PHILOSOPHY - Epistemology: The Preface Paradox [HD]

[@6ThreeSided9]

You basically summed up my personal perspective on knowledge in this video. I've thought about it a lot. Here's my answer to the question at the end: True knowledge as we define it is unrealistic. There is no need to reconcile knowledge with uncertainty, we just need to accept that the things we have are not truly knowledge and move on. Saying this is a problem is kind of like saying "I used to use a sponge to clean my car, but then I found out it wasn't actually a sponge at all, but a wash cloth! What should I do?!" It's silly because it somehow implies that a sponge is the only way to solve the problem of a dirty car, which we know is not true because he had been successfully washing his car with the wash cloth all along. Similarly, to say that there is a problem that what we've been working with isn't actually knowledge doesn't change anything about what we've accomplished. The desire to reconcile these two concepts isn't because it is a real problem, it's because we like to believe that we can know things, because it brings certainty, and therefore comfort, to our lives.

[@jamesadam4415]

found the engineer!

[@6ThreeSided9]

***** Not really, but thanks, for whatever reason that comes off as praise here!

[@olleharstedt3750]

What about the structure of logic? Do we "know" that? E.g. the law of the excluded middle? Also, isn't it a paradox in the end, that we "know" that we cannot have true knowledge?

[@6ThreeSided9]

Olle Härstedt Logic only functions given premises. Those premises themselves are usually assumptions that either are not the result of logical conclusions, or are extremely basic epistemological principals such as “I exist.” Logic is only foolproof if we assume the premises are true, so the idea that formal logic necessarily produces truth is incorrect. And there is no paradox because I never said that we “know” that we cannot know - we merely have a solid reason to believe it. Same issue all over again (that is, it’s not an issue).

[@JohnSmith-td7hd]

Warning: Some of the statements in this book are likely false, given the inherent propensity for statements of fact to sometimes be inaccurate. But if I realize that one of my beliefs is false, I will remove it from my book of beliefs. I can't know which beliefs, if any, are false beyond what I'm representing in my book, but I'm open-minded to new information. So since I don't know which, if any, of my beliefs are false, for each belief, I am forced to stay in the default position of all beliefs, namely "belief". Instead of probability, use "confidence". I am "very confident" that A. I am a little confident that B. I have just a little confidence in C. I'm not confident in A&B&C. Using "confidence" rather than "probability" points out that the likelihood comes from you and how you feel, not a purported objective probability such as those used in statistics (Like to describe a coin toss). Your confidence in your accuracy is what you're expressing- a "probability" outside of statistics is simply your confidence masked in pseudo-scholarship. There's also the issue of "unreasonable demands". When people ask you about any fact, they can always respond with "But how do you know?", and after you answer, they can do it again. They can do this forever. The only way to get anything done is to decide that you have enough information and move on, and note that you have enough information to discount other people's claims that none of your information supports (Like Earth being flat). Making unreasonable demands is sort of an argument from ignorance because it demands 100% accuracy before letting you believe something or act because it ends up being a claim that you're wrong because you COULD be wrong. Imagine thinking this way while trying to do anything- maybe by tying your shoes, you'll end up bring the Nazies back from the dead and starting World War III. How do you know that won't happen? Because causality and facts. A genuinely certain person would be impossible to convince even when presented with what is genuine proof of his/her error. So real certainty is akin to insanity.

[@KManAbout]

The default state of beliefs is disbelief.

[@KManAbout]

+Benjamin Andersen ignorance is not a stare of belief. It is a binary position. Either belief or disbelief. I understand what you are trying to say about human development, and how we develop Skepticism as we age but I am talking about the general state one has on belief.

[@KManAbout]

***** Belief and disbelief is a true dichotomy.

[@KManAbout]

The default position of any argument is disbelief.

[@KManAbout]

Why? Because logic. Let me explain. A stance on belief is equivalent to this example. You can either believe that 1+1=2 or believe that 1+1= not 2. There is no need for a stance of knowledge to decide beliefs. If knowledge is required to make a stance on belief then how would belief establish knowledge since knowledge can be simplified as a justified true belief(keyword simplified I understand the presence of problems with the justified true belief concept in epistemology) .

[@flamencoprof]

We just always must be prepared to say, if challenged "So far as I know.", and remain open-minded to reasonable corrections, rather than treat challenges as an unforgivable assault on our world-view. When a cognitive therapist, rather than telling me how to think, simply pointed out that I held contradictory beliefs, I thanked him for it and voluntarily changed how I thought. It relieved a lot of subconscious tension as a result. I didn't punch him for screwing with my mind, ha-ha!

[@SlipperyTeeth]

Belief is probabilistic.

[@CraftyF0X]

Well, this could be a contradiction. I mean this belief of yours about belives has a chance to be incorrect right ? but only if you are correct about your believes being probabilistic :D

[@George4943]

Of course *I* believe "Belief is probabilistic" (as Phoenix Fire said) due to the nature of the difference between belief and knowledge. I claim to know enough about beliefs and how they are formed to be justified to believe that beliefs about history follow Bayes' Theorem. (See Carrier's book)

[@antonioricardopereiragonca949]

+George Steele the only problem with probability models it relies on random occurrence and that cannot be represented and may lead to a lot a flaws in thought. No model can give a cristal clear 100% chance of something happens even if you need to take that for granted and absolut truth, as logic is logicaly valid, you are alive, because those can only be 1 or 0, there is no space in between. working in scales of gray instead of seeing black or white seems a good ideia until you realize you cannot see black or white only grays. You need to some how have black, white and gray, but logic only works in black and white and if you try to see the word in scales of gray you will lose the notion of black and white and ultimately will not see any black or white, just a darker gray or a lighter gray. then you can only see / collect information or think!

[@SlipperyTeeth]

+António Ricardo Pereira Gonçalves Can you even tell the difference between a really dark gray and black, or a really light gray and white? There's a point where it doesn't really matter anymore.

[@antonioricardopereiragonca949]

+Phoenix Fire If you only admit true black and true white it cannot be gray in any level. because gray colour is made of a % of black and a % of white. Only when one of those % is zero and real zero not a close to zero that is neglected you will get a white or black and trust me when I say that no current probability will give 0%. the onlt way to obtain a 0% is having without any margin of doubt colected all information related to that subject, and that is impossible since if that would be possible you wouldn't need a probabilitist model in the first place.

[@bolerie]

To me it seems interily reasonable to think that I don't know anything for certain. Thing like "the entire universe was created last tuesday" and "the entire universe is a simulation" could always be true and therefore no knowledge I have is certainly true. But at least to me it doesn't really matter.

[@JiveDadson]

The entire universe was created last _Wednesday_ and such has always been the case. Personally, I was created last Wednesday with the implant in my brain that there was a last Tuesday, and that I believed on that Tuesday that I was created the Wednesday before. I think I missed my calling. I could have made it big in philosophy.

[@overlordghs1081]

+JiveDadson how absurd... God obviously created the universe last Friday.

[@ericharris1499]

Why not simply preface with: "To the best of my knowledge"

[@gottod]

Don't know whether this is still helpful since I'm a year late. This is not a solution because, for every sentence x the author wrote, the author thinks that x is true to the best of his knowledge (otherwise he shouldn't have written that sentence). So, to the best of his knowledge, every sentence in the book is true. The paradox is back.

[@MaoRuiqi]

To remain balanced, i tend to use the word "may" for "is", thereby introducing the principle of uncertainty, and "guess" for "assume", thereby indicating a lack of reliance on the information being conveyed. "Uncertainty", as opposed to "doubt", which assumes certain knowledge to be correct, is highly underrated.

[@Pietrosavr]

I think the answer is quite simple, separate thought from action. In our thoughts uncertainties are allowed to remain, but when we decide to take action based on those thoughts pragmatism kicks in and we are left with definite yes/no binary choices. Both choices are uncertain but there are ways to make rational choices. First you consider the outcomes, are the outcomes positive, negative or negligible? Then you consider the probabilities; are they high or low? After you make that decision, you can logically deduce which action to take. For example I will use choices A or B, with positive, negative and negligible outcomes as +/-/0 and simplify probability to 'high' and 'low': high A+ & high B- => choose A high A- & low B+ => choose B ... etc Summary for any probability: 1) A+ & B- => choose A 2) A+ & B0 => choose A 3) A- & B0 = choose B 4) A+ & B+ = You probably win either way 5) A- & B- = You probably lose either way 6) A0 & B0 = Result does not matter This is basic high/low risk/reward strategies.

[@binaryblade2]

The way we reconcile the difference is simply by determining how uncertain we are. Its not only that we know that a belief is uncertain but we have ways of ascertaining how uncertain it is.

[@michaelwinter742]

"This book includes models developed intentionally over time. As time still continues, these models may still develop. As such, assuming an error-free book, anyone reading this book in a time after this book has been written should assume there has been opportunity for modifications to the model presented here. This book, therefore, acts as a powerful snapshot of where the model currently is as well as serves as an excellent presentation of the current model - as of this writing. "That said, I make more mistakes than the model I'm presenting. For example, this morning I intended to fill my coffee maker with 6 cups of water. In fact, I over filled by over half a cup. The 10% error in my coffee making is substantially more than the (scientifically quantified error) that is believed to be contained in these models. While all effort has been made to minimize both sources of error, rest assured I still had too much coffee this morning and errors found are likely my own and unintentional.

[@michaelwinter742]

See? I missed the quote at the end. Blast!

[@Xartab]

This will be the preface of my next book. This was just another example of philosophers becoming so entangled in their own mental masturbations that they can't see what's obvious anymore.

[@robinw77]

+Michael Winter : This is great! I'll also steal this for my book, but in return you can have my answer to the stupid "is the glass half full or half empty?" question. "The quantity of liquid in the glass is approximately 50% of its capacity."

[@michaelwinter742]

Robin Williams But do you see how oppressive you're being to vessels that are less capacious? They would hold the same amount but be at 51% (or more!) capacity. Your best bet is to argue that, at this rate of evaporation, the primary premise of the question will be true for so little time as to be insignificant. The more poignant inquiry would be the cost to use ratio. In America, 4 oz. of clean, potable water costs less than a penny. Now, look at your behavior choices. You're literally pissing it all away.

[@Xartab]

Michael Winter I know that we're probably both heterosexual males and that we likely live at a big distance from each other and that there is no deep affection between us (yet) and that there's a reasonable chance that there's not all that much chemistry between us anyway, but... Would you marry me?

[@rburnett]

This seems pretty straight forward from the skeptical perspective. The assumption is that ones method for producing belief produces true beliefs. It's not really a contradiction. The preface "paradox" seems to be merely stating the claim that ones belief that something to be true is only true up to the effectiveness of the methodology. The preamble is probably poorly worded to express this notion, which I won't defend, but the argument is over the philosophy not the poetry.

[@spidaminida]

Belief is not the same as knowing. As Confuscious say, to know that you do not know is the best.

[@MrPatrickDayKennedy]

Certainty is a mood. Knowledge is empirical verification of what is; inherently imperfect and limited - and yet wisdom (that which is loved in philosophy) obtains knowledge. Beliefs can be contradictory, nonsensical, incoherent, etc. and that is the power of the psychological tool no one would make it a single day without: faith.

[@danielcoimbra8642]

Sometimes we act with certainty, other times we don't. That's why we go through the day believing many things without question, and we could also at the end of the day write a preface to one of our books saying "I am almost certainly wrong on a least a few statements made in this book." That is one solution to the paradox: examining the psychology of our certainty, which fluctuates depending on the task, subject, kind of beliefs, and amount of beliefs involves, and perhaps a few other things. Another solution is to deny anyone is ever certain of something, but I think this solution will ultimately crumble into the one given above. I was going to say that if somebody is certain of P, they could never be convinced of the falsity of P, and would instead doubt all auxiliary assumptions, used in arguments and evidence against P, that she finds uncertain. (I am not sure what would happen when, all uncertain assumptions being discarded and only certain assumptions remaining, the argument or evidence still challenged P.) Since people could always in principle change their minds, except perhaps by a few statements such as the existence of other minds (though one person has written to Russell claiming to be a solipsist), it would follow that people are never certain about anything (except very few select statements). I think this doesn't work because it assumes people are always consistent on their certainty attributions. It could easily and very plausibly be the case that people are certain of something at some times, taking whatever it is for granted, and not on other times, leaving elbow room for (seriously) doubting.

[@mrsavedbygrace2569]

Knowledge is defined as justified true belief. Knowledge is attained by either testimony of others, memory, or sensory experience. Finding that others testimony is sometimes fallible, memory can fail us at times and it's possible to trick our senses, we can never know anything for certain. just saying.

[@VidkunQL]

"I wish to thank all of the people who helped me to verify the assertions in this book, so that I am at least 99.99% sure of each one. But there are roughly 20,000 assertions in this book, many of them independent, and I understand probability, so I know it is probable that at least one false assertion slipped past us. This is not a contradiction, just arithmetic. Sorry."

[@ryanbrown1835]

"I believe that I believe that the Earth is round" is a completely true statement

[@1337w0n]

"For each statement in the book, the author believes that statement to be true, and the author also believes that there is at least one false statement in the book." In this scenario, the question "Which beliefs should the author change?" can only be answered by an exhaustive exercise of verifying each statement in the book. At which point, the beliefs that need to change are some subset of his individual beliefs of individual statements of the book, and the belief of the extance of mistakes after each false statement in the book is corrected. (note that if the subset is {}, then all required corrections are already made.)

[@rn9940]

To answer the last question: we can know something, without knowing that we know it. It can be knowledge, but only the skeptic would request that we always KNOW that we know.

[@cliffordhodge1449]

To make this seem less paradoxical we need merely consider belief on some other subject. For example, if you ask me, "Will you ever die?" I naturally assent to the proposition, "I will die," but if you then proceed to ask me about all the different moments when I may die - "Do you believe you will die in the next moment, T; do you believe you will die in the following moment T2, etc." for all the times when I might die, I will answer "No," to every one. Are my beliefs inconsistent? I don't think anyone is inclined to say so. There is a type of parallel with slippery slope and line-drawing problems. For example, if you ask me another series of questions like, "Did you become bald with the loss of one hair? with the loss of two? the loss of three? etc." I will again answer "No," to each, but I will say that I am quite confident of my baldness nonetheless. So the fact that I cannot stipulate which beliefs are false does not suggest I cannot consistently assume that the aggregate of beliefs contains some that are false.

[@DrZalmat]

Kinda reminds me of my chemistry professor in the first semester. "A good part of the knowledge I teach you is false. Unfortunately I don't know, which one". As a human, errors are bound to happen and nothing is ever 100% certain. If someone claims something is 100% certain, he is either delusional about the statement/doesn't know better or lies. That is a fact (not a 100% one, of course :-) ). The only way to confirm something then, is bringing the probability of it being false way down. Yes, it could be wrong that the earth is spherical, but all evidence, observed by hundreds of thousands of people every day, says otherwise. So we have a lot of evidence from a lot of independent people. One is bound to make mistakes, but that all of them actually do the same mistake and so come to the same wrong conclusion is very unlikely. So I define "knowing" for myself as "seeing the evidence has a very small margin of error".

[@Amy-zb6ph]

I try to acknowledge where I have made an assumption and then, if something shows that assumption to be incorrect, I revise my assumption according to the new information I have gotten about it. It's an estimation of what is and, as long as I remember that the things I believe could be false, then I am open to revising my hypothesis as new information comes in. This leaves me open to the new information but also gives a foundation upon which to operate in and think about the world.

[@lee1906]

I think epistemologically one would be a fallibilist or as the late Philosopher Rick Roderick put's it "A fallibilist is someone who passionately believes certain things. Passionately believes certain things, some of them quite bizarre, as you’ll find out as we go along. But about those beliefs, I believe that they could be wrong.".

[@aldinlewis5579]

I've actually thought about this a lot before hearing of what the paradox is called. The answer might be very simple, because as an individual we are largely prone to being wrong but when you count everyone's beliefs as a collective the statistics say that some of us must be right assuming there is a right answer. Therefore the more diversity in beliefs the better the chance of having the right belief and it's safe to assume that anything worth being right about yields positives enough to sway the collective to the right answer.

[@perplexson]

As a student of economics, this whole paradox is redundant. From the beginning of the video, I solved the practical application of it by merely multiplying the likelihood of being wrong (q) by the time spent to diminish q, and compare that to the value attributed to diminishing q to you and to the readers. If you are contemplating checking a work a third time, chances are close to bringing these two into equilibrium. Put more simply, in poker, the "right decision" is merely the decision that has the highest probability of either maximizing profits or minimizing losses, by multiplying the risk by the chance of winning (expected value). Now you know why most people don't like economists.

[@PvblivsAelivs]

Well, for the earth being round, there is a very simple way (for most of us) to consider the possibility that it is wrong. Most of us have never conducted an empirical test on it, and wouldn't know where to begin. We are only taking instructions that we are given. Most of us (if we are reasonable) recognize that we don't really _know_ if the world is round. It is just a useful model for our day-to-day life. But also important, most of us could not compose our own "book of belief." Our beliefs change over time. Even if we were to read through and check off every belief in a purported "book of belief," we would only be able to confirm that we believed each statement at the time we came across it. We could not even confirm that there were no direct contradictions in the book.

[@ceputza]

This is not a paradox. Who said this should have a logical value? It's just words.

[@BillyBangster]

Would you mind elaborating on why you think that this is not a paradox?

[@nufmen2922]

Change your perception when you find something that is false. By simply asking why over and over again, you will find the truth soon enough. So just because you think something is right, doesn't mean it is. So basically the second statement of saying that everything you know is right is false. Just be sceptical when it comes to things that are contradictory.

[@pradeepkumarm944]

I think he is accepting the possibility of making mistakes in the preface out of convention, courtesy or to show that he is epistemologically humble. Of the two, the belief which he believes strongly is that he cannot make mistakes.

[@debries1553]

True objective knowledge is simply unattainable. You are, after all, observer, and as such subject to probabilistic behaviours. For instance, you can grow up in a place where everyone has the eye color blue and assume that this is normal. We can only assign a certain likelihood of truth. Whenever this certainty approaches one (something is very well observed or alternatives can be very well disproved) we can take it as a given, for convenience's sake. This doesn't mean that it can't be false, it just means that it is borderline irrational to think that it would be, given current understanding. It is a human thing, a method of simplification, to think in absolutes, but it helps with modeling reality and making it understandable. Stating a fact is simply stating that which you find most likely to be true, like the video says. This means that, probability wise, something can be false, and for a big set must be expected to be. Yes, much of this is said in the video, I just felt it wasn't put forth in a convincing manner.

[@gregoryfenn1462]

To answer the final question in the video: you don't need to reconcile certainty of knowledge with uncertainty from our fallibility at all. Knowledge doesn't require certainty. I know that I am wearing a white shirt despite also [knowing!] that I am fallible with respect to that belief. To give an extreme example: on a game show, Billy is asked a hard question that he doesn't know how to answer. The question was "What is the composition of sugar?". He is then offered four options to guess-from, A, B, C, or D. He then looks at "C" (C6H12O6) and thinks "Oh yeah, C rings a bell", so he answers C and is awarded points from the game show for getting the right answer. Billy did not guess C out of the blue, he felt genuinely drawn to it. This was because his chemistry teacher had taught him about sugar 20 years ago, although Billy can't remember that, nor did he think of it when answering C. In this scenario, Billy was not sure about C, but he still "knew" it, since his predisposition to correctly assent to C is causally related to the fact that C is true, by way of having been told about sugar by a chemistry expert and this casually affecting his psychological disposition to the formula "C6H12O6" facts about sugar.

[@sicktoaster]

1. The statements in this book are "thought to be true" (as opposed to saying they are true). 2. Some of the statements "thought to be true" are actually false, but it is unknown which are false.

[@ThomasBomb45]

One way to reconcile the original paradox is to think of the brain not as one homogenous belief storage machine, but many many connected parts. We can have contradictory beliefs because these individual parts aren't required to agree. While parts of your brain are certain in what they believe, another part of your brain acting as editor recognizes that the beliefs of the other parts of your brain may be false.

[@continuum_mid]

I am almost logically certain of several things, but I accept the small possibility that keeps everything short of 100%: that I'm wrong.

[@nikolatasev4948]

This video treats all statements are either true or false - which is the classic logical approach. It discusses the idea of the probabilities of the statements being true or false, but stops there. We know people thought the Earth was flat. Then they thought it was spherical. Now we think it is an oblate spheroid. It is very likely we are wrong, but we are far *less* wrong than before. For practical purposes we don't need to be perfectly right. Newton was wrong - we now know movement follows Einstein's principles. But for everyday reasoning we apply Newtonian logic, it is much simpler and when driving a car or shooting a gun it gives us results that are entirely satisfactory. We use Relativity calculations for specific tasks that require extreme precision - spacecraft, or particle acceleration, for example. Thus there is no reason to use probabilistic calculations in everyday statements. I would argue we already do it unconsciously, but that's not the point. The probabilistic way is less wrong, and should be used when the unrealistic principle does not give us results that are accurate enough.

[@StefanTravis]

I'm not sure this is a problem. To believe that a specific one of my beliefs is false entails a contradiction. To believe that the set of my beliefs contains falsehoods isn't a belief about any member of the set, but a belief about the set.

[@mrsavedbygrace2569]

it's kinda fun to see this as a paradox, the book and the statement, but it doesn't follow by necessity. it's the difference between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. In deductive reasoning, the conclusion is true because the premises are true, by definition. inductive reasoning provides a conclusion with a high probability of truth because the premises are not necessarily true but have a high probability of truth.

[@vwcanter]

Most of these paradoxes are easily resolved if you realize that most statements have implicit statements of likelihood in them, and you usually omit those qualifiers, but everyone knows they are there. If you simply make them explicit, the seeming paradox is resolved. The hypothetical author mentioned here doesn’t really believe that every single statement he made is true. Implicitly, he meant that every single statement is likely true. But in ordinary language, one omits that qualification. If he simply said, “I’m at least 90% confident in every assertion made in this book.” (which is implied by what he said) then you could easily see that the combined uncertainty adds up to a likelihood of several errors.

[@jacobprudent4354]

In some respects we operate like computer models in scientific research. It is the compromise of the two approaches at the end of the video. We make some assumptions that we know under some conditions are wrong, but for the bounds of the model we know they are safe, or at the very least better than never getting an answer at all. We know everything is probabilistic, but using a probabilistic approach with everything is about as useful as the question of whether reality exists. As in stated in the Zen of Python "Now is better than never, Although never is often better than *right* now" :)

[@MonsterManStan]

1. Some people don't care about contradiction to an extent 2. Some people don't believe some of the statements they make for other reasons. Sometimes I lie because it helps me.

[@Nenilein]

I feel a lot of people in the comments are missing the point of what the video is trying to say. Regardless of whether there are two different concepts for "Belief" involved, fact remains that we, as humans, are capable of holding true to two contradictory ideas, while also operating on the idea that there can always be only one "truth" due to our logic system. Even though we program our computers in ways that calculate one "true" possibility, while excluding all others to some extent, we, ourselves, would be unable to function that way, because it would mean always feeling 100% certain about everything, and if we did that, we would never admit our own fallibility. Yet, *because* we are capable of admitting our own fallibility, we're never able to truly say we're "100% certain" about anything, because if we trace our logic back far enough, we'll always find some element in there that we're not 100% certain about, even if that sometimes means going in as deep as to ask "Are we all in the Matrix?". It's all about how the rules of our logic are all based on a very binary system of Y/N or 0/1 statements, yet we ourselves simply don't work that way. Even Mathematics have uncertainties if you go in deep enough. Just think of Imaginary Numbers.

[@rillloudmother]

lol, imaginary numbers are not uncertain. try to make sure you know what you are talking about when you try to argue.

[@Nenilein]

+rillloudmother that's not what I meant, but whatever.

[@roberteospeedwagon3708]

Just admit at least one statement is false. If you do that you can't believe all statements are true, but that's ok.

[@WreckNRepeat]

The problem is that you need to specify which statement is false. You can't believe that each individual statement is 100% accurate without also believing that the combination of those statements is 100% accurate.

[@roberteospeedwagon3708]

But you can belief each statement to be true but possibly false. All statements you belief are true until proven otherwise. No need to specify which one.

[@WreckNRepeat]

Eddie Hill That's correct. However, that's not what you stated in your original post.

[@mylesswanson]

here is an approach on the subject: i can believe that each statement is true, but i can also believe that i am fallible. this would nullify the necessity for specifying which is the false statement and replace it with, each statement has a small but equal possibility of having been incorrectly reproduced.

[@WreckNRepeat]

myles swanson That's basically what the video suggested. You're not 100% sure about each individual thing; you're only about 99% sure. So when you add everything together, it's 0.99 x 0.99 x 0.99 ... and so on, until you're close to 0% sure that everything is right.

[@TonytheTaiwaneseTurtle]

believing is not knowing believing something is true according to the information you have gathered, while admitting that the truth might favor otherwise, is not contradictory, but an elementary scientific approach then there are also unintended errors one might make in his book, but when one claims he believes he made no mistakes, he is saying that he did not intentionally make any; when he says he believes that unintentional errors might occur in his book, it is not based on his information gathered with respect to the book but rather on previous experience where all books are likely to have some mistakes

[@dariuspatrick1385]

Believing something that is wrong is not a contradiction if you don't know it's wrong and willing to correct it once you realize it.

[@sabriath]

Because knowledge itself is probabilistic based on the majority of objective evidence found to support or deny claims made. Evidence can change the outlook of knowledge in some situations....for example, words have different meanings through history, calling someone "tall" is a fuzzy logic statement, or the idea of the atomic model allowed us to stop believing in the "elements" (wind, water, fire, etc.) for the most part. Knowing that things could change or that flaws are apparent, allows forgiveness for the transference of knowledge through speech and text, but it's better to know false claims and prove them wrong than to force everyone to start from scratch in order to prove their personal objectivity correct (highly inefficient for a society to grow and become smarter).

[@lolwut9089]

"I believe some things" and "Some of my beliefs aren't true" isn't a paradox.Those statements make sense when coupled together. For you to think that some of your beliefs might be wrong, first you have to have beliefs. It would be way more illogical if you said "I don't believe anything" and "Some of my beliefs are wrong"

[@thenamelessdragon]

Here is an idea. "There are many people who have helped fact check and critique this book, without their help this work would never have been published. The author of this book has researched the content of this book extensively and has only included material he believes to be relevant and factual. The author however acknowledges there may be errors in this work and claims full responsibility for anything false or dubious in this work." That should about do it. It covers that the author has researched the heck out of it but human error can sometimes prevail. I also made that formal. Anyone thinking of using that as a preface has to credit me. Here's the wording: "Preface written and composed by DarkLady to whom I give credit and appreciation to".

[@IXPrometheusXI]

I think the problem comes from taking knowledge to imply certainty. If we define knowledge as justified true belief, then fallibilism undermines the "true" part. We establish truth through justification. When we believe a proposition, then set out some justifications for it, we can't do anything else to establish the truth of the proposition. At this point, the claim that the proposition is true reduces to the claim that it is justified. This makes the "true" part something that we have to understand in retrospect. Imagine I believe A, and I use x, y, and z to justify A. From my perspective, no more can be done, and I would have to conclude that I know A. But imaging you know q, which contradicts A. In that case, A is false, and I do not know A. If you told me q (and I believed you), then I might say something like "oh, I thought I knew A, but I really didn't." Now suppose a third party... let's say your mom, knows p, which contradicts q. Now it looks like I was right before, and I really did know A, and that now I'm mistaken. There could always be some additional fact that would reveal the truth or falsity of A, so we can never say that we've "gotten to the bottom of it." So saying that A is "true" doesn't really add anything to my claim of knowledge - really what I'm saying is that "as far as I know, A is justified." Which seems fine... Mm.. I'm having trouble figuring this out. It seems like we could know lots of things, the problem is knowing that we know it. When it comes to belief, the best we can do is justify. Whether those justified beliefs count as knowledge relies on facts about the world we don't have access to in virtue of the fact of fallibilism. Uh... hm. Well fuck. I don't know what else to say about it other than that I'm comfortable thinking that I can't know whether my beliefs are true whether they're justified or not, but that I believe (for reasons I have not articulated here) that I should attempt to hold only justified beliefs. Justification seems crucially important here, but truth, while ideal, seems inaccessible. And... so what? That seems fine. IDK, anyone else have anything to add to that?

[@redsparks2025]

The answer is no brainer, it's called the scientific method, in simplistic terms I create observable experiments with repeatable results. At some point a philosopher has to stop siting in his/her room thinking about the world and actually go out an start interacting with the world, to prove for himself/herself that the world is truly round. However I do admit that not everything can be made into and observable experiment and therefore I would recommend creating some type of scale or index of probability or certainty for such cases. But at the same time keeping in mind that such an scale or index is more than likely arbitrary. Such is the nature of the regress argument of skepticism. I would recommend the author of the history book to add to the disclaimer that the book was created from knowledge derived from the historical evidence currently available at the time of writing the book and new evidence found later may change what is currently known. Really that's a no brainer.

[@ikaSenseiCA]

I have frequent delusions and hallucinations (possibly schizophrenic), and I just YOLO it. Make a hypothesis, assume it's true, try to disprove it, fail or succeed. If successful, make a new hypothesis, if not, assume it's true for practical purposes.

[@JaakkoPaakkanen]

In Finland, we have this saying: "Nothing is as certain as the uncertain" (Ei mikään ole niin varmaa kuin epävarma).

[@flamencoprof]

People think Science "knows stuff" and think Science fails when new knowledge shows old theories partially correct, but Science is an action, not a prescription.

[@thatoneguyyouknogal7777]

I think he should change the belief "At least one statement in the book is false" to "it is possible that mistakes are in the book" because then he could claim the he doesn't know if mistakes are in the book or not, but still believe them as true.

[@Ponera-Sama]

All you need to do is replace "Some of these statements ARE false" with "these statements MAY be false".

[@jackthatmonkey8994]

If there is uncertainty, there is no knowledge. But if I know that I am uncertain sometimes, then I know that I have no knowledge, and thus I do, because I am certain that I am uncertain.

[@borislavkatzarov7086]

This paradox exists only if the preface is considered to not be a part of the book. If, the preface and the book are one, then to state in the preface, that at least one of the statements in the book is false, is not a contradiction. Either, there is at least one false statement in the rest of the book, or the statement in the preface is false.

[@alexthebold]

"How can we reconcile the certainty of knowledge with the uncertainty created by our own fallibility?" You've done verbal sleight of hand. Knowledge, by your definition, is certain. Therefore, it cannot be uncertain. If it cannot be uncertain, then it cannot be fallible. Also, anything that could be fallible cannot be knowledge. There is no paradox, nor is reconciliation required. Nothing can be known, only asserted with degrees of confidence.

[@GingerAtheist]

Although people model beliefs as probabilistic it may not be the case that persons are doing any work with the probability. It was suggested to me that there could be a model where what persons are doing is more like (dis)confirming their beliefs (modeled as credence). I am awaiting for a former professor to finish a book he is a co-writer on dealing with these sorts of question. So I'd advise people who are interested in scholarly work about this to look out for Coherence by Branden Fitelson, Kenny Easwaran, and David McCarthy. I am not a coherentist myself, but Bayesianism does sound a good start to these sorts of issues.

[@rbur1746]

Human language is an imperfect artificial construct laid over the integrated systems of Nature. This language we use on a daily basis obfuscates the clarity that is otherwise present. Human language is still evolving, and is in the process of correcting itself, as indicated in the video. For example, the common concept that the earth is 'round' is mentioned at least twice in the video. 'Roundess' is two-dimensional and its use indicates flatness, a fundamental geometric error in this case. The earth is a spheroid, indicating three-dimensionality. Even though there appears to be an error, listeners understand what is meant by the word 'round' as opposed to 'flat'. Logic is not the only consideration for the preface paradox. Experience and use of language packs within each set of words many meanings not indicated in the presentation of the words. The mind must 'add' these associations. I think that in an effort to quantify all that exists, humans have invented systems that negate other potential causes, introducing fundamental errors as discussed in the video.

[@jwpjsbdj]

What is there to reconcile between these two approaches? Our beliefs are indeed probabilistic, and indeed we also "sometimes think in terms of yes/no answers, to get through the day". That is to say, we get through the day using our beliefs of which we think the probability of them being wrong is negligible (but not zero). (In fact we get through the day on much less certain beliefs, like going for a walk when there's 20% chance of rain!). There's nothing incompatible with this. As for the preface paradox: Each statement in our book we believe with very high certainty. For arguments sake we are very self-assured and believe each of them with 99.9% certainty. However since this is a book of *every* belief we have, say 100,000 of them, we are compelled to believe that the probability of all of them being true is 0.9999 ^ 100,000 = 0.00005. In other words we must believe that its 99.995% true that at least one of our beliefs is wrong! certainly enough to warrant a statement in the preface...

[@braddavistube]

why would you want to? uncertainty is the closest thing to a loving god i'll ever know. it's always there and never surprises me when it surprises me.

[@pfading]

Hume came up with the idea that belief and knowledge are the same. Also that belief can always be given a probability. Or "degree" of belief.

[@deriamis]

See, this is the reason why pure philosophy needs to be tempered by reality. What the author is relating in their book is both observations (facts) and theories (generally agreed-upon beliefs based on facts). What the author is stating in the preface is that, while the facts themselves are completely true, the beliefs based on them are provisional pending further observation. The better authors also state that it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a fact and a belief as well, since observation can be colored by belief, and that their relation of the facts and beliefs may contain editing errors. There's no contradiction here, just an acknowledgement in the preface that knowledge is always flawed and incomplete and that humans sometimes make mistakes even in the best of conditions. We needn't make honesty into a paradox.

[@crocogator665]

Belief is probabilistic; we just like rounding 99.9999% confident to 100% confident. Simple. No paradox.

[@TheAnat001]

I don't see why it's hard to reconcile these two things. There are things which I believe to be almost certainly true. Let's say their probability is above 99.99999999. I know that I'm not 100% certain they are true, so there is no logical paradox. However, I also know that the probability of them being false is low enough for me to just ignore it. Therefore, I'll act as if they were true, and use simple logic instead of probability. To put it differently, I don't truly "know" anything with 100% certainty, but there are things which I'm so sure of that I'll just simplify things and say I know they are true. There you have it, the two points of view are reconciled.

[@reganheath]

The belief book warning would read "Some of the statements in this book MAY be false". You cannot state truthfully that some ARE false unless you KNOW of at least 1 statement which is false, and if that were the case you would remove it from the book.

[@ClavisRa]

This is becoming a common theme in "philosophy" videos, posing a problem in the form of logic, then applying some wishy-washy reasoning to that logic that involves non-logic information processing underneath it, going, "tada, logical paradox!" Also, thinking of beliefs as only true or false is horribly childish. Beliefs come with varying degrees of certainly, and a grown up understands why they hold certain beliefs, what knowledge those beliefs depend on, and how certain or uncertain that knowledge is. So, yes, the author may believe each individual claim he makes in his book, but he also doesn't necessarily have 100% confidence in them, nor does it follow that his confidence in 10 of those claims together is as strong as his confidence in any specific one. That's not a problem that the basic logic presented here even addresses, so there's no real, nor apparent contradiction in knowing you've probably made some errors, and yet standing by the validity of each individual statement.

[@colbywalters9860]

It's a lot of apparent conclusions, it's not directly saying that there is some kind of paradox. Maybe the paradox doesn't exist, but then believing that it does not exist would mean you have to accept that humanity is infallible or that nothing is true, in a strictly logical sense. In logic there is no gray area of uncertainty, you can't simply insert fuzzy logic as a means to erase this paradox in terms of formal logic. That's well...fuzzy logic. We might know intuitively that there are just some things we are not certain about, but in classical logic there just isn't room for that. If you say you believe something and that belief leads to a contradiction the belief is said to be false, not less certain. It's because of this that logic itself is in trouble, because logic is binary and that is problematic in this and other ways. I guess what I'm saying is that here you're presupposing that what the creator of the video is saying is that beliefs are binary by default, but that's not the case. The creator is merely saying that if it is the case that we are meant to use logic as a metric for how we understand truth then there appears to be a paradox. That's if and only if we are talking about classical logic. This has nothing to do with pragmatism.

[@ClavisRa]

Colby Walters Let me demonstrate from a different angle how the premise of this 'paradox' is nonsense. Instead of a whole book, the author presents merely one statement. And prefaces it by saying, he has every confidence it's right, but, then again, he knows he's not infallible, so he apologizes ahead of time if he's wrong. Writing such a premise doesn't mean he believes the statement is false; i just means he recognizes his own fallibility. There no logic problem to digest here. Presentations like this one don't help people investigate logic in a productive way; that's my problem with this; the presentation goes out of its way to obfuscate the type of critical thinking it should be trying to reveal.

[@colbywalters9860]

But the paradox isn't that the author believes his statements are contradictory, if that were a requisite for contradiction then there likely would be no contradictions at all! The video is just drawing attention to the fact that if the author chooses to call one premise true the other cannot also be logically true. In this case if it's true that what the author says is true, namely that she believes all statements in the book are true and yet she knows with the same confidence that it's at least possible for one or more of those statements to be false her first premise that all the statements are true cannot possibly be LOGICALLY TRUE only "possibly true" which is fuzzy and does not fall into classical logic. The premise IF A & B & C... & X is TRUE, THEN P ~TRUE, is a logical contradiction. The author cannot hold this view, but the video makes the point that, broadly speaking, this is the state of all knowledge. Say I know A & B & C ... & X (in this case let this set represent the set of all knowledge I have). If I hold my proposition that A & B & C ... & X to be TRUE, if I also wish to hold that I am fallible then I must concede the possibility of P ~ TRUE, the paradox arises when P ~ TRUE becomes a fact. P in this case standing in for any letter in the set A & B & C ... & X. If I concede I could be wrong about anything, then I could be wrong about anything. It is true that without P ~TRUE being assumed to be a fact the paradox doesn't work, but don't you see how we're juggling? If P is TRUE then I am infallible, if P ~TRUE I am contradicted IF AND ONLY IF I hold A & B C ... & X to be TRUE. There is no direction I can take this logically to result in a TRUE set of all my knowledge of things I hold true that doesn't involve some kind of fuzzy resolution that involves probabilities and fuzzy stuffs like "certainty %" or "confidence level" which has no place in classical logic. It's as if to say the ONLY escape from the logical paradox found inside a classical problem is in fact to evoke fuzzy logic, which is of course by definition outside of the parameters of classical logic, thus calling into question logic itself by nature of this paradox. So in your example reducing the set to one factor: A is TRUE ---- If it is possible for A ~TRUE then A ~TRUE It is possible for A ~TRUE therefore A ~TRUE //Contradiction Both premises cannot be true, it's a logical contradiction, the paradox arises when you consider the implications of the logical contradiction, namely that we all usually presume we are fallible and that if we are fallible that means we could be wrong about anything. Whether or not the author believes her statement is false by virtue of fallibility is irrelevant, that's not the problem. It's about what she holds to be true.

[@ClavisRa]

The "puzzle" presented is not a series of logic statements. It is a preface written by an author that the presenter interprets (in an incorrect way) into logic statements. Yes, holding the logic statements as the presenter describes them to both be true is not possible. But that's not what the author within the puzzle is doing. He's making statements of language; the claimed correlation of them to logic statements is the problem. One way to think of it is a fallacy of equivalence: the English statements the author makes and the logic statements the presenter makes are not the same thing, yet the presenter treats them as if they are. In other words, if you apply strict rules of logic to non-logic statements, of course you get nonsense results. So don't do that. That brings me way back to my original point, that we need to stop thinking about our beliefs in black and white: 'i believe', or 'i don't believe'.

[@colbywalters9860]

So you're arguing that the narrative to explain the paradox is misrepresenting the paradox? Because it wouldn't follow from that, that there is no paradox. The beginning of the video is only one part of the explanation, the preface author is just a tool being used to highlight the principle argument. What the paradox is, is that we cannot hold true knowledge and also hold the belief that we are fallible because inherent in the belief that we are fallible is the possibility then that any one of our beliefs is wrong and since there is no metric to judge which beliefs are wrong we can't possibly KNOW anything in the logical sense where it can be classified as true. We can be reasonably certain, but again, that's fuzzy. It doesn't fit into classical logic and since classical logic cannot work us out of this paradox on it's own it would seem the only answer to the paradox is to use fuzzy logic to escape the paradox here.

[@ijohnny.]

The real fallacy is that the preface, and the text, cannot be changed in the event of the discovery of a false statement. And thus, the fallacy is the belief that a "contradiction" is permanent. There is a presumption that a paper and ink book is, uh, "written in stone". In the digital age all contradictions, and history itself, God help us, can be edited to correct contradictions, and transmute them into "truth". The more profound attitude, than questioning one's perceptions and beliefs, but to question one's expectations gleaned therefrom. We act from expectations, not perceptions--however small of a delay there may be between them. We could say that the greater the delay between perception and expectations therefrom, the greater the potential for anxiety experienced.

[@ScrewDrvr]

You can believe everything you wrote is 100% correct with the information you currently have. If new information is presented it could change. This does not mean that the author "believes at least one statement is false". It simply means that there is a chance that things could be incorrect given more information on the subject and/or simple human mistakes. There is no paradox here.

[@JimFortune]

There is a difference between what I believe and what I know to be a fact. It's only a paradox if you confuse the two.

[@TheJamesM]

Has nobody ever thought they knew something to be a fact, only for it to turn out to be false? The paradox remains. Except for me it doesn't, because I subscribe to the probabilistic view. We just _act_ as if things are certain, in the interest of pragmatism.

[@JimFortune]

Videojames No. They thought they knew.

[@TheJamesM]

Which is the most you can ever do. How would you propose distinguishing between thinking you know something and knowing you know it?

[@JimFortune]

Videojames Socrates did a dialogue on that and even he never settled it.

[@MRKetter81]

Your brain only has a shallow understanding of what you think you know about the world; no, unless you can comprehend something in its full ontology, you merely have imperfect perceptions about what you 'claim' to know.

[@cliffordhodge1449]

In the one case you have a belief about a set of statements, and in the other case you have a set of belief/statement pairs. A belief about a set is not clearly the same kind or category of thing as the various beliefs about each of its members.

[@Cr8Tron]

Without even having watched the video, I could already notice illogic in the description: "If we wrote down everything you believe in a book, we'd have to include one more statement in the book's preface: 'some of the statements in this book are false'." This confuses two different ways of thinking as being equivalent. Thinking that there *are* some false statements is not equivalent to thinking that there *might be* some false statements. There's where the error is, resulting in this false conclusion that there necessarily would have to be this "paradox".

[@BillyBangster]

Why would an act of replacing "there are some false statements" with "there might be false statements" resolves the paradox?

[@grundletrumpet8551]

What I don't understand is how this scenario could be considered a paradox. In my mind, it would be illogical to state that a preface warning of possible errors in a book about facts can lead to a paradox. By this logic, every book in existence is a paradox. Perhaps I just didn't get what you were saying, but this made no sense to me.

[@robinw77]

+IncognitoGuido : Yeah same here. It's a false dichotomy, or just not a paradox. If I wrote 100 pages of different calculations in a book but on some random page I got distracted because my cat jumped on my book and I wrote "2 + 2 = 5" or something (more complicated of course!) then obviously I don't believe that "2 + 2 = 5", because I believe I wrote "2 + 2 = 4" or "2 + 3 = 5" or whatever. If I then write in the preface that I believe them all to be correct, then it's still not a paradox - I just fucked it up :-)

[@giomjava]

Thank you! I've been thinking the same thing. This isn't a paradox at all, made no sense to me either. Also, "believing" that you've made at least one mistake and that actually being true are two different things. Arguing that "at least one statement is false" is incorrect and seems forced onto the whole situation, to create a seeming problem. There is no problem when you believing that "there is a chance that one or more facts aren't true, all others - are"

[@JustJ4cob]

you don't know what's a mistake and what's not a mistake but you know that it's right for the most part. The paradox is that you don't know the mistake but know that there is likely a mistake just not one you can see. So you have knowledge that you think is correct but know could be wrong. That's the paradox

[@grundletrumpet8551]

Jacob Porter Uncertainty isn't a paradox.

[@JustJ4cob]

being uncertain about something that by definition requires certainty is a contradiction. Ergo a paradox.

[@benjaminchen8857]

Obviously, the answer is that for computation reasons there is cutoff for approximating something to 1 or 0. Prepositional logic works well with a priori knowledge because of computational efficiency, but probabilistic is how we think of the world. I don't see this idea anywhere epistemology is discussed. It's not a particularly revolutionary idea. Knowledge in the colloquial sense does not need to be 100% certain.

[@MrCBroz]

I believe each of the statements in this book, but I also believe that I may be mistaken. I believe I am fallible. Given the length of the book, probabilistically, at least one statement is false, but, at present, I do not believe that to be so in any individual case. "I believe that" is a nice carrier phrase, but, in the context of belief statements in philosophy, we can sometimes lose the colloquial meaning, which, at least when I use it, entertains some degree of uncertainty, especially if contrasted with "I'm sure that." We might even call the second statement, "at least one statement is false," to be a probabilistic assessment, rather than a belief.

[@bryanharper3854]

"Everybody has false beliefs, including you. But that means everyone's beliefs are self-contradictory". But a person can have a set of beliefs, some of which are false, without the set being self-contradictory. E.g., { 'The sky is green', 'Denver is the capitol of Colorado' }. These two beliefs are logically consistent, event though one is false.

[@ken4975]

This "problem" only seems to exist because of the limited definition of "belief" that is being applied here. If you expand the definition the paradox disappears.

[@GarretAJ]

I really like these videos. Very nice popcorn philosophy for those who don't intend to take a college course but are still interested in educational bites. I just wanted to say, there is a growing group of people who do believe the earth is flat. They have their own internal logic and evidence. Also, though it's reasonable to change ones beliefs when you find a contradiction, this is not often true. People will tend to find new ways of holding the belief and/or struggle with the belief until they can no longer believe it.

[@IamGilgamesh666]

We could do the following: we could agree upon a probabililty such that any belief which has this probability or greater of being true is considered to be absolutely true. If, at a later point, new information is provided to lower the initial probability below the threshold, we consider it to be totally probabilistic.

[@createimagine1705]

the thing about all these paradox's is that we have imperfect reasoning and logic

[@amirysf6548]

Author can say : The content of this book is correct based on best knowledge of author. I as the author apologize for probable mistakes in this book.

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

If you are using realistic inclinations with natural language, you have to throw out logical conclusions. As Godel proved (very roughly) any language complex enough to make statements like "this statement is false" is internally inconsistent and capable of proving anything, even false things. To prove something, you have to use finalized language. In natural language we treat beliefs as certainty because that is best for our every day existence, but if you want to formalize it, you have to assign probabilities. Otherwise, you get inconsistencies and false conclusions.

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

formalized language, not finalized. Autocorrect error.

[@TheJackawock]

Yeah I completely agree. This paradox equates two statements which sound the same (because of the language used) but are not. There first is a statement of intent, there isn't any certainty in saying you believe everything in the book is right, it states that to the best of your ability that is what you aimed for. The second is a simple statement of probability. The 'belief' of both statements doesn't form a contradiction, however the language they're framed in would imply they do.

[@charstringetje]

No, he didn't. He proved that any such system would contain well formed "statements" (as you put it) that are undecidable. Those could be reasoned to be both true and false (or neither true nor false) and therefore undecidable. That doesn't make those statements intrinsically false and provably true as you put it... False statements are false, true ones are true and some statements are possible to construct in the system, but aren't provable within the system.

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

Yes, that is a much more accurate statement of Godel's theorem. I said I was using Godel roughly, but it really was too rough and not accurate. Sorry about that. The real point I was trying to make is that the informal language leads to an error. Informal language treats beliefs that you think are likely as though you have 100% certainty. If you formalize the language you will treat the belief, in this context, with some degree of probability. If you are 99% certain about 69 facts, then you've got a better than 50% chance you're wrong about 1 of them. If you have 450 facts and you're 99% certain about each one, you can also be 99% certain that you're wrong about at least 1 of them. Ordinary language doesn't capture the nuance of statistics because it is far older than the development of mathematics and the evolution of our brains are even older than that.

[@applesewer2684]

I think the probabilistic answer works fine. I think it's probably true that there's nothing we can know with 100% certainty, but that some things are more likely to be true than others.

[@ykl1277]

Probalistically speaking, the probability that a statement that I believe is true because I think the probability that it is false is low, but with 10000 statements that I believe is true, while P(True(X)) is high, P(True(x1) & True(x2) ... P(True(x10000)) is low if the statements are independent..

[@Aliggan42]

A good dose of contextualism and you're set. Just give a standard for different situations for what we can count as knowledge, while acknowledging Cartesian skepticism is just OP. For the paradox, it seems unreasonable to say that we can submit to either given belief. I don't think it has to be the case that only one of these beliefs are true and that the other must go... But that isn't even necessary. Whichever seems more plausible, according to some contextual standard, must be the case. It seems more reasonable to doubt that you are infallible than you're fallible, so just say you've probably made a mistake somewhere while acknowledging you've intended everything to be true.

[@havenbastion]

This is no paradox at all. Think of it like this - What the author is really saying is "My beliefs are all supported by knowledge which gives me 51% or greater certainty. However, it is likely that there is some knowledge unavailable to me at the present time which would overturn at least one of those beliefs if i had access to it."

[@havenbastion]

As for the other side of things, 51% certainty is as good as 100% for all practical purposes since as far as you know nothing may exceed it. Eventually you may be proven wrong on some point in which case you'll simply change your mind and go on being just as certain as you ever were. The real question is how certain are you really? If you haven't done sufficient research you'd be lying to say you were certain in the first place. If you are an expert you have epistemological warrant to believe the thing even if it is later shown to be an exceptional case.

[@CopelandMeister]

There's no paradox if people have contradictory beliefs. It doesn't violate the laws of logic at all. The fact that contradictory propositions are both held to be true by one and the same person is practically presupposed by logic. It's the reason we study logic at all.

[@km1dash6]

There is another video explaining why we want to have consistent beliefs, and cognitively we have something called cognitive dissonance, which is when we feel uncomfortable holding contradictory beliefs.

[@HeavyMetalMouse]

It seems somewhat obvious to say that, while we may 'know' that any one of out beliefs might be false, however unlikely individually, we still must *act* as though they are certain, unless presented with sufficient experience to deny them. In the form of the Preface Paradox - We may acknowledge that we believe with a high degree of confidence each individual fact, and may acknowledge that the book as a whole is likely to contain at least one error; but it is not contradictory to then -act- as though the book contains no errors, until and unless we receive specific credible counter-information. It seems as though, in large part, this argument commits a fallacy of ambiguity of terms. It demands that we use a form of logic that only permits certainty, while stating as a premise that each statement is only probabilistic - that is the origin of the contradiction. That we, in daily life, use 'simplified' logic based on true/false certainty is only a model for a more complex system that has shown to work well enough in most circumstances (much like Newtonian physics works extremely well in day to day experience, but in more extreme situations you need more exact and careful systems). If you define knowledge as involving certainty, then yes, we -can't- have knowledge. But that isn't a very useful definition of knowledge, in that case, as it relies on Simplified logic - we would need a definition that relies on the system of logic we -are- using, which is itself at least approximately consistent with Simplified Logic for the uses to which we put Simplified Logic. Consider a grocery list - a set of statements "We need eggs." "We need bread." etc. We have no reason to doubt each of those items as we go to the store - it's possible that we made an error and don't need one of those items, but the number of items is small enough that the total probability of an error is low and we can use Simplified Logic to treat it as though it were a simple certainty. It is only when we collect ever larger numbers of statement that we reach the point where Simplified Logic's approximation doesn't line up with reality. Our brains are not equipped to constantly think in Full Probability Mode in day to day situations, because that is resource intensive, but we -can- do it, given sufficient reason. We can say that we have 'knowledge' of a thing, meaningfully, in the Simplified System, and determine our Confidence in that knowledge if and when necessary for places where Simplified Logic is insufficient.

[@Warmduscher1876]

There is no paradox since the book itself isn't an absolute declaration of belief. I'ts more of an imperfect language problem. Let's change the preamble to the following: This book expresses my observations about X reality and the conclusions from other people's observations. Some have been contradicted by stronger observations in the past and corrected before publishing; it is possible that any may be contradicted and invalidated in the future as well. Is there still a paradox now?

[@notsobob]

Can't you just say, "It's possible I'm not correct about something or anything. However, I believe I've done as much research as is reasonable to publish this book."?

[@you_just]

I know it's off-topic, but I had to correct a mistake here: Christian apologists don't argue that the world is perfect; it's quite obviously not. The reason it's imperfect is because we mucked it up, not because God is imperfect.

[@amandagarcia2848]

The most common answer for these problems, from what I've seen is Pragmatism. Hopefully the next episode will go over this!

[@ryanleman7380]

this problem isn't that hard. From the description it sounds like you can rephrase the first claim as "I believe everything I understand which I try to write about in this book." Then second claim to "however there may be mistakes in the accuracy of my writing". The original "paradox" only exist in this case when colloquial speak is mistaken for literal.

[@thisismyname9569]

"Everybody has false beliefs, including you. But that means everyone's beliefs are self-contradictory." An interesting observation, but not a paradox. Our belief system is not a rigorously consistent logical system. We can believe contradictory things, the "but I might be wrong" disclaimer being just one example. Is every contradictory pair of beliefs we hold a paradox?

[@jmitzenmacher5]

He showed that: .99 times .99 is .98. I think the "unrealistic argument" would say: The mean of .99 and .99 is .99 (as good as 1).

[@jacksainthill8974]

There is no paradox here. Whatever the author believed, it would include an element of self-doubt (otherwise he/she wouldn't have had the work checked out). I wonder whether philosophers sometimes deliberately manufacture confusion just so as to give themselves a job.

[@Kyanzes]

It's certainly a problem for someone who wants absolute certainty. A reasonable individual would read everything critically and not take anything for a final fact.It's more like the "the way of things according to the author". If you really want to read the best sources then look around and learn which content creators tend to make a the least number of errors, which one seems to be the most reliable and first and foremost: use several sources and compare them. E.g., if you want to learn about the Siege of Stalingrad, read Soviet accounts, German accounts and other accounts as well (e.g., US, UK etc.). You will find the contradictory information, you can be sure of that. There will be many interesting parts where you'll find differences. Now, obviously, in a math book it's more of a problem but, again, check other sources as well. Also: it's customary to provide sources anyway in more serious works.

[@thomasr.jackson2940]

Interesting video. I am not sure this is really a "philosophical" paradox though. In this context, what we "believe", and how we believe it seems more properly the realm of neuroscience and neuropsychology than philosophy. Mathematicians and logicians look for formal proofs in an abstract realm, and this has led to all sorts of insights and advancements. But everyday humans live in a different world, linguistically and functionally. It can be fun to look at the logical contradictions of our mental and linguistic world, but it shouldn't be earth shattering. Most of us have beliefs that we hold with "certainty", but few of us think most of our beliefs are beyond the realm of questioning. We even ask people to "listen with an open mind", i.e to leave our world of functional certainty in order to consider alternates. It is usually something that takes some particular mental effort or disposition, though many of us become practiced at the exercise. There are some things, like certain religious tenets, some people refuse to subject to such examination. If there is a transparent porch at a great height, many people might become fearful to step out on it, even though they hold certain believe that the object is solid. Clearly not all of the brain gets the memo or is convinced. So it works both ways. Rational thought is not our only way of collecting and analyzing data, and never will be, without rather extensive evolutionary modifications. We have to consider our limitations when applying abstract arguments. An analogy might be physics and mathematics. Scientists, like Newton, might find mathematics that explains the world. Later, people like Maxwell and Einstein, and Bohr might find the mathematics doesn't fit as well. But the Math wasn't "wrong", not in a formal sense. In fact, Newton did a great job, and we still use his model today. It is just that we found out more about the world, and we had to develop new Math.

[@joncavanaugh9980]

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.-Walt Whitman

[@ahmidahmid9303]

The statement "some of this book content may not be accurate" is a believe itself that's because there is nothing as wrong or right for a point of view it depends on the frame of thinking it's still one of believes so the whole book is 100% correct for the author that's why people can't be changed unless they did it