takes hold and we question enshrined “T” truths in the interest of improving the lot for mankind. In addition, save for notable examples (i.e., the Middle Ages and the decline in the late Bronze Age), each time we’ve questioned the paradigm, the species has experienced a boon in quality of life and longevity.

I am uneducated in the ways of Kuhn and Popper, but it sounds reasonable to me.

@Nightingale94

I think there is certainly a benefit to staying curious about where our perceived reality may be at odds with our own self interest, as individuals and as members of species, and to remember that our “truth” is only a tool to engage with and not perfect.

I wrote a book about uncertainty, but when I finished it, I thought: “Well, my system of thought—seeing uncertainty as a great positive—will only appeal to the curious.” A person who is not curious may see little value in remaining uncertain.

[BestGuessYet]

@Scorpion

Beliefs are generally supported by evidence.

Sure. We all believe we have supporting evidence. Why else would we believe a thing?

Although I’ve met many who simply leap to belief, come to think of it.

@Scorpion

We don’t believe the claims of religion because there’s no evidence to support them.

So say you, but I have met guys who saw Jesus in a dream.

That’s evidence, isn’t it?

[Nightingale94]

Perhaps there is a value in that dichotomy. Those among us who are “certain” of a thing at any given time, give the thing time to play out. Without the observations that can be derived from this period of holding the thing as “true”, it would be challenging, if not impossible, to build new or better models for accomplishing the desired end.

[BestGuessYet]

@Frank

There appears to be a contradiction here. You feel confident that you can rely on neuroscience to show that you can’t rely on neuroscience. How do you address that?

It sounds like a word puzzle. You use the same word “neuroscience” to point at different things. Some academic philosophers around here might even call it equivocation.

I rely on the study of the human mind to show that we can’t rely on the human mind to certify ultimate truth. (Although it’s just one angle from which I approach the problem.)

Neuroscience shows me the mind’s limitations—not that neuroscience is unreliable.

@Frank

JTB is a stab at specifying the proper use of “know.”

That has been my assumption, and as I’ve said repeatedly, I have no problem with whatever business the academic philosophers are up to. I’m not interested in them.

I only have the debaters in front of me. And I find that the apes will use the word ‘know’ as they use it.

@Frank

Relatedly, the idea that a proposition is true does not require that anyone can know or prove that it is true. Not all truths are established truths. If you flip a coin and never check how it landed, it may be true that it landed heads, even if nobody has any way to tell. Truth is a metaphysical, as opposed to epistemological, notion: truth is a matter of how things are, not how they can be shown to be. So when we say that only true things can be known, we’re not (yet) saying anything about how anyone can access the truth. – SEP on JTB

That’s all fine with me. As I say, I’m only interested in how things play out in the real world. In the world I inhabit, many believe they can possess God’s Own Truth about all sorts of things.

@Frank

And here, you aren’t really pinging the Truth part of JTB, it’s justification. A skeptic might argue that that no one has access to justifications for beliefs.

I’m not sure I’m following you here. It seems to me that everyone has access to justification. It’s easy. One doesn’t even have to click one’s heels thrice in order to own all the justification one needs. My interest is in the T.

@Frank

Strictly speaking, a proposition is an abstract object. It’s not made of words.

I’d have to know more about your claim. I don’t trust abstract objects, in general. Someone the other day talked about rationality as perhaps existing outside of humans, but I have a hard time with just such a thought.

Do concepts exist outside of the ape? I don’t know, but I’m doubtful.

But even if propositions exist as abstract objects, where does that leave the individual ape, as he goes exploring for it?

[BestGuessYet]

@Nightingale94

Perhaps there is a value in that dichotomy. Those among us who are “certain” of a thing at any given time, give the thing time to play out. Without the observations that can be derived from this period of holding the thing as “true”, it would be challenging, if not impossible, to build new or better models for accomplishing the desired end.

Yes, I just call it the best guess yet. It’s no different from garden-variety commitment. Just language.

[Frank]

@BestGuessYet

Neuroscience shows me the mind’s limitations—not that neuroscience is unreliable.

Ok. So you have confidence that you can acquire knowledge to some extent. You’re not a skeptic.

[j_j]

@BestGuessYet

It’s a hard thing to face, that we are each building our personal understanding of this place. We want to believe there are Holy Words or some Prophet who really did know what was going on.

I’ve noticed that even Plato can serve for that. Apparently, he can be The Answer I Need.

Yeah. Plato is often used that way. But it can be Wittgenstein or Heidegger or basically anyone Famously Profound.

I think most of the famous foolosophers deserve their fame, so I gladly celebrate the value in their work.

@BestGuessYet

Right. Our beliefs are part of us. It took me a while to realize that I needed to be gentler and more accommodating when attacking other beliefs, and I appreciate it when people do that with me.

Well said ! To get distance from our beliefs is to get distance from our selves. To me this is a change in the self. The belief that was once necessary ( part of the core me) becomes optional (a mere tool or experiment. )

Stoics like Epictetus are relevant here. If we try to train ourselves against our training — resist kneejerk reflex habits — this is perhaps good practice for more theoretical philosophy.

@BestGuessYet

Same with my horizon. If I make a mistake and look foolish, well, that’s just an unfortunate event that happened. The horizon is the goal. Let me figure the best way of moving toward it.

Exactly ! That long term goal “overpowers” the short term goal of looking Right Every Time. I am a process that is on the way.

[Meta_U]

@BestGuessYet

I have a problem with that particular word: proof. Some seem to think it exists out there in the cosmos, to be plucked and owned, but I see it as just a claim by an ape that a thing has been proved. (Outside of math and other formal systems, I mean.)

I would extend what you say to the use of mathematics and other formal systems as well. These logics are useless unless applied, and the premises of application are just claims made by “apes”. And even if we look at a proof which is completely within a logical system, rather than the application of a formal system toward some content, then it becomes a matter of accepting the axioms or rules of the system. So the claimed “proof” is just the consequence of accepting the rules.

@BestGuessYet

I think it’s a matter of word use. What you call opinion, I might call personal preference, for example. It’s my opinion that forest green is the finest of all colors.

But you’re welcome to offer examples of what you are calling unjustified opinions.

I think it’s more than just preference. You can show me a sample of a colour and say “it is my opinion that this is forest green”. I might show you a slightly different colour, and say “my opinion is that this is forest green”. You might show me a colour chart with named colours, and demonstrate how your colour sample is closer than mine to the sample on the colour chart, and therefore claim that your opinion is justified while mine is not. But if I take you to a different colour chart, which has a “forest green” that is more like mine, then we’re right back to the starting point. And, it might be the case that anything anyone designates as “forest green” is just a matter of opinion, because an objective “forest green” cannot be properly justified. Then all claims of “this is forest green” are unjustifiable opinion, even though we all have our reasons.

@BestGuessYet

Yes, I suspect you have a different view of justification than I do. I think of it in broad terms. Most anything which pushes us toward a belief, I would call justification.

I pointed out already, that you are not adhering to a rigorous definition of “justify” with this type of statement. We need to define “justify” in a way which is consistent with what is intended by epistemologists when they speak of JTB, and not be sidetracked by “justify” as used in common language. To justify is to demonstrate the correctness of something. To see something with your eyes, or to otherwise observe with your senses, is not to demonstrate, therefore these types of reasons for believing something don’t qualify as justification.

@BestGuessYet

OK. I would see it differently. I’m not sure why logic would take primacy over direct observation. There are times when I don’t trust logic much at all.

I’m not talking about taking primacy, I am talking about what “justified” means. In JTB nothing indicates that “justified” takes primacy over “true”, what is indicated is a compatibility between the two.

@BestGuessYet

I see a lion behind a tree. But I know this is Kansas, and Kansas doesn’t have lions, and so it must not be a lion behind that tree.

I think you are actually opposing truth with justification here. If you see a lion and you honestly believe this, then this is your truth. But then you use logic to justify “it must not bee a lion”. So you have a true belief which you have justified the opposite of. How do you propose to reconcile these?