belief

Originally posted by epiphinehas
[b]No believer makes a claim to outright knowledge. There's no room for faith if one knows something for a fact.

Faith, conceptualized in the Bible, isn't "blind" faith, in any regard. The apostles, for instance, claimed to have witnessed Jesus Christ, in person, after he was crucified and his corpse was enclosed in a tomb. Did Peter, Ja ...[text shortened]... ves the apostles' testimony. Belief in the truth of that testimony constitutes knowledge.[/b]

Right on. It's like the evidence in a court case. We are the jury and
must decide based on the evidence. I believe there is enough evidence
to justify my being a Christian.

Originally posted by sumydid
No believer makes a claim to outright knowledge. There's no room for faith if one knows something for a fact.

What the (excluding liberal progressives) believer claims is, they believe God exists and have faith in the truth of the bible and the promises made by God and Christ in the bible.

There is zero onus upon a person making this claim to prove an ...[text shortened]... information? Which action on your part is more courageous? Which action more compassionate?

First, that's not true, there are plenty of religious believers who claim outright knowledge.
You can see some on these very forums.
Also not all (or even most) religious believers are Christian.


I am not saying, all believers must have rock hard evidence for their beliefs... Although they should.
What I am saying is that a positive belief needs justification, a reason why you believe it.
This justification needs to be good enough for the person doing the believing.
This justification can be, 'because I have faith that it is so'.

My problem with theism is that there is no convincing justification, Faith is pretty much it.

non-belief however doesn't need a justification.
If you want me to believe something (anything) then you need to present a reason for me to do so.
Absent such a reason the default start position should be non-belief.

This is what I mean by theism having the burden of proof. and Atheism not having one.
You need to justify (and I would go further and say prove) your belief in god.
Till you do so the default position is one of non-belief.


The argument I make for this being true is that there are an infinite number of things you could believe
for which there is no evidence.
Many of them are contradictory.
You can't possibly operate by believing all of them, till they are proven false (which may not even be possible)
So you start by believing nothing, and then adding beliefs when they are rationally justified, you are on much better ground.

By starting out and saying you have no proof for your belief, and that you have to have faith, you just removed all possibility
of me agreeing with your position.
I don't, and won't, believe things on faith. I need a justification, of strength appropriate to the thing to be believed.
(ie I need less evidence to believe you if you tell me your name, than if you tell me a god exists.)

Originally posted by bbarr
Typically, when I believe a proposition, I also believe that I know that proposition (call that proposition 'P', whatever P may be). It's hard for me to imagine a case where I have the belief that P and the belief that I don't know P. Presumably, if I believe that I don't know P, then I believe I have insufficient evidence to justify the belief that P. But ...[text shortened]... applying both to beliefs about God and beliefs about the location of one's keys?

I would say that any definition of knowledge that requires absolute certainty is not
useful. you can invoke evil demons to remove absolute certainty from pretty much everything.

You don't need absolute certainty, just high enough certainty, the beyond reasonable doubt test.

You can say, I know where my keys are, while still acknowledging the 'small' possibility of being
wrong.
Or if you were being pedantic you could say you believe you know where your keys are.
the belief here being justified, but not held as an article of faith.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Right on. It's like the evidence in a court case. We are the jury and
must decide based on the evidence. I believe there is enough evidence
to justify my being a Christian.

And you believe the bible to be the literal word of god...

So tell me how are you getting on with the passage instructing rapists to be forced to marry their victims???

Or are you still avoiding this question.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I would say that any definition of knowledge that requires absolute certainty is not
useful. you can invoke evil demons to remove absolute certainty from pretty much everything.

You don't need absolute certainty, just high enough certainty, the beyond reasonable doubt test.

You can say, I know where my keys are, while still acknowledging the 'smal w where your keys are.
the belief here being justified, but not held as an article of faith.

But in a previous post you claimed you were part infallibilist. Did you just not know what that term meant?

Anyway, there are problems with fallibilist conceptions of knowledge. Here is one:

Suppose that it is 99.99999% probable that P, and I believe P because I have access to the reasons that indicate P's probability. Presumably, that would be a sufficient threshold to have knowledge that P, on any fallibilist account. So, if fallibilism is correct, then I can justifiably claim to know P.

Suppose it is the same for Q. So, I can justifiably claim to know Q. But if I can justifiably claim to know P and claim to know Q, then I can justifiably claim to know (P & Q). This is called a principle of closure in epistemology (roughly, I can know what is entailed by things I know).

Suppose P is the proposition 'Lottery ticket #1 will not win', Q is 'Lottery ticket #2 will not win', and so on, for a billion other propositions, each corresponding to a single ticket. Then, under closure, you get the implication that I can claim to know that no single ticket will win. But, of course, one ticket will win. So, a fallibilist conception of knowledge yields a contradiction when conjoined to the epistemic closure principle. So, which would you like to give up?

Originally posted by bbarr
So, a fallibilist conception of knowledge yields a contradiction when conjoined to the epistemic closure principle.

No, it is, by definition, fallible. But only 0.00001% of the time.

Originally posted by twhitehead
No, it is, by definition, fallible. But only 0.00001% of the time.

Please read the example again.

Originally posted by bbarr
Please read the example again.

The lottery example? What am I missing?

Originally posted by twhitehead
The lottery example? What am I missing?

That it's the conjunction of fallibilism and epistemic closure (or some other agglomeration principle) that yields the contradiction.

Originally posted by bbarr
That it's the conjunction of fallibilism and epistemic closure (or some other agglomeration principle) that yields the contradiction.

Maybe it is the epistemic closure that is at fault. You are taking two highly unlikely events and then assuming that the combination has an equally unlikely probability - which in the example is not true.
I think the fact that it is fallible must be taken into account.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Maybe it is the epistemic closure that is at fault. You are taking two highly unlikely events and then assuming that the combination has an equally unlikely probability - which in the example is not true.
I think the fact that it is fallible must be taken into account.

What are you talking about? I'm taking a billion highly unlikely events and assuming that the negation of their conjunction is certain. Here it is again (using P1..Pn to stand for the propositions):

P1: Ticket 1 will not win.
P2: Ticket 2 will not win.
....
Pn: Ticket n will not win.

Suppose N is some very large number. Then, the probability of P1, P2,...Pn being true will be correspondingly high. If there are a billion tickets, for instance, then the probability of P1 being true is .999999999. The fallibilist claims we can know propositions that are uncertain. Here, P1...Pn each meet a very high threshold (it can be arbitrarily high, if you increase the number of tickets) for being likely true. Each would be a candidate for knowledge. Belief in each would be justified. But if epistemic closure is true (or some other agglomeration principle), then belief in the conjunction of these propositions would also be justified. But we know that that conjunction is false, since one ticket will win. So, either knowledge requires certainly, or we can't always justifiably believe the entailments of what we believe (i.e., closure is false).

Originally posted by bbarr
But in a previous post you claimed you were part infallibilist. Did you just not know what that term meant?

Anyway, there are problems with fallibilist conceptions of knowledge. Here is one:

Suppose that it is 99.99999% probable that P, and I believe P because I have access to the reasons that indicate P's probability. Presumably, that would ...[text shortened]... on when conjoined to the epistemic closure principle. So, which would you like to give up?

I did indeed, and i do know what the term means.
What I meant is that I hold that there are occasions where you can know with certainty.
But they are rare enough that limiting knowledge to only such occasions makes the term not worth having.


Ok for your example.

I would not personally claim to 'know' that a lottery ticket will not win, I would state that it has an extremely low but
calculable probability of winning (or the reverse that it has an extremely high but calculable chance of losing)
However if I were to go with your example.

in this instance the chances of P & Q are not independent. The chance of P and Q is not the same as the chance for P or
the chance for Q.... as you successively add events (tickets) the collective chance drops dramatically.

Thus in this instance you not only need a sound justification for P and a sound justification for Q, but also a sound justification for
P & Q.

For any given set of facts there is the probability that any given fact is true and the probability that the set as a whole is true.


Also there is an example I like to give that neatly demonstrates part of how I am thinking.

Normally statements are rated as true/not-true, as a binary state.
However you often have no way of knowing if you have actually arrived at truth. but you can say that you are within a certain
distance of truth.

For example, Newtonian gravity is wrong. It plainly deviates from reality, and can't predict numerous things including Mercury's orbit.
However they still used it for going to the moon. Because the maths is simpler and the difference for the earth moon journey between
Newtonian gravity and GR is so small as to be irrelevant.

GR may or may not be true, it is close enough to truth that we can't yet distinguish whether it is true or not-true.

So we have gradations of accuracy to truth, that we can measure accurately even though we don't actually know with certainty what
truth is, or whether we have actually arrived at it.

For any given situation you can often work out how close to truth you need to be for it to no longer matter.
For going to the moon, Newton was close enough that you are perfectly ok using his gravity equations.
For the GPS network you have to use GR/SR or it wont work.
So I would say that for the moment GR is functionally true. In that it is impossible to distinguish any difference between GR and Truth.


Remember I also said that I was less interested in finding a unified theory of knowledge that worked perfectly and logically consistently
for all situations than I was with practical working definitions that we could use in the real world.
Partly because I don't think a unified theory of knowledge is actually possible.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Right on. It's like the evidence in a court case. We are the jury and
must decide based on the evidence. I believe there is enough evidence
to justify my being a Christian.

Excuse me for butting in........

But there are hundreds of religions and have you thoroughly explored every single religion - before submitting to the animal killing religion.

Do you think you can do better than that.

Originally posted by Dasa
Excuse me for butting in........

But there are hundreds of religions and have you thoroughly explored every single religion - before submitting to the animal killing religion.

Do you think you can do better than that.

No, of course not, he joined the religion he was born and indoctrinated into.

As do the vast majority of people who are religious.

The only viable position if you really explore rationally the evidence is atheism.

Most people don't however explore things rationally.

You are a perfect case in point.

Originally posted by googlefudge
And you believe the bible to be the literal word of god...

So tell me how are you getting on with the passage instructing rapists to be forced to marry their victims???

Or are you still avoiding this question.

Oh really.

Could you supply the Book, Chapter and Verse of this "passage"?