On Nov 19, 10:14 pm, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> Focusing on belief formation and reliability may obscure the truth
> about belief as much as it reveals. Once we understand that belief can
> and does manifest spontaneously in hindsight, with no evidence or
> reliability, we can see it as a sense phenomenon and it's epistemology
> is self-authoritative. The task then becomes understanding how sense
> works, and how factual experience can be derived through fiction.
> Evidentialism & reliabilism to me are just two different forms of
> pattern recognition, no more valid than intuition, perception,
> emotion, etc. depending on the context.

that's one of the reason endorsed by reliabilists in rejecting
evidentialism.
reliabilists say that since we don't have a degree of control over
formation of our beliefs at the same level as we have for our actions,
which is presupposed by evidentialism, mental state alone isn't enough
to justify belief, instead, AIUI, we need to
(1) investigate through what processes the belief is formed, if we
regard them as reliable, then we're justified in holding the belief,
if we don't, then cast it into fire, if we can't determine the
reliability / we're not satisfied, then
(2) acquire more evidences from processes that are regarded reliable,
until we are in a mental state that represents the belief as being
true

i disagree with your saying that causality of belief is irrelevant,
because of (1); believing that belief B isn't worthy to be justified,
is justified by reasoning, where the main reason is B doesn't come
from reliable process. hence, the causality of belief, albeit complex,
isn't irrelevant, of course we don't need to determine how exactly a
belief is formed (no need to be an omniscient), skimming over memorial
experiences about the belief's formation is enough to approximate
whether the cognitive processes are reliable. i think it's easier to
practice rather than to theorize

so IMO, (1) is important because it's our first tool in filtering
beliefs; to get beliefs that are worthy to be justified, ie. ones that
people should spend efforts in proving. ones who assert causality of
belief is irrelevant simply have more beliefs to justify


> Which 2 ism? I think that defining terms in linguistic accord with a
> theory is (sorry) a waste of time. I'm really only interested in
> reality.

i believe we're in a misunderstanding here, i, too, don't like the
vagueness characteristic of lang, but what can we do? our ability to
conceptualize clearly surpass our ability to describe them

that's why i asked for help in determining what the correct, or at
least common, interpretation of 'evidence' is according to
evidentialism, i thought this google group carrying the name
'epistemology' is one of the right place


just for fun,
(1) the 1st statement of your 1st post: "I'm not sure about how Plato
should be interpreted, but it seems presumptuous to me that we should
assume that 'beliefs' exist in an objective way"
(2) the articles aren't about Plato's view on the matter, it's just
the domain name
---------
(3) "you haven't read the 2 articles i mentioned in my 1st post"
(4) one who isn't interested in something, probably won't read
articles about it
---------
(5) "you believe you don't need to know about evidentialism-
reliabilism"
(6) discussing something with someone who doesn't interested in it,
probably will lead to misunderstanding
---------
(7) "we're in misunderstanding"

of course, there're other causes of beliefs (3), (5), (7), but i don't
need them, these are enough, & because i regard induction as reliable
(which i believe you also do, because i believe you're a scientist),
thus my belief (7) is justified, i might try to obtain more evidences,
but i'm satisfied already

make no mistake, if my belief that "you believe you don't need to know
about evidentialism-reliabilism" is in fact true, IMO, you're rightly
so. after all i'm also just *playing* around with these stuffs

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