The Permissibility of Faith

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spetey
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The Permissibility of Faith

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Post by spetey »

Hi folks!

In my experience, when debating with those who believe in God, 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.) I'm very wary of such appeals, because I hear it as "I will continue to believe despite lack of evidence or argument for my position (at least, of the kind that I can share with anyone who disagrees)." I think such behavior is impermissible. Faith to me is just dogmatism, and to me, dogmatism of any kind is very dangerous.

For comparison: imagine, for example, that you met a rabid racist. You give a carefully reasoned argument to the effect that skin color doesn't matter to who a person is or what rights they have, etc. The racist responds: "Although I have no answer to your argument, or arguments that I can share with you for my own position, I just believe; I have faith that my race is superior." You would be at an impasse, right? Should you come to disagree over some important social policy measure, there is no way to reason out your disagreement. Instead you have to see who has more money for PR, or who has more tanks, or what have you. I assume that in these cases we all agree that "faith" is in an important sense impermissible. We think the racist is being dogmatic, and we think that it's destructive not to be open to reasoning.

So why might appeal to faith be permissible when it comes to discussions of religion? Or have I somehow misconstrued what it is to appeal to faith?

;)
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Post #111

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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.

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Post #112

Post by spetey »

Harvey! Ugh. Let me again cut way past a lot of tempting errors to a few key ones...
harey1 wrote:
spetey wrote:And where is the "contradiction" you have found in my position?
Here is one that I found ... 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).
First of all, even if you were correct, this is not a "contradiction" in any standard sense of the word. At most it would be a failure to provide further support for one of my premises. This is just indicative of how you make very basic confusions in this area often.

Second, why assume the external-foundationalist portion of my theory is so naive that it excludes testimony? This is not a charitable assumption and is totally unfounded on your part.

Third, what is it for a belief to be "causally constructed"? This is another term you invent and hope makes sense; it is not something you have been pressing me on explicitly before.

Fourth, even if correct, how would this show that my epistemology endorses dogmatism?
harvey1 wrote: 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?
No. It's simple: the "core beliefs" may or may not be externally justified, and one hopes that they are, and one should not assume that they're not. What's inconsistent about that?

Look again, carefully, at my quoatations (which again you have responsibly quoted). I first said that you should not assume that the core beliefs can't be externally justified (as you did in your (5))--that is, I insisted you allow for the possibility that they are. And then I said one hopes they are. And the contradiction is...?
harvey1 wrote: 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
Show why I think they are? Through my perceptions, which I have said contribute centrally to the internal coherence, plus all sorts of nearby beliefs about how my perceptions are reliable, and so on. Show how they actually are? That I can't do--I might be in the Matrix or deceived by a demon. But if your demand is that I defeat skepticism before you will acknowledge that I might have a consistent and anti-dogmatic epistemology, then your demand goes way too far. No epistemology in thousands of years has defeated this brand of skepticism.
harvey1 wrote: ... I ask you to do it for every "core belief" in order to consider it a "core belief."
If you ask me to give reasons for those beliefs, I'm happy to do so, and have done so when it comes to atheism.
harvey1 wrote: 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.
Perceptions perform that role, as I explicitly said recently, and as I assumed was taken for granted previously.
harvey1 wrote: 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?
Yes, they can, that's what I'm telling you. As I have said before, these are not in competition. I can be a foundationalist on external justification and an foundherentist pragmatist on internal justification. This is a common and perfectly reasonable suite of views. Your insistence that these have to compete or something only seems to me to show that you don't understand the position.
harvey1 wrote: The purpose of this thread is to ask whether our beliefs are causally connected to the world or not.
No it's not! Look back at the first post. I didn't ask for a refutation of skepticism. I asked whether it's okay to continue to believe something important and controversial without reason.
harvey1 wrote:
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.
Good! You think you have to give reasons for all your beliefs. Good, that's an even stronger position than the one I asked for. We have agreed on this point, and that's awesome.
harvey1 wrote: It would seem you are arguing from a perspective of "faith."
Again, I know it seems that way to you, Harvey. But by your own lights you need to give reason to show how that seeming is related to the way things are.

;)
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Post #113

Post by harvey1 »

spetey wrote:Harvey! Ugh.
Good afternoon to you too, Spetey. It seems I'm just getting on everyone's nerves today.
spetey wrote:Third, what is it for a belief to be "causally constructed"? This is another term you invent and hope makes sense; it is not something you have been pressing me on explicitly before.
By "causally constructed" I mean that experiences, phenomena, events, etc. are what intiates a "core belief." If a "core belief" is not a direct or indirect result of the outside world, then how can it be a belief about the world?
spetey wrote:Fourth, even if correct, how would this show that my epistemology endorses dogmatism?
Being dogmatic is "characterized by an authoritative, arrogant assertion of unproved or unprovable principles". I don't think one is explicitly endorsing dogmatism if they have an acausal view of how core beliefs are formed, but implicitly it opens the door for someone to claim as a "true assertion" something that doesn't correspond to reality, which is what dogmatists will often do if they gain enough power so that they can have greater influence over the standards of rationality. It's difficult for a pragmatic-based conception of justification to allow such a thing since if the conditions are poor, the dogmatic individual is left trying to explain the poor conditions by utilizing a pragmatic view of justification (much harder to do). Hence, pragmatists are more likely to produce opportunists instead of dogmatists. A great example of this in our society are presidents. They often come into power and conditions might reflect well even before their policies take effect. It is sometimes the previous administration's policies that caused the better conditions. Likewise, someone having good policies might suffer as a result of previous bad policies which they are blamed. The opportunist in that situation would be the party no longer in power who could claim that times were good when they were in power. All and all, opportunism is better than a situation where standards of judgement are more controlled by cohering with some kind of "smart set of beliefs" since they never have reason to optimize those beliefs. The image that comes to my mind is atheist Marxism and atheist Socialism.
spetey wrote:It's simple: the "core beliefs" may or may not be externally justified, and one hopes that they are, and one should not assume that they're not. What's inconsistent about that?
Okay, I went over the quotes and I realized how I ended up mis-quoting you. You were correcting my "previous (5)" here, and not providing the correct position with respect to your "core beliefs." That was my mistake. Sorry about that.
Discussion on Perception Versus Holistic Issues wrote:
harvey1 wrote: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
spetey wrote:Show why I think they are? Through my perceptions, which I have said contribute centrally to the internal coherence, plus all sorts of nearby beliefs about how my perceptions are reliable, and so on.

harvey1 wrote: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.
spetey wrote:Perceptions perform that role, as I explicitly said recently, and as I assumed was taken for granted previously.
harvey1 wrote:Your answers here look inconsistent to me since at times you want coherentism to perform this role [of causal connection to the world] 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:Yes, they can, that's what I'm telling you. As I have said before, these are not in competition. I can be a foundationalist on external justification and an foundherentist pragmatist on internal justification. This is a common and perfectly reasonable suite of views. Your insistence that these have to compete or something only seems to me to show that you don't understand the position.
Okay, clear this up for me. In the first two quotes in the caption, you insist that it is perceptions that perform the role of a causal connection to the world (i.e., foundationalism). However, in the last quote I asked you explicitly if all the components (coherentism, internal pragmatism, and foundationalism(/perception)) perform this role, and you said "yes".

What I want to know is, which answer is correct. Is it perception that directly and causally connects a belief to the world, or is it a holist conception where the "trinity" you have set-up causally connects your beliefs to the world? Your answer seems inconsistent to me.

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Post #114

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I've enjoyed reading these debate-a-thons between spetey and harvey1, but I can't resist making one observation.

If the depth of scientific, philisophical, and semantic detail to which you two delve is required in order to come to the "right" conclusion regarding religion, then 99.9% of the rest of us are in deep trouble! Wow! :shock:

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Post #115

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PrismPaul wrote:I've enjoyed reading these debate-a-thons between spetey and harvey1, but I can't resist making one observation. If the depth of scientific, philisophical, and semantic detail to which you two delve is required in order to come to the "right" conclusion regarding religion, then 99.9% of the rest of us are in deep trouble! Wow! :shock:
Thanks, PP. I think that just goes to show that there are a number of options to have strong convictions in a faith, and that one shouldn't be so gullible as to allow atheistic-materialistic thinking to cause them not to live what could have been a much more pleasant and meaningful view of human life and its destiny (both as individuals and as a whole). But, that's a subject for another thread...

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Post #116

Post by spetey »

Back from a quick vacation! Perhaps with a bit more perspective, and a bit more patience.
harvey1 wrote: Okay, clear this up for me. In the first two quotes in the caption, you insist that it is perceptions that perform the role of a causal connection to the world (i.e., foundationalism). However, in the last quote I asked you explicitly if all the components (coherentism, internal pragmatism, and foundationalism(/perception)) perform this role, and you said "yes".
There are different questions in epistemology that different views try to satisfy. That's why answers to one question need not compete with answers to a different question. For example, on perceptions: one hopes that one's perceptions of the world are caused by the way the world actually is. Those perceptions, very roughly, are externally justified just in case they were caused in the right way. The problem is, whether they were caused by the world as it is or by some hallucination is not something "accessible" to us. So this is typically why we might ask for a second "internal" type of justification, one "accessible" to us, according to which to trust our perceptions they must cohere with (or not be undermined by, or whatever) our other beliefs. For example, if I believe that I just took a big hit of LSD, this belief can tend to undermine my trust of my perceptions. That there really is a big pink elephant in the corner does not cohere with my antecedent beliefs that there are no such things as pink elephants, and they'd be unlikely to be in this part of the world, and certainly this part of my house, and so on. On the other hand that I am hallucinating a pink elephant might cohere well with my belief that I recently ingested a serious hallucinogenic.

I'm so pleased, meanwhile, that we both agree that it's important to give reasons for controversial views. If you did somehow manage to convince me that my epistemology were dogmatic, Harvey, I would be more likely to adjust my epistemology than this closer-to-core principle. And you seem to agree with this "core" belief! That's good!

;)
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Post #117

Post by spetey »

harvey1 wrote:
PrismPaul wrote:I've enjoyed reading these debate-a-thons between spetey and harvey1, but I can't resist making one observation. If the depth of scientific, philisophical, and semantic detail to which you two delve is required in order to come to the "right" conclusion regarding religion, then 99.9% of the rest of us are in deep trouble! Wow! :shock:
Thanks, PP. I think that just goes to show that there are a number of options to have strong convictions in a faith, and that one shouldn't be so gullible as to allow atheistic-materialistic thinking to cause them not to live what could have been a much more pleasant and meaningful view of human life and its destiny (both as individuals and as a whole). But, that's a subject for another thread...
Yeah, thanks, it's nice to know someone's reading (and enjoying) these besides Harvey and me.

As you might guess, PrismPaul, my evaluation of the circumstance is different from Harvey's. Myself I think the issue of this thread is simple and straightforward: I want to know why it's okay for a Christian to believe without having to give reasons, but not okay for a racist. This is not a question that requires specialized knowledge; anyone can discuss it reasonably. To be honest I think Harvey is interested in diverting us from this very simple issue, and my personal diagnosis is that this is because Harvey is hesitant to give up faith-appealing as a backdoor, should he feel he needs it on another thread. ;)

What do you think about appeals to faith, PrismPaul?

;)
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Post #118

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spetey wrote:
harvey1 wrote:Okay, clear this up for me. In the first two quotes in the caption, you insist that it is perceptions that perform the role of a causal connection to the world (i.e., foundationalism). However, in the last quote I asked you explicitly if all the components (coherentism, internal pragmatism, and foundationalism(/perception)) perform this role, and you said "yes".
There are different questions in epistemology that different views try to satisfy. That's why answers to one question need not compete with answers to a different question. For example, on perceptions: one hopes that one's perceptions of the world are caused by the way the world actually is. Those perceptions, very roughly, are externally justified just in case they were caused in the right way. The problem is, whether they were caused by the world as it is or by some hallucination is not something "accessible" to us...
I don't think we need to talk about hallucinations, brains in vats, etc., at this moment, at least. For now, let's just assume that perceptions give us an approximately good notion of the world and that there are no Maxwell demons out there deceiving physicists about the nature of physical law (at least for now).
spetey wrote:On the other hand that I am hallucinating a pink elephant might cohere well with my belief that I recently ingested a serious hallucinogenic... I'm so pleased, meanwhile, that we both agree that it's important to give reasons for controversial views.
Whoa... How about the answer to my question? Are basic beliefs always a direct consequence of perceptions at some point in history, or not? What connects a belief to the outside world in your view? This is an important question since a negative answer would reflect poorly on you in the question that you asked at the beginning of this thread.

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Post #119

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harvey1 wrote:To be honest I think Harvey is interested in diverting us from this very simple issue, and my personal diagnosis is that this is because Harvey is hesitant to give up faith-appealing as a backdoor, should he feel he needs it on another thread.
Not so, Spetey. I see that you are throwing stones while you also live in a glass house, so I just want to get us to the point to where this is clear.

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Post #120

Post by spetey »

harvey1 wrote: Whoa... How about the answer to my question? Are basic beliefs always a direct consequence of perceptions at some point in history, or not?
First, notice that's a new question--before it was whether core beliefs are "caused by the world", which you now want to assume:
harvey1 wrote:For now, let's just assume that perceptions give us an approximately good notion of the world and that there are no Maxwell demons out there deceiving physicists about the nature of physical law (at least for now).
As for your new question: are "basic beliefs" always a direct consequence of perceptions? I'm not sure what you mean by "basic beliefs". Are they what you called "core beliefs" earlier (that is, those nearer the center of your web of belief, the ones less likely to be revised)? If so, then no, some basic beliefs will be rather abstract, such as logical laws and principles against dogmatism and the like. These are not directly caused by perceptions--if caused by perceptions at all, they are several layers of abstraction removed. Some "basic beliefs" could be innately believed, and so not caused by perceptions at all. In principle however they could be revised due to contravening perceptual input.
harvey1 wrote: What connects a belief to the outside world in your view? This is an important question since a negative answer would reflect poorly on you in the question that you asked at the beginning of this thread.
As I have said previously, a belief is ultimately "connected to the outside world" through the initial inputs to the system from the world, which we call perceptions. (And here we are assuming, as you ask, that perceptions do connect us to the world as it is.) And I'm not sure what a "negative answer" would be to a "what connects?" question.

Are we coming closer to establishing that I am secretly a dogmatist despite myself, Harvey? Because if not, I'm really not sure why you are still pressing me on this thread--we at least think we agree that it's important to give reasons for controversial beliefs, and you have yet to show me that I don't think this after all!

;)
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