Realism Without Belief

[@KaneB]

Pessimistic induction: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bIDam6mhmq6tjsU Idealization: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Zp27mYGaqayWptk

[@justus4684]

Love your videos dawg

[@EndrChe]

Word

[@italogiardina8183]

If Muons are still behaving oddly then the phenomenon could break particle physics. An experiment at Fermilab in the US suggests that muons rotate faster than expected, which would be a problem for the standard model of particle physics.

[@norabelrose198]

I just don't see the sense in which realism is explanatory. Like what does realism allow me to do that I couldn't do otherwise? Is science more productive when scientists are realists? I think some people, esp. in the debate about quantum mechanics, have sort of made this argument (Sean Carroll, David Deutsch) but it seems pretty weak.

[@KaneB]

Here's a puzzling phenomenon: Science is remarkably successful with respect to prediction and control, when compared to other traditions. We might wonder, what is it about science that makes it so successful? The realist says that part of the answer will be that our best theories are true. If a theory is true, it's not at all surprising that its predictions are confirmed, or that it can be applied to manipulate nature. This is the sense in which realism is explanatory. Is it a requirement of a good explanation that it allows you to do things or to be more productive? If productivity is a matter of e.g. controlling nature or developing technologies, then I don't think productivity is a requirement of good explanations even in science. The expansion of the universe is a good explanation of observations such as galactic red shift, but there's not much we can do with that at present, since it's a feature of reality beyond our control. On the other hand, if we think of it in terms of generating and supporting theories then yes, I think realism does arguably promote productivity. Not among scientists, but philosophers. This is to be expected, since realism is a philosophical programme, not a scientific one. First, the realism debate has been central in philosophy of science and has spawned a great deal of work analysing the dynamics of theory change, the role of idealizations, the different methods by which theories are supported, etc. Second, there are many philosophical views that seem to depend on a realist interpretation of science. This is because many philosophers see philosophy as offering a "continuation of science by other means". Take debates in the metaphysics of time, for instance, where most philosophers presuppose the (approximate) truth of our best physical theories and then deal with philosophical issues raised by those theories (say, does special relativity refute presentism?) Now we might think that all of these philosophical debates are confused or useless or whatever else, in which case we might say that realism is not as productive as it seems at first sight.

[@Spiritchaser93]

Based on the analytic philosophy's definition of Truth then I'm not a realist, but if we were to take realism to involve the scientific method as inseparable from both theories of unification and objects of reference, then realism is the only sensible worldview because its counterparts, anti-realism (Idealism/mentalism) or non-realism (pragmatism) both fail to account for the metaphysics of what makes science possible, and science as a domain of functives abstracting from concrete chaos using variables. What comes prior to subject and object is that which individuates the two. I find analytic philosophy to be too ontic, and not fundamental enough, to quote Heidegger. All of these "problems" are very much pseudo in nature, the irony that it was Wittgenstein who understood the relationship of science to epistemology better than any other analytic thinker after him. This is why continental philosophy renders analytic thought trivial, and natural science makes analytic philosophy redundant.

[@ericb9804]

my understanding of pragmatism is that it makes the point that "metaphysics" in general aren't necessary at best, and question-begging at worst. So what exactly do you think the "metaphysics of what makes science possible" are?

[@Spiritchaser93]

@@ericb9804 not only are such concerns seen as not necessary, pragmatism of science is the belief that questions regarding the nature of reality are unanswerable in the first place because they are set up in such way that any answer given can never be formulated in the way without relating back to the social - human goals and intensions. to even speak of a "philosophy of science" is a contradiction because philosophy and science are two distinct domains with their own methods which are incommensurable. hence, we can only speak about the metaphysics of science - where science discovers the "how" of things by abstraction (think about ceteris paribus laws of nature as Nancy Cartwright put it) and offering approximate predictions of how things will turn out (as causation is not inherent in reality but rather an association of the mind as the genius Hume discovered). but the "why" of things is the concern not of science but of metaphysics - to show the relationship between the observable and the observer. its a relationship that cannot be ignored by simple pragmatism, since such concerns are what science rely on but are assumptions which science cannot possibly answer/not the concerns of science. ie. what makes science POSSIBLE in the first place, what allows us to make statements about the world which on the one hand, require an observer and on the other, somehow imply a universality or independence of the observed from the observer.

[@tykjpelk]

Science is pretty cool but I don't think we need to pretend that it's epistemologically rigorous. At best we come up with models that make very good predictions, but to make a proper theory we have to come up with an underlying framework that we can't directly observe, and it tends to break. Maxwell's equations are in my opinion the masterpiece of classical physics, and they are directly wrong, because they assume that light is a wave and don't require quantization of the field. We're trying our best here, but there's no way for us to promise that the deeper insights we infer from our models are correct. It's true that pragmatism is unsatisfying, but all the satisfying justifications have serious holes. I'd rather have a justification that's unsatisfying but at least consistent. All this to say that science is when you use the scientific method, and there's a whole bunch of us doing just that because by the standards of the scientific method itself, it seems to work.

[@DanielM__1]

Kane in high definition

[@luisvasquez5015]

Don't let oil companies find this video!

[@rogerwitte]

The problem here is that you want absolute belief but science delivers approximate truth. Even the failed scientific theories are true up the extent that they can make true predictions and false to the extent that they make false ones. Our current theories are true to exactly the same extent ... but we cannot always tell yet, which bits of the theory are true ... so all our beliefs are subject to revision in the light of experience. There is no absolute and invariant truth in Science.

[@KaneB]

No. I'm well aware that realists only argue for approximate truth. Nothing in this video assumes otherwise. Just substitute the phrase "approximately true" for "true" throughout the video and everything I said still goes through, as far as I can see.

[@davidfoley8546]

​@@KaneB Newtonian mechanics is an extraordinarily good approximation of the theories that replaced it. This is not just an empirical claim but can be formalized as a theorem, e.g. the classical limit in the case of general relativity when v/c goes to 0. So there is a precise sense in which Newtonian mechanics is "approximately true", which seems to defeat the objection that the success of Newotian mechanics is a counter-example to the success-to-truth inference. On the contrary, Newtonian mechanics is approximately successful in precisely those conditions under which the new theory suggests it would be approximately true. This case, at least, looks a lot more like a vindication of success-to-truth, contrary to what you say in the beginning of the video.

[@KaneB]

@@davidfoley8546 It's approximately true with respect to the behaviour of objects in a particular range of masses and velocities. What it says about the underlying structure of space, time, gravity, mass, etc. is false. (You can call that part "approximately true" too, if you want, but then you a have concept of truth that concedes everything the anti-realist wants.)

[@davidfoley8546]

​@@KaneB I'm not sure I see the distinction you're making about the behavior of objects and the underlying structures. In the classical limit, spacetime is flat, and gravity and time work exactly the way they should in Newtonian mechanics, not just empirically but at the level of the theory. It looks not like the classic theory was fundamentally wrong, but rather that it was a special case of a more general theory.

[@paimon1250]

​@@davidfoley8546 Behaviour means how things behave, or how they move, act, appear. Behaviour has famously always excluded what things actually are, since behaviour is purely an external thing when it comes to physical objects. Not trying to appear smartass here, just as a reminder so you might be able to see the distinction better: An animal might behave in one way towards you, and with your limited knowledge, you assume that the animal is actually *angry*. It turns out however that the animal is actually *aroused*. The behaviour then failed to provide you true knowledge about what the animal is actually experiencing. Similarly, the behaviour of objects does not necessarily give you information about its "underlying structure", whatever the hell that means, being a little cheeky here. What it does tell you, is how it currently appears to you. Your theories will help you make predictions about how it will appear next, and come up with ideas of how it appeared prior to you making your current observations. As a separate note, the idea that there are "underlying truths" or structures is already a very bizarre kind of line of reasoning. It seems that most philosophy is obsessed with strange metaphysical truths that exist in a vaccum, completely independent to the only thing that we ever know, which is what is given to us with our capacity for intelligence, perception, and modelling. Interestingly then, we seem to think that the "underlying truths" we do identify using these same things, are then somehow *independent* to these things, despite never leaving the sphere of these very subjective and limiting tools and things. It's a very silly attempt to try and get passed a horizon that is always an infinite amount of Kilometers stretched out ahead of you, and believing that every conclusion you reach is somehow now untouched and independent to the tools you have used to construct it. Which is, I suppose, a whole other element of the issue of Realism about *anything*, and the belief in truly external truths, when we simply do not ever come to any external conclusions about anything, but come to *many* internal conclusions that we mistakenly label as external when another person agrees with us. But that is besides the point. Behaviour != The Truth of the Object or thing that behaves. Philosophies that usually believe it does are foolishly extremely realist to the point of being naive.

[@Nickesponja]

You should try getting a bit closer to the camera, I could barely see you in this video

[@saintsword23]

Just a quick argument, after listening to your introduction, against the idea that "the most successful ideas are most likely the real/true ones" idea: If I program a virtual reality video game where the best way to progress the game is to treat the characters in it like real people, I'm not justified in then believing they are real characters.

[@PeterBarnes2]

What if we had something more like 1) While it may not be possible to possess a singular theory that {predicts not-zero things, whose predictions are all absolutely true, and which does not contradict so many other such theories as to not permit a covering of all phenomena with such theories}, it is still the case that for every phenomenon whose measurement may distinguish the veracity of several theories, there exist arbitrarily many theories which: Predict this particular phenomenon more accurately than any presently existing measurement And which satisfy any finite number of other arbitrary conditions, such as agreement with another theory, within a given non-zero margin, on a compact domain. 2) For at least many fields of science, the reduction of the world to a finitistic composition of phenomena (a composition of arbitrarily many independent phenomena, but which must themselves be compositions of only finitely many well-determined phenomena) which are individually predicted better than they are measured is sufficiently broad and rich today as to engage in perhaps all ethical obligations and personal goals which do not explicitly require supernatural interactions. Even to work at the edge of science is done by leaning heavily upon other sciences and engineering to formulate an experimental procedure (the precision and quality of any microscope, the ingenuity of Fizeau's apparatus, the material properties of Borosilicate glass, etc.) then simply rolling the dice in executing the experiment. 3) Regarding a "Pascal's Mugging" over the existence of a reality that is nearly as observed, I am aware of no direct cost to behaving as if one believed in reality, and the opportunity cost would seem to be not having an unlimited amount of time to meditate on the many things not in reality. Indeed, most people dream while asleep, and to sleep is well demanded by one's health. And while it is true other meditations are displaced in the day by chores and work and other things in "reality" as such, I myself do enjoy thinking about unreal things with more prejudice and preference than I think is perhaps owed. If anyone is aware of some different activity than thinking, dreaming, or otherwise meditating, and which is engaged in principally outside of reality, I'm sure many people who aren't me would appreciate hearing about these activities in great detail. Perhaps this would be called the 'limited success - to - functional agreement' inference.

[@gannonapoliticalteen9694]

“There’s lots of work to be done is the point.” haha!

[@aarantheartist]

If the realist says, “You should believe the scientific theories that meet criteria C”, The anti-realist can’t resist the question “which theories meet C?”, and you can’t blame him for remaining unconvinced if the realist replies with “who knows!”. Completing the argument would be an enormous project that I don’t think most philosophers would even be interested in starting. But I suspect that those who would advance this argument would resist any requirement that their arguments be convincing to anti-realists. I’ve read quite a few papers where philosophers reject the burden that their arguments need convince opponents, particularly debates around forms of scepticism. I kind of think, what’s the point of making an argument at all then? Enjoyed the video Dr B.

[@KaneB]

Maybe the point is: An argument is a pleasing story I can tell myself that makes me feel good about my own beliefs. And why not? Perhaps other people won't find it pleasing, but then some people don't find chocolate ice cream pleasing, and this doesn't make chocolate ice cream any less pleasing to me. The worry I have with realism is that realists might find that, on reflection, their story will turn out to be capable of making them feel good about a far smaller range of beliefs than initially expected.

[@aarantheartist]

@@KaneB I guess I always thought of an argument as an attempt to convince one’s dialectical opponents, not a form of happy story telling. But that’s just a semantic hang up of mine and doesn’t matter. I don’t really have any objection to feel good stories as such. But you’re right that this particular story doesn’t seem very promising.

[@primenumberbuster404]

This channel is the definition of actual "intrusive thoughts".

[@rodrigogomes2064]

What?

[@AlFiele]

I feel like that's philosophy as a whole

[@rodrigogomes2064]

@@AlFiele intrusive thoughts, are thoughts you dont control. Their disorganized, and mostly ilogical. How is analytical philosophy similar to that?

[@jamesrandall9489]

No????

[@13part]

what?

[@jagharminautsikter]

i like this format on this type of content

[@bishopbrennan3558]

What's the painting in the thumbnail?

[@ilgabarezza]

Apart from the explanatory hypothesis, I think another way to overcome the issue is possible! There is an interesting paper by Michael Devitt called “An Ignored Argument for Scientific Realism” (2020) in which he contends that a scientific realist should define scientific realism (mainly) as a metaphysical thesis, avoiding every epistemic consideration. Have you read it? I think the problems that you raise in this video might be avoided if we consider the argument put forward by Devitt (the Basic Argument) instead of the no miracles argument. PS: great job you’re doing on youtube Kane, appreciate your videos on SR!

[@KaneB]

I'm unsure. As Devitt points out, many of the standard objections to scientific realism can be raised against realism based on the Basic Argument. The promiscuous use of idealizations in contemporary theories clearly spells trouble for the claim that the truth of those theories best explains the observed phenomena. So the question becomes whether the moves that the realist makes to defend the Basic Argument would end up complexifying the inference to truth, as has happened with the realist's success-to-truth inference. I suspect that the moves will be similar in both cases. The defender of the Basic Argument might say: "Okay, it's not good theories that best explain the observed phenomena, but only those theories with a track record of successful novel predictions... And it's not the theory in general that best explains the observed phenomena, but only the working posits of the theory... Etc."

[@xxplumplumxx]

it really seems to me that the concept of scientific realism is an idle wheel in the theory of scientific realism and therefore we are unjustified in believing it but i might just be confused

[@KaneB]

Yeah, and it doesn't seem that scientific realism makes any precise, risky novel predictions...

[@fanboy8026]

Dawg dawg dawg

[@exalted_kitharode]

Are you okay? You look exhausted and quite gloomy

[@KaneB]

I was ill when I made this video.

[@13part]

hello Kane, felt a little bit lost on this one. would you recommend watching the full series you made on scientific realism? thank you

[@KaneB]

If you're interested in realism vs anti-realism then yeah, I'd recommend it.

[@alananimus9145]

I am 2 minutes in and you are already conflating terms and pulling a motte and bailey. This is a semantic trick. The hypothesis of aether vs the theory of aether. There has never been an aether theory.

[@KaneB]

Stop being an ass (this isn't a request. I'm just going to remove your comments if you keep it up)

[@_unkn0wnus3r_85]

Seriously, please just shut up. Your arrogance and lack of intellectual humility is embarrassing.

[@davidthevegan4901]

correct me if I'm misunderstanding anything (philosophy is not my field of study just a hobby). The argument levied against scientific realism, at least the version that posits a conditional claim, is that it fails to be a useful guide for belief unless one is well versed in a particular subject enough to prove said conditions are met. My first thought was "is this not just the scientific process worded differently? is science not just the process of experimentation evaluating whether theory/ hypothesis x satisfies the condition of predicting y?" In my opinion this seems to be strikingly similar to the problem of induction, which questions our reasons for believing that the future will resemble the past. I'd posit that we can't rationally conclude that the future will always resemble the past, but for the sake of attaining that which we as humans value we must build an internal degree of belief that the future will in fact resemble the past. Which to me is the real goal of scientific inquiry. AKA a sick person doesn't seek a doctor for truth of his ailments he seeks a doctor for a cure to his ailments and the theory's that guide our doctors treatments are first and for most used for the purpose of finding a cure with high efficacy. It is then our human prerogative to regard the doctors understanding as truth. I guess what I'm ultimately saying is that if scientific realism is the belief that our scientific theories are true then the belief is not held by scientists as they should be practicing skeptics, rather the belief is held by those see the value of our scientific theories. My second thought was "could God within heidegger's existentialism and spinoza's god be considered idle wheels of their philosophies? and if so are idle wheels simply a consequence of the properties of language, i.e. metaphor and such devices used to commute understanding within a culture?"

[@derpmansderpyskin]

This is obviously the least fun answer, but we actually do know that at least some of our theories are not true. For example, the theory of relativity and quantum theory are incompatible with each other- despite the fact that they are both very well verified experimentally. So at least one of them is wrong.

[@Allyouneedisablender]

Have you ever looked into or considered looking into formal ontology?

[@KaneB]

No, it's not a field I know much about

[@ericb9804]

"If we can't identify 'Truth' by way of justification, then we can't identify it all." - R. Rorty. Realism seems obvious enough to use in a colloquial sense. And yet, we don't need to insist on realism as the foundation to epistemology. So it's not about choosing between realism and not-realism, as much as its about realizing we can't tell the difference between them so we don't need to make a choice in the first place. Read Vickers again and replace the word "truth" with the word "justification" and you'll see nothing changes. What you call "truth" is just something we can ignore and be none the worse for that.

[@KaneB]

Realism: There are electrons. Not-realism: There are no electrons / I don't know whether there are electrons. Similarly, Theism: There is a God. Not-theism: There is no God / I don't know whether there is a God. Seems easy enough to me to tell the difference in these cases. At least, insofar as I can tell the difference between the two sides of any distinction. We can push skepticism far enough that even distinctions like "black vs white" or "love vs hate" dissolve. I don't find anything especially problematic about the realism/non-realism distinction. Actually, in its general form (not specifically directed to scientific theories), it strikes me as one of the simplest, most "basic" distinctions we have. People are of course free to ignore whatever they like. I happen to enjoy talking about scientific realism so I'm not going to ignore it.

[@ericb9804]

@@KaneB no, not quite... electrons are something we experience. We have experiments and such where we measure electrons and how they influence other things etc. A notion of "electrons" has proven demonstrably useful in a number of ways. All the better for us. And yet, we only know of electrons by way of our experience. There is no sense in which "electrons as the really are" can be divorced from "my experience of electrons." It looks the same to us. "Reality as it is, is always reality as it appears." - AJ Ayer. Moreover, anything we think about electrons, we are free to change our mind about. If we come up with some experiments that fundamentally changes what think "electrons really are," we are free to change our minds about them. So the best we can say about "reality" is that we never know at given time if we know what it is or not. The point here is we don't have to choose between "realism" and "not-realism." Obviously, we don't know if electrons are "really real," but so what? Any group of people is free to use the concepts of "electron" as if they were real if it suits their purposes. And thus far, it certainly has. Pragmatism, or neo-pragmatism, if you prefer, demonstrates that the reason transitional epistemology has never reached conclusions on exactly the topics you discuss is because the whole endeavor is just a giant act of confusing ourselves with our own words by insisting that a notion of "objectivity" is worthy of spending time on in the first place.

[@KaneB]

@@ericb9804 >> no, not quite I'm not sure what part you're disagreeing with. >> the point is we don't have to choose... Of course you don't! You don't have to think about this stuff at all. That's fine. Everybody has different interests. But I don't see any difficulty understanding the difference between the options in this case. Similarly, if somebody asks me "who is better, Stockhausen or Xenakis?" I don't have to choose. I might like them equally, or I might not be interested in thinking about either. But I can still comprehend the options. With that said... I find your comment a little puzzling because it seems to me that, despite your protests otherwise, you *are* making a choice here. Comments such as that the reality of electrons cannot be divorced from our experience of electrons, or that we can never know if we know what "reality" is, or that we don't know if electrons are "really real", would seem to put you pretty firmly in the anti-realist camp.

[@ericb9804]

@@KaneB I think the distinction is one of vocabulary. The question isn't really "which to do we choose, Realism or anti-realism?" but rather more like, "what is the vocabulary most useful to describing our situation?" So its not really a matter of simply not choosing realism or anti-realism, in the sense that we don't have to choose a favorite TV show, but more of realizing that both of those terms have no practical value - they don't actually help me do what I am already doing. Its no coincidence that we have debated realism vs. anti-realism for literally millennia and gotten nowhere. I think in this video you mentioned "aether" as a scientific theory, and how its no longer considered useful. Realism vs. anti-realism is like "aether" - its a theoretical framework that just didn't pay off, which is ok. The pragmatist, as opposed to the anti-realist, just thinks we are all better of leaving the whole discussion to the annals of history and using wholly different words to describe our state of affairs.

[@Fafner888]

Honestly I don't understand the position of scientific anti realism. Are we supposed to doubt the existence of bacteria and electrons? Or what about the Andromeda galaxy? Is it a "theoretical posit" too? (because it is observable only in a telescope). What are exactly the things that we supposed to be instrumentalist about?

[@KaneB]

Different anti-realists say different things about this. The same is true for different realists: realists do not agree on what we are supposed to be realist about, as I discussed briefly in this very video. I also have a series on scientific realism where I explain in detail some of the different versions of realism, which involve significantly different ontological commitments (e.g. entity realism vs structural realism). More generally, people beyond the scientific realism/anti-realism debate will say different things about this, too. In general, people disagree about what we are supposed to believe in and what we are supposed to doubt. So I'm not sure what the issue is with scientific anti-realism in this respect.

[@Fafner888]

@@KaneB But do you personally believe it's reasonable to be an anti realist about things like bacteria or the Andromeda Galaxy? It feels like these philosophical discussions are disconnected from reality because once you look at particular examples it becomes quite obvious that anti realism is indefensible (unless you subscribe to global Cartesian skepticism).

[@KaneB]

@@Fafner888 I'm an anti-realist about pretty much everything. My feeling is the opposite of what you describe: I usually find that the closer I look in any particular case, the more plausible anti-realism becomes.

[@Silent-Speaker]

Thank you Kane, for these absolutely wonderful vibes! ❤

[@yassirel653]

You look nice kane Baker

[@KaneB]

Thanks!

[@xdrowssap4456]

third! also hegel is lame.

[@InventiveHarvest]

Newtonian mechanics isn't wrong, only incomplete. It still works in flat geometry in a single reference frame. It still exists as a special case of the new theories - noneuclidian geometry and relativity. If you want to shoot cannonballs at an enemy or something, you will still use Newtonian mechanics to figure out the trajectory. Of course analyzing science in the modern age is going to be complicated, but most people understand what probability is and what a idle wheel is. The edge science has over philosophy is that science will eventually discard ideas that don't work.

[@Zarakendog]

If the Newtonian theory states that space and time are absolute, and those claims are false, then the theory is wrong, no?

[@InventiveHarvest]

@@Zarakendog spacetime iis absolute in the local case. You can't use relativity to have an extra five minutes before going to the job.

[@ericb9804]

Obviously Newtonian physics is useful, and yet if you have to add caveats in order for it to "exist" then its difficult to understand in what sense it is also "real." Philosophy also discards ideas that don't work, it's just harder for philosophers to reach agreement on what those ideas are.

[@InventiveHarvest]

@@ericb9804 physics isn't "real" - it's a mathematical framework to describe reality. Dont confuse the map for the terrain. As a map, Newtonian physics still works for basically everything we do here on Earth. It is only in cases like satellites and such that it doesn't work. Locality is not an excuse to make the mechanics work.

[@ericb9804]

@@InventiveHarvest Ok, but isn't saying you have a "framework to describe reality," precisely to be a "realist?" Isn't it to offer a metaphysical explanation for why your map is as useful as you find it to be? Can't we just say that mathematics are useful and leave it at that? Can't we still make use of a map without actually knowing if it refers to any "terrain" at all?

[@chrispowell1768]

What is the article you mentioned by Stephen Busch?

[@KaneB]

"Dynamics of theory change: The role of predictions"

[@Alex.G.Harper]

the thumbnail looks like ones of the photographs derek parfit shot

[@KaneB]

It's from the "Houses of Parliament" series by Claude Monet

[@therealtruthvideos2832]

Do you have a video that you summarize your position and your best arguments in favor of moral anti-realism and scientific anti-realism?

[@KaneB]

Not really

[@amirbahri6274]

Why i feel like kane has already done some videos on this exact topic

[@KaneB]

Yep I talk about this stuff often.

[@ericb9804]

Your confusion is revealed at 13:35 to 14:05 - "justification" is not something you ever have or don't have. Rather, its something you offer to other people. If those people agree that your conclusions are "justified," then you all can work together. And if they don't, then you go your separate ways. And yet, in either case, there is no sense in which you can say you are "justified" independent of the people to whom you are speaking.

[@KaneB]

I'm not confused and I don't actually buy the notion of justification, as I explain here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/npC4p6ZqjrOmZ9E I just happen to enjoy the realism/anti-realism game and that's what I'm playing in this video.

[@ericb9804]

@@KaneB But even in that video you exhibit the same confusion - namely the idea that "justification" is something you can identify "by itself" - i.e. that with regard to any given "belief" you can be either "justified" or "not justified" in some "objective" or "rational" sense. But that is not how "justification" works - "justification" is something you negotiate with an audience. Any given audience can find your statements on any given topic "justified" or not. And yet, "justification" is not something you can speak of independent of that audience - it just doesn't make sense. And different audiences can disagree on whether or not they find your statements "justified." And if they do, so be it, for that is just to say that your "beliefs" are accepted by some groups and not others, and this may or may not be an actual problem, depending on the beliefs and the groups in question.

[@KaneB]

@@ericb9804 No, I'm not confused. I don't accept that you get to be the authority on how the word "justification" is to be used. I'm adopting the usage that's conventional among a particular group of analytic philosophers. If you happen to use the word differently, that's fine. We're simply talking about different things here.

[@KaneB]

@@ericb9804 To clarify, if "justification" per your usage is simply a matter of whether beliefs are accepted by a particular audience, then obviously I do not deny that there is justification in your sense (putting aside more radical skepticism; sometimes I deny that there are other people so would deny that there can be justification in your sense). But that's not how many philosophers use the word, and their concept of justification is what I'm talking about in that video.

[@ericb9804]

@@KaneB That's certainly fair enough as it stands. Different people are indeed free to use words in different ways. And yet, in the same spirit, I am free to point out that the way you, and the "particular group of analytic philosophers" use the word, doesn't seem particularly insightful, let alone useful, even to them and by their own standards. So its unclear why one would think such a usage matters at all. But you are certainly free to disagree.