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Pfhorrest

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That's basically what I meant. It's wishful thinking. It would be terrible if X therefore it's not X. How could it be not X? Come up with something, t...
November 01, 2020 at 22:06
I was thinking of theism as I wrote that, as one of those "specific big beliefs". I think they're compartmentalizing their work from the rest of their...
November 01, 2020 at 21:31
You have to work your way down through the networks of supporting beliefs until you find something in common to work back up from. This may take you a...
November 01, 2020 at 21:02
Yes. Nobody's beliefs have a particular burden of proof over anyone else's. If you want to push your beliefs over someone else's, you've got to show t...
November 01, 2020 at 20:36
Can you give an example to the contrary? I'm talking about scenarios where you have a belief system like "A" plus "A implies B", and then a new belief...
November 01, 2020 at 20:25
I addressed underdetermination specifically in the very post you quoted: Critical rationalism does not find undertermination a problem; you're never t...
November 01, 2020 at 09:43
That you think I'm trying to distinguish knowledge from belief or that this has anything to do with ontology shows a complete misunderstanding of what...
November 01, 2020 at 09:05
Except it's not, at least not on the same order as the beliefs under discussion. If anything, it's a meta-belief, an axiom of the method of belief rev...
November 01, 2020 at 08:42
I do, but that is not in conflict with anything Quine has said, or that you or Isaac have said along the same lines as Quine.
November 01, 2020 at 03:12
What is so inadequate? He’s basically stating confirmation holism, as you pointed out, and I’m saying “no duh”. You rule out a complete network of bel...
November 01, 2020 at 01:19
I never said I disagreed with it, I said it’s not contrary to my views, i.e. I agree with it.
November 01, 2020 at 00:58
If you tell me the sky isn’t always blue, sometimes it’s orange or even grey, that’s not something surprising I need to revise my beliefs about, that ...
November 01, 2020 at 00:20
I'm not ignoring Quine at all. When I first read Quine I thought his point about confirmation holism was trivial under my pre-existing falsificationis...
October 31, 2020 at 22:28
That's not induction specifically, that's just any invalid inference. Induction is not technically valid, because validity only applies to deduction t...
October 31, 2020 at 21:43
It’s the “checking” part that makes the difference, between acting like the observations you happen to have made so are plenty (and possibly even bein...
October 31, 2020 at 09:29
That's not contrary to my views at all. (I've just been saying in the past few posts that a "belief" as I mean it is formed from a "perception", which...
October 31, 2020 at 08:47
I don't see why that's a problem. Induction doesn't give you certainty like deduction does, but noticing patterns (which is all induction really amoun...
October 31, 2020 at 07:41
If counterfactually you would not have held that belief if the world were different such that that belief would have been false, then yes. On my accou...
October 30, 2020 at 20:19
The whole question is why they should be able to make us do it. And, since they only are able to do it because we allow and enable them to, why do we ...
October 30, 2020 at 03:17
That's an answer to why we are required, not why we should be. Also, given that who has the power is always in the end a question of who has the great...
October 30, 2020 at 01:52
When you tell someone else that they must do (or think) something, it absolutely does call for justification. Xtrix isn’t saying that people need just...
October 30, 2020 at 00:35
Not much to add but :100:
October 29, 2020 at 23:17
To wit: a left-wing YouTube channel I watch recently had an episode titled "Vote! (For Joe Biden! (Who Sucks!))"
October 29, 2020 at 20:36
That's perfectly in keeping with what I'm talking about. If some crazy conspiracy theory seems unlikely to you, you're free to believe to the contrary...
October 29, 2020 at 20:33
It's not a matter of skepticism being taken too far on any kind of linear axis, it's about there being two different senses of "skepticism", where you...
October 29, 2020 at 05:19
There is a difference between challenging beliefs as in rejecting them all until they can be proven from the ground up -- which, as you say, inevitabl...
October 28, 2020 at 21:37
Socialism is not synonymous with centralized distribution, nor is capitalism synonymous with markets. Socialism vs capitalism is about how ownership o...
October 28, 2020 at 21:15
The communists would say it is the rest of the world that has been infected with capitalism.
October 28, 2020 at 19:27
Anarchy is without rulers, not without rules.
October 28, 2020 at 19:25
I think OP is maybe talking about the idea of people taking comfort in ideas, e.g. religious ones, and that being derided as a bad thing. If I am corr...
October 28, 2020 at 03:34
I have a different assessment of the degree of certainty of that claim.
October 27, 2020 at 07:29
I'd like to see a poll about that. Even one just here on TPF. Actually, I did one of those on morality already, and it seems like many people think ot...
October 27, 2020 at 07:18
I'm counting being uninterested in checking your beliefs against the senses as "ignoring empirical evidence". Plenty of people ignore claims that ther...
October 27, 2020 at 07:05
Those are inseparable conditions. To think that something is correct is to think things contrary to it are incorrect. Do you think that those who thin...
October 27, 2020 at 07:00
Everyone has direct access to a small part of the world -- that's what sensation is. (This hinges on the direct realism covered in the previous thread...
October 27, 2020 at 06:58
You really have a problem with anybody ever thinking they know anything, don't you? That's the consistent theme across all of your posts: someone clai...
October 27, 2020 at 06:43
Exactly: whether you order chicken shit or dog shit or nothing, you’re getting force-fed some kind of shit or another.
October 26, 2020 at 23:34
https://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/PhilosophyNewsNetworkisPhilosophyUseless2.png
October 26, 2020 at 20:58
Sure, but it’s easier to remain convinced of a falsehood by a bad argument when there’s nothing at stake for being wrong. Even if the correct philosop...
October 26, 2020 at 18:09
The difference I suppose is that people persist in holding views that have already been shown wrong in philosophy, because there’s not serious practic...
October 26, 2020 at 17:44
Philosophy makes progress only in showing what philosophical views are wrong. If what’s left over is common sense, so be it. This is not actually uniq...
October 26, 2020 at 17:40
I don't. The justification lies in someone's responsiveness to however the world is, not on knowing how in particular the world is. I'm planning a thr...
October 26, 2020 at 08:56
It was a Doctor Who joke.
October 26, 2020 at 02:15
Time is a ball (of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff), balls are round, cycles are round, therefore time is a cycle.
October 26, 2020 at 00:31
Because guessing (or otherwise non-responsive-to-reality belief formation) and just happening to be right doesn’t rise to the standards that we hold k...
October 25, 2020 at 23:34
That would be saying that knowledge is simply true belief, which then leaves open the problem of people who form beliefs in a way not responsive to th...
October 25, 2020 at 21:54
Not on my account. On my account it's justified by default. Justification is the initial status of a belief, and it can only get worse from there, not...
October 25, 2020 at 20:31
I think maybe this is the point of confusion. I’m not talking about transforming beliefs into anything else, but just when a belief is or isn’t justif...
October 25, 2020 at 19:29
I don’t see the apparent contradiction. Can you elaborate? I’m basically applying the same standard of justification to belief as we usually do to act...
October 25, 2020 at 18:14
Machines made of ghosts made of machines made of ghosts.
October 25, 2020 at 17:40