spetey wrote:To give you a sense of this frustration, consider this example. Suppose you know a good deal of physics, and wanted to make some point about physics. And I, knowing little about physics, but assuming that your theory must be wrong somehow, kept pestering you about the physics by asking questions and making claims that simply demonstrated my lack of understanding of physics. Wouldn't that be a bit frustrating for you? Wouldn't you want to say "look, physics is hard, I can't teach you in a few days why it works this way, and I'm a bit mystified about why you're so sure the physics is wrong when you don't know physics very well"?
My answer to that is that this makes it a lot easier to find contradictions in my reasoning. You should at least get me to scratch my head on how to answer. Look, it's really not that hard to do this if someone comes along with some pretty naive ideas. This is what the whole creationist-evolutionist debate is about, right? Many creationists come to the table with some naive ideas about the flood, creation, etc, and within a short time an expert can bring them to contradiction and an inability for them to explain the world as the evidence shows to be the case.
spetey wrote:That's a bit like the situation I'm in, except suppose now that you didn't have to make a point about physics in the first place--the other person keeps insisting on talking about physics when it is almost totally beside the point. Wouldn't you find that even more frustrating?
No, I disagree again. These issues you have brought up deal with skepticism and belief, and that is a discussion
about epistemology. It's not fair for you to make demands of others if you are not willing to meet those same demands.
spetey wrote:And where is the "contradiction" you have found in my position?
Here is one that I found:
harvey1 wrote:Here again is your opening statement:
My interlocutors will inevitably appeal to faith as their justification for belief. (Some don't call it "faith"--some call it "intuition", or "trust" or some such.)... So why might appeal to faith be permissible when it comes to discussions of religion? [my emphasis]
However, compare that quote to this quote by you:
spetey wrote:"I don't think any beliefs are foundational" and in another place, "my belief that a desk is in front of me could be justified by the desk itself."[my emphasis]
It seems to me that you are making an appeal to faith since you have not provided any conditions on how an inanimate object can confer belief (e.g., "it confers
justification on my belief that a desk is there" [my emphasis]). This is the same as "intuition" or "trust" and, according to your terminology, it is an appeal to faith. Notice that I have provided such conditions by framing those conditions within a pragmatic framework. You said you were an epistemic pragmatist, but nowhere have you referred to a pragmatic framework, so it strikes me initially that you are appealing to faith.
The contradiction is that you haven't shown how your beliefs are causally constructed other than some kind of naive foundationalism, however you never addressed the more complex situations that naive foundationalism cannot address (e.g., expert testimony).
Here's another contradiction:
Your previous (5) was correct, except for the assumption that the "core beliefs" can't be externally justified.
AND,
The core beliefs may or may not be externally justified; that's not a matter entirely up to the thinker in question. One hopes, though, that the core beliefs (and others) are externally justified.
If "core beliefs" can't be externally justified but you hope they are externally justified, then isn't that a contradiction?
spetey wrote:harvey1 wrote:The most you have committed to is that core beliefs "may or may not be externally justified." That's not sufficient. What if a theist said that their beliefs on God, "may or may not have anything to do with the way the world appears"?
Another bad howler. How the world
appears subjectively is not the same question as whether there is external justification. If you're asking me to prove my beliefs "externally justified", that's not something I can do, and that's part of what it is to be
external justification. This problem affects your external pragmatism as much as any other external position. (How can you tell that the beliefs actually
are effective, instead of merely
appearing that way to you?)
I'm not talking about proving that your beliefs are "externally justified." All I ask is that you show how (i.e., give a reason why) your "core beliefs" are causally connected to the world as it appears, and I ask you to do it for
every "core belief" in order to consider it a "core belief." The reason is that if you cannot do it, then it looks like you are promoting a dogmatic approach to the world (except you've exchanged material-atheist dogma for religious dogma).
spetey wrote:harvey1 wrote:This, I think, sums up your error in thought. You are not acknowledging the primacy of pragmatism over coherentism.
Okay, here at least you are trying to point out what's wrong with my theory. and I appreciate it. It involves a basic confusion, though: pragmatism and coherentism are simply not in competition. One is a theory about the
structure of the justification relation, and one about the constitutive nature of justification.
harvey1 wrote:Let me quote BonJour: ...
I think this objection has great force, but that the only reasonable response is to (a) go totally external in your justification, or (b) if you want to recover a reasonable internal, "available" justification, move to some form of foundherentism instead. I choose the latter since I think internal justification is crucially important.
I'm not criticizing your move to founherentism, but something has to take the responsibility of causally connecting us to the world. The problem with foundherentism, as I you've stated your interpretation of it, is that it could be considered a holistic approach to knowledge and therefore nothing is actually cited as performing that role. It could be seen as "hocus pocus my beliefs are connected to the world". Your answers here look inconsistent to me since at times you want coherentism to perform this role and at other times you want pragmatism to perform this role and at other times you want some kind of naive foundationalism to perform this role. All of these approaches cannot perform this role and not perform this role at the same time, can they?
spetey wrote:I don't know about "many"--I can't think of more than one or two. Mostly I know the coherentist pragmatists, like Carnap, Quine, Putnam, Harman, Churchland ... If your point is that not every expert in the field has the exact suite of epistemological positions I do, yes, that's correct. But that doesn't show that my epistemology is dogmatic by a long shot. And more importantly, it doesn't somehow establish that belief in something controversial without reason is an okay thing to do--and that is your goal in this thread, right?
The purpose of this thread is to ask whether our beliefs are causally connected to the world or not. If someone doesn't think their beliefs need to be causally connected, it is "faith-based" as you suggest. That's bad. If, ideally, every belief is somehow causally connected to the world (i.e., we can at least provide a reason to show that it is), then that's not a perfect world but it's the best we can hope for and we have met our responsibility.
spetey wrote:You are allowed to talk about it. It's just frustrating when what you talk about is so confused and has nothing apparent to do with the point at hand.
That just seems like a bizarre comment. Epistemology and causally connecting our beliefs to reality (as best as possible) is the issue here. Yet, you seem to only want to talk about it from one perspective (namely, any perspective except your own).
spetey wrote:You did? Does this mean that you do think it's wrong to continue to believe something controversial without being able to give a reason?
It's got nothing to do with controversial or non-controversial. One should have a reason why they believe their beliefs are causally responsible to the world as it appears. I don't care if it has to do with the computer on your desk, or if it has to do with believing why Stephen Hawking is a brilliant guy. Every piece of knowledge must somehow be causally accountable to the world. This is done by giving reasons constructed within the framework of an epistemology which shows
how this is done responsibly.
spetey wrote:Because honest, in this thread, that's
all I want to hear. Whether or not you like my epistemology (or your understanding of my epistemology), if we
agree on this crucial point of this thread then we can
move on to giving those reasons in
other threads.
As I said, I don't see that your version of founherentism is sufficient from what I've seen in your responses. It would seem you are arguing from a perspective of "faith."
spetey wrote:harvey1 wrote:However, you failed to demonstrate that you are basing your beliefs on the world ...
Oh boy! If
that's what you're asking of me, then no, I can't refute skepticism. And if
you can, you should get it published right away! The world has been waiting for thousands of years for a good refutation of skepticism! Meanwhile all I can do is try to give
good reasons for each of my beliefs. And are we agreed that you too think that's important?
Yes, but your reasons, if I read them literally are, "'core beliefs'
can't be externally justified" and "core beliefs may or may not be externally justified." That looks pretty fishy to me.