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"Believe" is an overloaded word. In one sense, it's simply the content of your mental state. In basic epistemology, Knowledge is defined as "Justified True Beli

"Believe" is an overloaded word. In one sense, it's simply the content of your mental state. In basic epistemology, Knowledge is defined as "Justified True Belief", i.e. when your mental state matches the actual state of the world for the "right" reasons (this is surprisingly tricky to make formal, see [1])If your head is a memory cell, your beliefs are the actual 0s or 1s inside it. In other senses, "beliefs" are an identity, and some people like to think theirs are more based on science than others. "Believing" in science amounts to adhering to a broad package of ethical and lifestyle choices that references science to various degrees, their followers believe this gives them more legitimacy than other lifesyles or ethics systems, but the actual degree to which they are justified by science varies enormously. To take 2 extremes : (1) Taking a stance against fossil fuel is "believing in science" because (good, credible) science says those increase carbon footprint which in turn disrupts the climate in a huge variety of ways, technically this doesn't necessarily imply to oppose fossil fuel as science doesn't have normative component (science doesn't care - in the strictest sense - if human civilization is destroyed or signficantly harmed), but with only an additional few, normally agreed-upon, assumptions you can get there. (2) Taking a stance against biological-women-exclusive sports is "believing in science" according to the stance followers because a few studies of shaky foundations and questionable funding says there is no unfair advantage to those who had male puberty, although there are tons of other studies that disagree. Those who say (loudly) they "believe in science" are usually using "believe" in the non-philosophical sense, and the viewpoints they love to push most are usually (2)-like rather than (1)-like. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem

GauntletWizard 4y ago
So far as I can tell, the Gettier problem is exactly the same as "I believe in Science" - There's a fallacy of false equivalence in "X is a justified argument, X||Y is therefore justified because of the justification in X", or something like that, I'm not sure what to call that fallacy. When you evaluate the truth of the whole argument, you'll find that it's not a "Justified True Belief" because the truth does not flow through the justified prepositions.
bobthechef 4y ago
trashtester 4y ago
There are extremely few things (if any) we can know for certain. Thinking in terms of boolean logic like this appears very primitive to me. In my opinion, the only rigorous way to improve our knowledge, is to employ Bayes Theorem, and Bayesian thinking in general. You and I may have different prior on a topic. We may see the same evidence, but end up believing different things because of the prior. As long as we state the prior, that is good and fair. If the evidence contradicts my prior, I should lower the confidence I have in my belief, even if the prior was big enough that I still believe the same thing. Unfortunately, what often happens, is that people lock themselves into believing things absolutely. If you lock some prior probability to 1, Bayes' Theorem has n way to let you update that belief. This is especially common when it comes to beliefs related to religion and identity. In fact, this is one way to define religious belief. Anything you believe that you will NOT stop believing regardless of evidence, could be defined as religious. If you believe in God, and we discover that Heaven is not on the other side of the starts, the believer just modifies non-core parts, and claims that "God is everywhere and nowhere". If belief in racist oppression is what defines you, and you find that most individuals are not individually racist anymore, you can just introduce "Structural Racism" that claims that hard work, staying married and maths are racist.
- switchbak 4y ago
  Racism of the margins, as it were.

GauntletWizard 4y ago

So far as I can tell, the Gettier problem is exactly the same as "I believe in Science" - There's a fallacy of false equivalence in "X is a justified argument, X||Y is therefore justified because of the justification in X", or something like that, I'm not sure what to call that fallacy. When you evaluate the truth of the whole argument, you'll find that it's not a "Justified True Belief" because the truth does not flow through the justified prepositions.

bobthechef 4y ago

trashtester 4y ago

There are extremely few things (if any) we can know for certain. Thinking in terms of boolean logic like this appears very primitive to me. In my opinion, the only rigorous way to improve our knowledge, is to employ Bayes Theorem, and Bayesian thinking in general. You and I may have different prior on a topic. We may see the same evidence, but end up believing different things because of the prior. As long as we state the prior, that is good and fair. If the evidence contradicts my prior, I should lower the confidence I have in my belief, even if the prior was big enough that I still believe the same thing. Unfortunately, what often happens, is that people lock themselves into believing things absolutely. If you lock some prior probability to 1, Bayes' Theorem has n way to let you update that belief. This is especially common when it comes to beliefs related to religion and identity. In fact, this is one way to define religious belief. Anything you believe that you will NOT stop believing regardless of evidence, could be defined as religious. If you believe in God, and we discover that Heaven is not on the other side of the starts, the believer just modifies non-core parts, and claims that "God is everywhere and nowhere". If belief in racist oppression is what defines you, and you find that most individuals are not individually racist anymore, you can just introduce "Structural Racism" that claims that hard work, staying married and maths are racist.

switchbak 4y ago
Racism of the margins, as it were.