On Belief, Knowledge, and Justification

[smoothmoniker]

Ok, here’s my project in this thread. I want to explore the concepts of knowledge, belief, and justification, and in particular how these concepts operate in relationship to both physical and metaphysical concepts. I’m going to do this in multiple posts, in some sort of coherent logical argument, and in order to accomplish this, I’m going to ask for a specific type of thread courtesy that seems in keeping with the spirit of the Cellar: Please use this thread to respond to the actual arguments that I’m presenting, and not as a catch-all thread to drop in your own random theories about these concepts. If you think that these concepts are related in a different manner than how I’m relating them, either make a cogent argument against one of my points that illustrates where my argument is weak or defeatable, or start a new thread that presents your understanding of them from scratch.

I really do want interaction in this thread, and I would love nothing better than for someone to present a really strong argument against my thesis, but please make it *against* my thesis, and not merely presented alongside. To make that task easier, I’m going to number the paragraphs in my argument, so that you can easily respond with things like "You're such a dumbass, as illustrated in (3.4)".

A’ight, some vocabulary up front, just so that we’re starting on the same page.

(1.1) Belief = a statement about something in reality, which the person holds as true to reality, but about which the actual fact of the matter is unverified (or unverifiable). For example, “I believe that Undertoad is a person living in the Philadelphia area, and I act as if that is true in reality, but I have not yet travelled to Philly and seen his house.”

(1.2) Justification = the accumulated evidence that counts toward a belief being true to reality. The justification for my belief about Undertoad is as follows: he has several times indicated that he is a person living in the Philadelphia are, he has special information about locations and events in Philadelphia that would be consistent with him living near there, and there seem to be several people here in the Cellar who indicate that they know him to be from the Philadelphia area. All of these things count toward my belief about Undertoad being justified.

(1.3) Knowledge = a justified, true belief. That is to say, a belief which I hold, and have justification for holding, which is also true to reality. If Undertoad does in fact live in the Philadelphia area, and I have sufficient justification for holding that belief, then I can say that I “know” that Undertoad lives in Philadelphia.

(1.4) Physical – anything which exists in the natural world, which can be investigate by empirical senses. An apple, a rock, the law of gravity are all things that fall under my definition of physical things.

(1.5) Metaphysical – anything which exists outside of the causal chain of the natural, physical world, but which has interaction with it. God, the soul, supernatural miracles, universal moral law, things like astrology, psychics, and reincarnation would fall under the definition of the metaphysical. The human mind, if you consider it to be something apart from just the chemical interactions of the brain, is a metaphysical concept.

This interaction between justification and knowledge is going to be where the crux of this conversation occurs.

[smoothmoniker]

(2.1) Any statement that contains a truth claim (it says something pertaining to reality) can be evaluated along two axis. The first axis evaluates whether the statement is true or false: whether it corresponds to reality or not. The second axis evaluates justification; whether or not the person making the statement has good reason to believe that the statement is true or not. From this, we can place any statement that makes a truth claim in one of the following four quadrants:



(2.2) It’s easy to see how these categories make sense when we’re talking about empirically verifiable truth statements, such as “There is a chair in my kitchen”. Think about all of the relationships that could exist between that statement and reality.

(2.3) First, I could say “I saw a chair in my kitchen when I left the room 3 minutes ago, I am the only person home right now, I haven’t heard any noises from the kitchen that indicate someone removing the chairs, and in my experience things don’t normally vanish from my kitchen without cause, with the exception of the one coffee travel mug that works without spilling, which seems to constantly disappear from my kitchen.” We can agree that this information would constitute justification for me to believe my statement to be true. If all of this is the case, and the chair does actually still exist in my kitchen, then my statement is in category I – it is true, and I have good reason to believe that it is true.

(2.4) Now suppose that my wife came home from work without my knowledge, went silently into the kitchen, and removed the chair a minute after I left the room. In this case, my statement is in category III – it is false, there is no chair in the kitchen, but I am justified in my belief that the statement is true. All of the statements that justified the belief in the first case still apply, even though the statement is now false.

(2.5) Suppose I said, “This is a brand new house, we’ve never been in the kitchen, nobody has been in the kitchen since it was built, no person has ever moved anything into that room, and the builder told us that the house was completely unfurnished when we bought it.” If all of this is the case, and there is actually no chair in the kitchen, then my initial statement “there is a chair in my kitchen” is now in category IV – my statement is false, and I have no good justification for believing that it is true.

(2.6) Category II is an odd case. Suppose that all of my statements from 2.5 still hold, but that unknown to me, even though the rest of the house is unfurnished, the plumber who finished off the sink brought in a chair to sit on while he worked, and forgot to take it with him. In this case, my statement that there is a chair in the kitchen happens to be true, even though I have no good justification for believing that it is true.

[smoothmoniker]

(3.1) Here, finally, is the crux of my argument: there are no special categories for metaphysical beliefs that are different from physical beliefs. Any statement that I may make about God can be measured along the same axis as my statement about the chair: it may either be true or false, and I may either be justified or unjustified in holding it. From this thesis there are several question that spring immediately to mind:

(3.2) First, what sort of things count toward justification for metaphysical beliefs, and are they essentially different than the things which count for justification in the case of physical beliefs?

(3.3) Is it ever possible to verify the truth of a statement, that is, to assign it with certainty to either the top or the bottom on our grid? This isn’t just a question for metaphysical statements, it holds for my statement about the chair as well. I’m going to take up the reason why it’s important to ask this question later on, but here’s a hint; I think you have to answer it the same way for both physical and metaphysical statements.

(3.4) Should we considered it proper to “believe” things that are outside of category I, or do I have an obligation as rational, thinking person to limit my set of beliefs to those things which, to the best of my ability to investigate and verify, are both true and justified.

Ok, at this point I’m going to take a little pause to let you guys either answer these questions if you think they’re interesting, or to argue with the categories that I setup in section 2.

Or, if everyone thinks this stuff is boring and meaningless, I'll just keep rambling on ahead, steadfast in my unjustified false belief that everyone finds me fascinating and sexy.

damn sexy.

[Beestie]

3.1: Agreed. For me, metaphysical is just that part of physical that lies outside the realm of the verifiable. I think that over time, things move from the metaphysical into the physical (metaphysical entropy, if you will) as the opportunity to apply the scientific method avails itself. Its really all about cause and effect. Effects with unknown causes tend to be classified as metaphysical events or, at least, its an easy way to "process" and accept the event. Ultimately, all things become physical at some level since we are not capable of processing much of anything that lacks a physical component. Even Heaven and Hell are reduced to pleasure and pain at some level.

3.2: Any justification for believing anything metaphysical lies in the ability of the belief to predict future events or explain current events. My belief that God commands the sun to rise each morning is perfectly justified since he has never failed to make it so (its predictive and explanatory). Now that I understand the sun doesn't really rise at all (the earth spins), the belief is shattered. Therefore, as a more reasonable explanation is provided, beliefs gravitate from the metaphysical to the physical and the realm of the metaphysical is incrementally and irreversably depleted.

3.3: No. It all boils down to the success of predictability - the likelihood or frequency that the assumption that the chair is there when you return is proven correct however justified or unjustified the belief that it was there in your absence. I believe that eclipses are God punishing us by withholding "His" light from us (mooning us, if you will). Bob, however thinks that it happens when Thor hurtles his battleax across the heavens and it blocks out the sun for a mintue. We can both justify the event (not enough people in church/forgot to sacrifice a virgin to Thor) but neither of us can predict the next one. When Newton comes along, causality/predictability become known and the metaphysical is diminished. However, there is nothing to say that Newton took into account all variables (as Einstein showed). And it may turn out that Einstein's models are not perfectly predictive. Until all variables are known (one can never be sure that there is not one more unknown variable), the idea of irrefutable predictability remains a goal and not a state. Therefore, validity can never be absolute.

3.4: That's an odd question. If there was no good reason to believe it was true (lack of explanatory value/ evidence of its falseness and/or no predictive value) then why would anyone believe it was true in the first place? Dogma would appear to be the subject of this question and, therefore, outside the scope of the discussion.

Its tough to focus on this at work so I'm not sure if I'm furthering the thread or messing it up. I sense some weaknesses in some of my points but can't take the time to sew them up so I fully expect you to blow a hole in the side of them

[Clodfobble]

I'll start out by saying that I hate, hate, hate philosophy. I hated it in college, and I've hated every conversation about philosophy I've had before or since (not philosophical conversations, mind you, but actually talking about philosophy and belief systems themselves,) and I've found almost every philosophy book I've ever read to be pompous and, more to the point, completely useless as far as our everyday lives go. I'm very pragmatic. The closest I ever came to finding philosophy interesting was utilitarianism and a little bit of existentialism, but even then my next thought was, "That's nice. I wonder who supported Sartre's lazy ass?"

That said, I actually read through your whole set of posts without stabbing my eyes out (yet ), because it feels like you're actually going somewhere that applies to how real people behave in the real world, which I might be interested in. So you have at least one captive audience member for now, but I make no promises.

[Beestie]

I'm not far behind you, Clodfobble, but I do think Philosophy has one redeeming quality and that is to question assumptions. Pragmatism is an extension of our core belief system (a collection of assumptions about causality) which, in turn, is very much affected by philosophy.

[Undertoad]

I'm happy to follow your path no matter where you take us sm. I love this stuff!

In preparation I have reminded myself of the difference between deduction and induction, because I'm pretty sure the fuzz factor there is a problem.

You haven't proven I live in the Philly area. I mean, I *do*, but you haven't proven anything. You've taken a set of really obvious signs that point to it and induced that I do. The signs sure look obvious. But it's still an induction, not a deduction. And now if you accept that I live in the Philly area as fact, and build other deductions and inductions on TOP of that fact, you might be building your understanding of reality on a house of cards.

I might be so fascinated by Philly (hey, it's possible) that I want to be there and am lying about the whole thing. But we can probably get to a deduction that I live in the Philly area. It's totally provable, because if you want to, you can come here and see it.

[Undertoad]

And Clod, I understand your point totally. In the end we pretty much just try to live out our lives and make a decent go of it. It's like astronomers studying the physical nature of the universe; what they find out there, working out whether the universe is 13 billion years old or only 12, won't make as much difference in our own lives as whether we decide to have a donut for dinner. On the other hand, our natural curiousity as humans won't let some of us let these questions go. And I swear there is a point to it; we need to do the heavy lifting sometimes to get to the next level.

[Beestie]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

You haven't proven I live in the Philly area. I mean, I *do*, but you haven't proven anything. You've taken a set of really obvious signs that point to it and induced that I do.

I think he deduced that you live in Philly.

[Clodfobble]

Nah, if he had deduced it, he would have had to start out with some absolute statement, such as "all people named Tony live in Philly." Deduction is absolutes applied to a specific situation, induction is matching specific cases against each other.

He induced it because he has no absolutes about UT or the type of people who always live in Philly, just a lot of evidence that matches up with other specific cases (people whom we do know live in Philly).

[smoothmoniker]

Beast, I'm going to come back and hit your post a little later today, because you said some interesting stuff that I want to think about.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I'm happy to follow your path no matter where you take us sm. I love this stuff!

In preparation I have reminded myself of the difference between deduction and induction, because I'm pretty sure the fuzz factor there is a problem.

You haven't proven I live in the Philly area. I mean, I *do*, but you haven't proven anything. You've taken a set of really obvious signs that point to it and induced that I do. The signs sure look obvious. But it's still an induction, not a deduction. And now if you accept that I live in the Philly area as fact, and build other deductions and inductions on TOP of that fact, you might be building your understanding of reality on a house of cards.

I might be so fascinated by Philly (hey, it's possible) that I want to be there and am lying about the whole thing. But we can probably get to a deduction that I live in the Philly area. It's totally provable, because if you want to, you can come here and see it.

I don't think this kind of statement is inductive or deductive; I haven't moved from a sample to a group, or from a group to a sample. I'm inferring - moving from a collection of data to a likely conclusion.

I'm more interested in the state of my belief prior to verification. True, I could get on a plane, come visit you, get my bad self all sloppy up with cheesesteak, but prior to me actually doing that, I still have a justified true belief that you live in Philly. The point where we might disagree is that I think I'm able to call this belief "knowledge" in the normal sense. I have enough justification for my true belief that I can say "I *know* that UT lives in Philly.

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by smoothmoniker

(3.2) First, what sort of things count toward justification for metaphysical beliefs, and are they essentially different than the things which count for justification in the case of physical beliefs?

Veracity and authentication of historical documents which corroberate events purported to be of metaphyisical origin

Which also counts toward physical beliefs.

(3.3) Is it ever possible to verify the truth of a statement, that is, to assign it with certainty to either the top or the bottom on our grid? This isn’t just a question for metaphysical statements, it holds for my statement about the chair as well. I’m going to take up the reason why it’s important to ask this question later on, but here’s a hint; I think you have to answer it the same way for both physical and metaphysical statements.

No, and here's why: once you leave the room, the actual situation in the room may change and you're back to where you started. You can go into the room at any time to check on your assertion, but once you leave again, you cannot be certain events have not changed.

(3.4) Should we considered it proper to “believe” things that are outside of category I, or do I have an obligation as rational, thinking person to limit my set of beliefs to those things which, to the best of my ability to investigate and verify, are both true and justified.

I don't know about proper, but certainly an option. I don't think anything not fitting in the axis (axes?) means it's not true, but rather that we don't know if it's true or not, regardless of justification.

You make my brain hurt.

[smoothmoniker]

Originally Posted by Beestie

3.1: Agreed. For me, metaphysical is just that part of physical that lies outside the realm of the verifiable. I think that over time, things move from the metaphysical into the physical (metaphysical entropy, if you will) as the opportunity to apply the scientific method avails itself. Its really all about cause and effect. Effects with unknown causes tend to be classified as metaphysical events or, at least, its an easy way to "process" and accept the event. Ultimately, all things become physical at some level since we are not capable of processing much of anything that lacks a physical component. Even Heaven and Hell are reduced to pleasure and pain at some level.

I think we're talking about different things here. I want to limit metaphysical to mean things which, if they exist at all, are necessarily beyond brute phyicalism. The best example would be God - if he exists at all, he is by nature a metaphysical being that cannot be reduced to brute physicalism. I agree that we have historically placed things in the metaphysical category that we would now call physical, but I think it would be better to say that we were mistaken in our category, not that the thing itself changed from being a metaphysical to a physical thing.

3.2: Any justification for believing anything metaphysical lies in the ability of the belief to predict future events or explain current events. My belief that God commands the sun to rise each morning is perfectly justified since he has never failed to make it so (its predictive and explanatory). Now that I understand the sun doesn't really rise at all (the earth spins), the belief is shattered. Therefore, as a more reasonable explanation is provided, beliefs gravitate from the metaphysical to the physical and the realm of the metaphysical is incrementally and irreversably depleted.

I think explanatory power and predictive power are pretty good things to put on the "Justification" list, and I would note that even though you count them toward justification for metaphysical ideas, they are also the two primary axioms for justifying physical ideas, notably scientific hypotheses. We are justified in believing the theory of gravity because it has comprehensive explanatory power of current states of reality, and because it has predictive power for future events.

3.3: No. It all boils down to the success of predictability - the likelihood or frequency that the assumption that the chair is there when you return is proven correct however justified or unjustified the belief that it was there in your absence. I believe that eclipses are God punishing us by withholding "His" light from us (mooning us, if you will). Bob, however thinks that it happens when Thor hurtles his battleax across the heavens and it blocks out the sun for a mintue. We can both justify the event (not enough people in church/forgot to sacrifice a virgin to Thor) but neither of us can predict the next one. When Newton comes along, causality/predictability become known and the metaphysical is diminished. However, there is nothing to say that Newton took into account all variables (as Einstein showed). And it may turn out that Einstein's models are not perfectly predictive. Until all variables are known (one can never be sure that there is not one more unknown variable), the idea of irrefutable predictability remains a goal and not a state. Therefore, validity can never be absolute.

Is this only the case for metaphysical events, or for physical as well? Take my example of the law of gravity - it has a perfect record for predictability. It predicts that any two objects of a certain mass placed within a certain field of each will be attracted, and lo and behold, every single time it's true. Can we say that this justification criterion for predictability reaches the point where we can positively assign the law of gravity to the "true" category?

3.4: That's an odd question. If there was no good reason to believe it was true (lack of explanatory value/ evidence of its falseness and/or no predictive value) then why would anyone believe it was true in the first place? Dogma would appear to be the subject of this question and, therefore, outside the scope of the discussion.

Let me give a for instance. A young girl in an oncology ward is told by her doctors and her parents that she is going to get better, and be completely healthy within a month. She believes this, and as a result, she is happy and content for 4 weeks, right up until the moment when she dies as a result of the cancer that her parents and doctors knew would kill her. She had a justified false belief. Put aside for a moment the ethics of the doctor lying to her, and ask the question, would there have been some benefit to the girl having a justified true belief that she was going to die that was greater than the benefit she derived from her justified untrue belief that she was going to live?

Basically, was it proper for her to exist in category I or category III?

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Just to make sure we are on the same page - as I understand it, you consider "justified" = "true"? You seem to consider that some statements can be more "justified" than others, depending upon the accumulation of evidence either way?

In your philosophy, is there anything which we may accept as "givens" or "material reality" versus a "belief" which may or may not be true?

For example, would you consider the equation

force = mass x acceleration

a "belief" or a "true" statement useful for describing the behavior of objects under the laws of classical physics?

[Beestie]

Originally Posted by smoothmoniker

I think we're talking about different things here. I want to limit metaphysical to mean things which, if they exist at all, are necessarily beyond brute phyicalism.

I agree with your point that categorical error is what places certain events in the realm of the metaphysical when they really never belonged there. My real question, therefore, is how can we really be sure what does and doesn't belong there. How can we differentiate between categorical error and the truly metaphysical? The ancients were not aware of their error and although we are more enlightened, I'm pretty sure we are making some errors as well. If you want to only include those things for which error is unthinkable (God, for example), then justification is limited to the lack of a physical cause. These justifications are nasty because they are obviously difficult to refute using anything other than a seperate metaphysical explanation landing one in a "my construct can beat up your construct" zone. The idea that I introduced of metaphysical entropy - the idea that one day there will be nothing left for which there is not a physical cause implies that some metaphysical concepts will be shown to be physical concepts as our knowledge increases while other metaphysical objects/ideas will simply cease to exist until the metaphysical lexicon is void.

I think explanatory power and predictive power are pretty good things to put on the "Justification" list, ... We are justified in believing the theory of gravity because it has comprehensive explanatory power of current states of reality, and because it has predictive power for future events.

Is this only the case for metaphysical events, or for physical as well?... Can we say that this justification criterion for predictability reaches the point where we can positively assign the law of gravity to the "true" category?

Well, Newton's laws work fine until one starts to accellerate to around 20% of the speed of light then Einstein's equations become more accurate explainers of the way things act. So gravity, once thought absolute suddenly becomes elastic as other variables enter the fray. My point is that one cannot know with certainty that all the variables are accounted for until they assert themselves and become known. So the definition of true becomes that which has not yet been proven false. And there is no justification possible for asserting that a thing cannot be proven false since the fact that it hasn't already been proven false is evidence that the thing capable of proving it false has not yet come into being in the realm of whatever phenomenon is being explained. Hence all justification of events physical and metaphysical remains vulnerable to the unknown and since the unknown(s) cannot be quantified, the degree of vulnerability of any given justified truth can never be established.

The best definition of truth I ever encountered was "that upon which we all agree." Unfortunately, I can't recall who said it. But, its true

Let me give a for instance. A young girl in an oncology ward is told by her doctors and her parents that she is going to get better ... She believes this ... until the moment when she dies. She had a justified false belief. ... ask the question, would there have been some benefit to the girl having a justified true belief that she was going to die that was greater than the benefit she derived from her justified untrue belief that she was going to live? Basically, was it proper for her to exist in category I or category III?

Take the for instance that the young lady was a devout Christian. Since she did not know of her impending death, she was denied the opportunity to reconcile with her God, repent, receive final absolution, tell her loved ones how much they meant to her, do some final good deeds, etc., etc., etc. I'm not comfortable speculating on behalf of another which quadrant is proper.