SSH Feldman Chapter 2 Part 2 _ Lecture notes _ Tutorial Notes 3 (Week 3)

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September 19th, 2023 Reason and Argument A. Belief, Disbelief, and Suspension of Judgment - Three main cognitive attitudes you can take toward a proposition: - Belief (You might come to the conclusion that the proposition is true) - Disbelief (You might come to the conclusion that the proposition is false. - Suspension of Judgment (You might come to the conclusion that you are unable to decide that a proposition is true or false) - Belief comes in various degrees or strengths (If I feel sure that it is true, then I believe it) - You can’t come to more than one of the three cognitive attitudes at one time. For example, if you believe the proposition, you can’t at the same time also disbelieve it or suspend judgement about it. However, you can keep changing your mind, but you can only have ONE of those attitudes at a time. Belief Principle: - Whenever a person considers any proposition, that person must believe the proposition, or disbelieve the proposition, or suspend judgment about the proposition. A person cannot at any time have more than one of these attitudes toward one proposition. Beliefs with slightest inclination to accept examples: - Future sporting events - Beliefs about things that happened a very long time ago so you can barely recollect There are many sentences that do not contain the word “believes” but still report what someone believes. For example - “Jones thinks that all trees lose their leaves in the fall.” - He “thinks” which actually is the same as “believes”. OR - “Some economists feel that the federal budget deficit is not a serious problem” - Someone could claim that something is true without believing it - Beliefs could be about any topic, important or trivial. For example beliefs about the meaning of life and beliefs about what will be on TV tonight. B. Belief and Truth - When a person believes a proposition, they believe that the world is a particular way- the way that the proposition says it is. The belief is true just in case the proposition she believes is true. This means the world is actually the way the proposition says it is. - Whether your belief is true depends not at all on how strong your belief is. It depends entirely on whether your belief accurately describes the world. - The truth of beliefs, like the truth of propositions, depends on how the world is, not on the existence or strength of the beliefs.

C. Belief and Disagreement - To believe a proposition = believe that it is true. - For example, believing that there is life on Mars is the same thing as believing that it is true that there is life on Mars. - To disbelieve a proposition is to believe that the proposition is false and that the world really isn’t the way the proposition says it is. - If one believes a proposition and the other disbelieves the proposition, then they disagree. - The world can’t both be and not be the way the proposition says it is. EXAMPLE - Hasno License is not allowed to drive a car I can argue with that person who says that, that that person can actually drive. I end up giving the keys to the Hasno and he goes out to the car, starts it up, and drives away. Eventhough we may seem to disagree here, we really don’t. The belief the person could have been expressing is: Hasno License is not allowed to drive a car. Therefore, there was no disagreement because the proposition the person asserted was not the same one as I denied. Since the person was trying to assert Hasno is not allowed to drive a car, and I disbelieved that Hasno cannot drive a car (ability). Same sentence to express different propositions. - In other words, people may seem to agree because both use the same sentence to express their beliefs. However, it is possible they are using that sentence to express different propositions, and that their underlying beliefs are really in conflict. - For example, two people might both say that they support free speech, but the sorts of things they count as “speech” may be so different that there is a significant disagreement between them. Thus, to understand others and to know whether they disagree with one another, we must know which propositions they believe. D. Reasons for Belief Sometimes people have good reasons for the things they believe and sometimes they don’t. - For example, scientists who have done careful research about the effects of smoking cigarettes have good reasons to believe that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer. The reports of these scientists provide the rest of us with good reasons to believe the same proposition. Though, our reasons differ from theirs. This is because our reasons come from their reports or testimony. Principle of rational belief (RB) - If a person’s evidence concerning a proposition supports that proposition, then it is rational for the person to believe the proposition. If the person’s evidence goes against the proposition, then it is rational for the person to disbelieve the proposition. And if the person’s evidence is neutral, then it is rational for the person to suspend judgment concerning the proposition.

Consequence of (RB) - Rational belief is not the same as carefully formed belief. - Rational belief is belief based on good reasons. It is belief that is guided by the evidence. - Sometimes people might do a lot of research on a topic, and then form a belief. We can’t tell whether it is rational for you to believe that proposition or not though. Even though you carefully gathered information, the conclusion you reached could be not supported from the evidence you gathered. D2. Fallibilism - Error people think is that only good evidence is conclusive evidence. - A belief can be rational even though it is false. Or our evidence can make it rational for us to believe a proposition but that evidence does not guarantee that the proposition is true. - The idea that a belief can be rational even though it is actually false is known as fallibilism. - When the evidence that makes our beliefs rational is fallible, or imperfect, it can lead tus to false beliefs. - Conclusive evidence, in contrast, is so strong that it can never lead to false beliefs. - The main idea of fallibilism, is that it is rational to believe something when your evidence supports it, even if that evidence is not entirely conclusive and does not guarantee the truth of what you believe. - Though, some people reject fallibilism. Sometimes when the evidence is not conclsuive, someone might be wrong. Therefore, suspending judgment is the rational attitude that the person takes. - Thinking like this is really catastrophic though, because do you have evidence sufficient to guarantee the truth of most propositions that seem certain and obvious like what your name is? Is your evidence conclusive? The answer is no. Because you probably learned your name from your parents, but your evidence does not guarantee that they did not lie to you about your name. - Thus, if it were rational to believe things only when the evidence guaranteed their truth, it wouldn’t be rational to believe many basic propositions about everyday life. D3. Strength of Evidence - Evidence can support a proposition to varying degrees; some evidence provides nearly conclusive support for a proposition. Other evidence might support it only slightly. (RB) implies that it is reasonable to believe the proposition in either case. - For example, according to RB you can believe a proposition with evidence but the evidence does not have to be strong at all. Principle of Proportional Belief (PB) - It is rational to proportion the strength of one’s beliefs to the strength of one’s evidence. The stronger one’s evidence for a proposition is, the stronger one’s belief in it should be. D4. Irrational Belief - A good way to understand more clearly just what (RB) entails is to consider cases in which people fail to show its dictates, or do not believe rationally.

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