The challange of Epistomology!

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Here it is finally… the root of our dispute…

How do we know stuff?

Once we have that one answered… then we can ask “do we know if god exists?”

I ask that 4 things be covered when positing an epistemic position…

  1. Define “knowledge”.
  2. Describe how you can know anything as an individual. (looking for method here.)
  3. Escape the problem of solipsism/nihilism (present the principle/argument on the basis of which you reject extreme skepticism)
  4. draw a line from your epistomology to your belief/disbelief in the existence of god.

In short… how do you know anything… and how can you know that god exists?

Let us take it for granted that philosophical certainty cannot be attained… and simple focus on epistemic consistency and validity durring these discussions…

2

Ah, welcome back. Congratulations and condolences.

1.) Knowledge is justified true belief, when it is a product of truth-oriented faculties operating in an environment in which they were intended to work.

2.) Well, the methodology would be the ‘justification’ bit of the above. A justified belief is one that is produced by a person operating in an intellectually virtuous manner.

3.) The main reason to reject extreme skepticism is the same as anything else- it can’t be derived in the above ways, or at least, I’ve never seen it demonstrated that it can be. Extreme skepticism isn’t a position that results from a justified application of truth-oriented tools, I don’t see it as any sort of position at all. Of course, the main defeat here for skepticism is the idea that faculties are truth-oriented in the first place. Somebody who doesn’t believe that, or worse, has a strong reason to doubt that, would be wide open to skepticism RE: The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.

4.) Well, you can see most of that in my “Case for Theism” thread. Belief in God can be justified- that is, a person can have experiences (including exposure to arguments) that result in belief in God when reacting to those experiences an an intellectually virtuous way, and those beliefs can result from properly truth-oriented faculties.

3

Thank you :slight_smile:

Good to be back.

Hmm… already there is plenty to talk about… Please open this up a bit… what faculties specifically? How would be recognize the enviroment in which they were “intended” (intended by whom/what?) to work in?

I believe you might have defined “knowledge” in a way so that it becomes unattainable… in that you not only require it to be a justified belief but also a justified TRUE belief… thus in order to recognize “knowledge” we must be aware of it’s “truth” as well as the justification…

I hope you can see what the problem here might be…

Could you please explain what you mean by “an intellectually virtuous manner” ?

You consider skepcism self-defeating?

Does that mean that you take your epistemic position to be a kind of “default”? Seeing as how you deny that there is a cause to reject your position in skepcism… rather than give cause to accept it despite skepcism?

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Mad Man P

I don’t think there’s an exhaustive list of faculties, but I’m thinking of things like the senses, memory, reason, empathy, the acceptance of testimony, and maybe a couple more controversial things like some sort of ethical sense. How we recognize the environment in which they were intended to work isn’t important, what important is that we do. Vision is reliable at giving us information about objects above a certain size, within a certain rang e of distance, and under these lighting conditions and not those ones. Don’t get over hung up on it, because it’s mainly a widget to address Gettier- it’s something probably best answered last, justification is more important.
As far as intended by whom, you know I think there’s a Whom, but if you prefer, think of it for now as our faculties being intended to produce truth belief in the sense that our heart is intended to pump blood. That is it’s purpose, which is a way that we put these things that does not always imply…purposefulness, if you follow me. Proper function would be another way to say it.

It’s not that knowledge is unattainable, it’s that it has criteria that are external to us. Having knowledge, and being aware of our having of it are not necessarily the same thing. We can see that our beliefs are justified, we can see that there are situations in which justification does not entail truth, we can see that there are situations in which justification AND truth does not entail knowledge, and so we have this third criteria (call it warrant) that I describe in terms of faculties function properly in the environment conducive to their function. All of this adds up to us believing confidently that we know many things, including most or all of the things we take ourselves to know. No, we do not have certainty (other than as a psychological state), but I know you’ve come to terms with that and won’t demand it of me, either.

 Yes.  Intellectual virtues are things like open-mindedness, intellectual honesty, courage, charity, conviction, and so on.  Our beliefs are justified when we act according to those virtues in arriving at them.  If you would like, imagine the perfect philosopher.  Our beliefs are justified if they are the beliefs [i]he[/i] would have if he were in our shoes.

Eh, I think most of it’s presentations can be shown to be self-defeating if a person were to bother to try, yes. I think where skepticism really falls apart is that it’s counter-intuitive. One of the things that we just see about the world is that we are able to learn things about it- that we know many truths. From my point of view, epistemology begins with describing how this is so, not trying to find out whether it is or not. We already know that. Someone who wanted to deny the fact of knowledge is setting up a huge burden for themselves, and I’ve never seen a skeptic rise to the occasion.

I see the observation that we know many things to be a default. I see my epistemic position to be an attempt at understanding how this occurs, and what it means.

5

I think David Hume covered this.

I agree that complete skepticism is not possible, Ucci - not for very long, at least - any thorough skeptic would surely be a thoroughly dead skeptic very quickly.

But what, prithee, is intellectual “virtue”? I also wish to know this.

6

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I thought it might be useful to post some already conceived definitions of knowledge:

So it looks like a problem already exists…most definitions of knowledge I’ve found, including Uccisore’s, involve subjectivity, which seems inevitable. A person might have knowledge about an incident that would lead to an incorrect conclusion.

I found Uccisore’s definition interesting because it seems a person who believes they are Napoleon Bonapart would be intellectually virtuous, yet incorrect. It does seem this is the core of the debate, but if there is no consensus about what knowledge really is, I don’t think this is going to be a productive discussion.

I’ll be intellectually virtuous and admit I have no idea what this means.

Again, I find Uccisore’s response interesting, and yet exactly as I’d expect. Belief in God, or more specifically a brand of God (Christian), it seems comes down to experiences such as social influence, then justification of those experiences, i.e. a really really really good feeling when studying the Bible, thinking about Christ, praying, etc. There is also no doubt in my mind people experience such feelings and epiphanies when studying Christianity, and I can completely understand why somebody would then come to the conclusion that what they were instructed or told, whether from youth or as an adult, was true.

7

faust

I have a deontological view of epistemology. I know you know what that means (even if my spell checker does not), but for the benefit of others, I believe that the most accurate way to talk about justified belief is with statements like

“I ought to believe that”

“She shouldn’t believe that”

“We ought not believe without proper evidence.”

I take those statements rather literally, I think justification is a moral thing, of a sort. But, I don’t subscribe to a law-based moral code, I think virtue is the key to morality, in this and in other cases. You can form rules of thumb that look like laws, but they are only true because of the virtues they express.
So, intellectual virtues are those motivations and traits that a person ought to exhibit when engaged in intellectual activity- open-mindedness, honesty, courage, etc. So, a belief is justified if it’s arrived at through adherence to these virtues.
It’s important to note that this is a trial and error thing. Take Gettier problems for example. We know that a person in one of those situations doesn’t have knowledge before we know exactly why, or what do to about it. Similarly, we learn about intellectual virtues by observing paradigmatic people. We learn about intellectual vice by seeing that a person has an unjustified belief first (in cases that are obvious to us), and then seeing why they have it- ‘Ah, that person was lazy’, or ‘this person was afraid of confronting a certain bit of evidence’. Once we learn that, we take those lessons into more difficult situations, like the ones philosophy analyzes, and what we mean by ‘justified’ just is that the person is adhering to the model of what a person ought to have done.
Being a philosopher, then, is probably 90% making sure one is behaving one’s self, and maybe 10% actually exploring some new idea.

8

Oh, I see. That’s rather like John Rawls. Which is to say it’s rather Kantian.

In that vein, your comment about truth-oriented faculties seems rather Rawlsian/Kantian as well.

Of course belief in God can be justified. That’s what philsophy is all about. It’s the “truth” part that has always stymied me.

Of course, I am a materialist/logical positivist/perspectivist. Would be a tough nut for me to crack.

In the end, I don’t see epistemology as any challenge to theism. But then again, I don’t find it to be a challenge to anything else, either.

9

Uh-oh, I’ve read some of the things you’ve said about Kant.
If my epistemology were a challenge to theism, or atheism for that matter, that would mean I was doing it wrong. The very idea of epistemology resolving a controversial issue like that (outside of epistemology) is mistaken, I think. The fact that it is controversial indicates that people of good faith believe on both sides of it, and so epistemology has to leave room for both to exist. If an epistemologist concludes that a there can be no justified (a)theist, then he is simply wrong, because it’s quite clear that there are some.
Epistemology has become important to philosophy of religion specifically because atheists have gone out of their way to construct negative epistemologies for the sole purpose of showing why theism can’t be believed. That was a mistake. You’ll forgive me, but I am thinking of logical positivism here, among other things. This recent trend here to say “Proper Epistemology is whatever the guy I disagree with isn’t doing” isn’t epistemology at all- I’m not even sure it’s good philosophy of any kind.

10

I have a much better view of Rawls. True, it’s exactly where he is kantian that he goes astray. But he is a giant, nonetheless. If anyone ever made any sense of Kant, he did. But of course, he picked and chose his Kant.

Justification isn’t the only criterion to knowledge, however. Truth has to be accounted for. That’s what epistemology is seeking, which is why I am not a subscriber to epistemology. I think it’s a wild goose chase.

Yeah, Hume constructed just such an epistemology, and for that very reason. And logical positivism is certainly a direct descendant of Papa Hume, via Bertrand Russell.

But, at bottom, the value of LP is its treatment of, and focus on language - viewed this way, it is a-epistemological. (Anepistemological?) That is certainly the way I view and use it. Logical Positivism, in the end, gives up the ghost on epistemology. It is, for that reason, a poor weapon against theism, I agree. By its on terms, it cannot speak about theism -“philosophically”, that is. Because, of course, no LP would be able to claim that any metaphysical statement has any meaning.

Now, just as with Hume, their motive is solely to discount theism (and metaphysics in general). I have a slightly different motive - not to discount theism, but to render debates about it as the vapid exercises they are. With one exception - along with Nietzsche, I can, and any LP can, talk about religion as a purely social phenomenon - without speaking to the philosophical merits of it - that is to say, sans epistemology, ontology, or teleology.

11

I agree with you that justification isn’t the only component to knowledge, you’ve got truth, and you also have a Gettier Widget of some kind. I think justification, though, is the component we have access to- of the three, it’s the one we can know is in place.
The problem I have with debates about theism being empty is that that’s only one piece of the metaphysical puzzle- two people who agree that God exists can come together and talk about a whole lot more than that. It appears to me that debates/lectures/essays on theology do have content. Now, they don’t have meaningful content to the atheist, to be sure, but that’s just because of a rejection of required premises, not anything special about the subject matter.
The other thing that troubles me is that arguments that God can’t or doesn’t or is unlikely to exist are very poor arguments. If God did exist, and more or less took the actions that some religion described Him as having taken, then a system that denied our ability to examine that seems like it would be a very bad system. Counter-intuitive, too, since it appears as though many people are doing precisely that.

12

I think the “truth” component of the jbt model means something more along the lines of “A false proposition cannot be ‘known’ by anyone to be true.”

IOW, since we know that the claim “The earth is flat” is false, no one can know that the earth is flat. Someone can believe the earth is flat but no one can know that the earth is flat.

If we believe with justification that a proposition, which is not known to be false, is true then along with the Gettier widget, as you phrase it, we have knowledge.

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What “system” might allow us to examine the actions that, say, Christianity describes the Christian God as having taken? Is there such a system?

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Ucci - Agreed.

15

I take it that you agree we can know nothing about the world with infallible, indubitable certainty. Given this then, do you also agree that we ought to believe what is more likely to be true in regard to the possible answers offered for a particular inquiry rather than what is less likely to be true?

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Reality Check-

Yeah, I was going to include something like that if Mad Man P pressed the question- For me to know that there is a cat on the mat, there has to be a cat on the mat. That’s the truth component.

A minor niggle- No one can know that the earth is flat, because the earth is round. “Since we know” doesn’t really enter into it. Truth is an external component, not an internal one.

So long as the proposition is true. What is/is not ‘known to be the case’ has nothing to do with it, except as a component of justification, perhaps.

Well, Christian claims aren't a 'type' of claim, Re: justification.  A Christian claim might be ethical, historical, philosophical, or otherwise, and would examined in the way those usually are.  In the case of God's actions, you're talking about a historical claim- the claim that an event took place a while ago.

EDIT:

Well, you know. We’ve got analytic truths and truths about our own mental states. We can know nothing interesting about the world in the way you describe, perhaps.

More or less, but not axiomatically. I believe that the desire for truth is virtuous, honesty is virtuous, and so on, and that because of those virtues, it ends up being the case that we ought to believe what is more likely instead of what is less likely. I don’t know if that distinction will become important or not, but I thought I’d make it.

17

Can you think of any examples of instances when we ought to believe what is less likely to be true rather than to believe what is more likely to be true if our aim is to know, as well as we can know, what is true?

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Nope.

19

If I understand this correctly, then you believe that if belief A and belief B contradict each other that both belief A and belief B can be justified by the same epistemic system?

How is this possible without the reasons (or at least one of the reasons) that justify A’s belief being a defeater for B’s belief (or vice versa)? Do you see what I’m getting at here?

Sorry, my question probably wasn’t clear. I asked the question because I was curious about this statement of yours: “If God did exist, and more or less took the actions that some religion described Him as having taken, then a system that denied our ability to examine that seems like it would be a very bad system.”

I’m unsure what this means. Do you mean to say that you believe epistemic models or systems of inquiry that deny our ability to examine God’s actions are in wide use today? Or are you saying only that if there were such systems, they would be very bad systems?

Should we determine the probable truth of historical claims about the actions of God in the same way that we determine the probable truth of any other historical claim or is some other method required?

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Reality Check

Yes, so long as both beliefs aren’t held by the same person.

If you believe that Sam is at home because you called him at his home number five minutes ago and he answered, and I believe that Sam is at work because I know this is his shift, and he's reasonably dedicated to his job, then both of our beliefs are justified, even though they contradict (assuming I don't know about your phone call).

I believe that logical positivism is such a system, and that it is not in wide use. The reason why logical positivism would be a very bad system, is that it denies our ability to examine something that many people are examining, and our ability to answer questions that many people are asking. If there are alternatives that permit us to more fully examine critical issues, then we should take them.

As far as I can tell, the method is the same, but I’m not much of a historian.