Unbelievable Theories

[@KaneB]

Normativity, moral and epistemic: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXmrc4GLlMyLhpI See also my video on self-refuting theories: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pmOVopmamb6ejqs

[@no-ic5gw]

I love your videos my dude. Thanks for taking the time to share these thoughts with me and everyone else.

[@KaneB]

That's great to hear!

[@jacksaetveit]

This is unbelievable.

[@fullfungo]

So true!..

[@bartstreumer]

Great video! And good point about reflective equilibrium, I hadn't thought of that.

[@KaneB]

Thanks! I loved the book by the way.

[@bartstreumer]

@@KaneB Thanks, that's nice to hear!

[@ahmedbellankas2549]

Unbelieveability,that's a great idea,and by the way great philosophical analysis,thank you for your thoughts.

[@lanceindependent]

(2) I find it immensely puzzling that one would maintain that normative conditions must be met in order for people to believe things. In particular, why should we suppose that we must have normative reasons for belief? The conditions necessary for beliefs are empirical questions about our psychology; one cannot conclude a priori that if certain conditions aren’t met we “can’t” believe something: it could be the case that our psychology just doesn’t conform to such a priori considerations, and that people can believe things without meeting the conditions Streumer outlines. I would think it would make more sense to say that such beliefs are unjustified or in some other way defective, but it seems bizarre to say we “can’t” have such beliefs - how would Streumer know that without empirical evidence?

[@dogsdomain8458]

I agree. Why can't someone be a fictionalist about reasons or temporarily suspend their disbelief to aquire a new belief?

[@samsklair4701]

Hey Lance! I'm inclined to agree with Streumer about this for the following reason. Reasoning about what to believe entails the commitment to the following rule: When a fact (e.g. that smoke is coming from the forest) increases the likelihood of a proposition 'p' (e.g. that there is a fire), such that 'p' is now more likely to be true than false, increase your confidence in 'p' to greater than 0. If an agent isn't following this rule, it doesn't seem like they are forming 'beliefs' (i.e. mental states that 'aim at' truth or are responsive to truth) at all. If belief formation requires a committment to this rule then it requires a committment to a normative fact/rule, namely a fact/rule about when to increase your confidence in a proposition being true.

[@lanceindependent]

@@samsklair4701 Hi Sam. Why does reasoning commit you to that rule? And what do you mean by "commit"? //If an agent isn't following this rule, it doesn't seem like they are forming 'beliefs' (i.e. mental states that 'aim at' truth or are responsive to truth) at all.// Why not? A belief may be an attitude whereby one holds a given proposition to be true, but I don't take it to be a feature of beliefs that they must be responsive to facts about what would or wouldn't increase the probability that a proposition is true. Someone could believe something is true because they want to, or for no reason at all. If someone thinks X is true, I don't see any reason to think such beliefs should be responsive to any particular considerations about what's true or not. Also, what do you mean by "true"? Are you endorsing a particular conception of truth? //If belief formation requires a committment to this rule then it requires a committment to a normative fact/rule, namely a fact/rule about when to increase your confidence in a proposition being true. // I deny belief formation requires a commitment to that rule. Also, the rule is underspecified, without a particular account of what is meant by "true." I'm not convinced it requires a commitment to any rules. What causes people to have beliefs is an empirical question. Whether or not someone thinks something is true isn't going to be contingent on philosophical norms or facts, unless it turns out that agents are only capable of believing things if they conform to particular philosophical norms or considerations, and it would require empirical evidence to demonstrate that such considerations are required for belief. Even then, that might be a contingent feature of human psychology, and it would not necessarily demonstrate that no agent (such as an artificial intelligence) couldn't believe something without following the proposed rule.

[@samsklair4701]

@@lanceindependent //Why does reasoning commit you to that rule? And what do you mean by "commit"?// Reasoning about what to believe does not seem to be possible without following that rule, if we are understanding beliefs to be mental states that are responsive to facts. An agent could form fact-unresponsive mental states without this rule. //A belief may be an attitude whereby one holds a given proposition to be true// I think that definition of belief is underspecified, what do you mean 'holds' a proposition to be true? What exactly does the 'holding' relationship between the attitude and the proposition entail? I would say that 'holding' a proposition to be true entails a readiness to use that proposition to inform your beliefs about other propositions (to make changes to your other beliefs and form new beliefs). Beliefs can only be defined in terms of their responsiveness to other beliefs and their role in forming new ones. In other words, the things someone holds to be true must be understood in terms of other things they hold to be true. That is what is meant by 'responsive to truth'. If beliefs are responsive to truth, by extention they must be responsive to facts about the likelihood of propositions being true. Hence the rule. //Also, what do you mean by "true"? Are you endorsing a particular conception of truth?// I don't think the rule requires any particular conception of truth, we can leave it an open question what truth is. Personally I think truth might be a primitive concept that cannot be analysed in terms of anything more fundamental, but I don't think this is necessary for the rule to be adequately specified such that we can follow it. In order to believe anything at all we have to have some adequately intelligible notion of what truth is, there may be a correct way of making that notion more explicit, but an implicit notion of truth is sufficient for the rule. //What causes people to have beliefs is an empirical question. Whether or not someone thinks something is true isn't going to be contingent on philosophical norms or facts, unless it turns out that agents are only capable of believing things if they conform to particular philosophical norms or considerations, and it would require empirical evidence to demonstrate that such considerations are required for belief. Even then, that might be a contingent feature of human psychology, and it would not necessarily demonstrate that no agent (such as an artificial intelligence) couldn't believe something without following the proposed rule.// Empirical investigation into the formation of beliefs requires an adequately specified definition/understanding of what beliefs are, which can only come from doing philosophy. As I think I have demonstrated, when we understand something of what beliefs are, we understand something about what is necessary for belief-formation to occur.

[@lanceindependent]

@@samsklair4701 Can you tell me what you mean by a "belief"?

[@lanceindependent]

(1) My main objection Streumer’s views is that I think it’s a mistake to focus on normative error theory rather than normative antirealism, and that the normative antirealist can deny both (a) that there are stance-independent normative facts and (b) that we require normative reasons to hold beliefs. As a result, there is no problem with believing that there are no stance-independent normative facts. If Streumer’s use of “normative property” means the same thing as “stance-independent normative fact,” or is sufficiently similar, then I see no problem with believing that there are no such things.

[@tristanm8250]

Is B4 really a necessary condition though? There are many well-documented cases of people holding a belief P while simultaneously believing that there are no reasons to believe P, namely, when people are afflicted by delusion or psychosis but still retain a high degree of insight into their own condition. When pressed, these people will say that they know full well that their belief P is irrational and unreasonable, but will insist that they nevertheless feel a strong and irresistible conviction that it must be true. In these cases, belief seems much more akin to a spontaneous sentiment or emotion rather than a judgment or cognition. I am sure Streumer addresses this in his book somewhere though...

[@KaneB]

Yeah, Streumer mentions this but he says it's not relevant since people defending error theory are not literally delusional.

[@lanceindependent]

@@KaneB I'm puzzled that he'd claim that's not relevant. I thought his position is that people can't hold a belief without reasons. Is he saying they literally are incapable of doing so, or is he saying that if they do so that they're making some kind of mistake? Is this a normative claim or a psychological claim?

[@KaneB]

@@lanceindependent I think he'd say that people are usually literally incapable of doing so, but that there may be cases of mental disorders where beliefs can be held without reasons. He says that he could replace (B4) with the more restricted principle: (B4*) A person believes that p only if this person does not believe that there is no reason to believe that p, unless the belief that p is compulsive or deluded. and apparently this won't make any difference to his argument. Maybe a deluded person could believe in the error theory, but philosophical discussions of error theory are not conducted by people who are deluded. As far as I can tell, he intends all of this as a descriptive psychological claim.

[@lanceindependent]

@@KaneB If he intends for all of this to be a descrpitive psychological claim, then I'd be curious to see how his account of "reasons" figure into psychology, and how one can demonstrate that people can only typically believe something if they take themselves to have a reason to do so, if that's what the claim is. That seems to attribute what may be a fairly heavy metaphysical load onto ordinary psychology. I doubt his proposal could even be readily operationalized in a way that would be empirically testable, or that it would hold up to empirical scrutiny if it could be.

[@souadtounsi9738]

how are we dealing with intentions , likewise "insincerity "when asserting a theory or some arguments: the only and final attempt in this area is about refering to judgements, and making sounds deductions,so that if we just quantify on then, we will modify the principle , and we then , do reject also the "intention " , at the same time, altogether.

[@joelturnbull4038]

My first thought about this is that a strategy similar to something like apophatic theology might be appropriate: just deny all of the negations and/or alternatives to error theory, and don’t make any positive claims in its favour. I don’t know enough to know whether that would work, though.

[@ahmedbellankas2549]

Why should we say that what explains the plausibility of C is the unbelieveability of T? Maybe we have a sense responsible for plausibility.

[@exalted_kitharode]

Hello Kane! Thanks for your efforts. Would you like to illuminate in one of your videos the work of Hartry Field? He's famous for his nominalist stuff, which is of course interesting, but he also has strong opinions concerning metaepistemology, philosophy of logic and metaphysics. I'm sure you've heard of his lectures on logical entailment, normativity and paradoxes. That's intense stuff. That would be wonderful if you'll be interested, as he seems to have at least some affinities to your type of positions, if I'm not mistaken. Have a good day.

[@KaneB]

I'm surprised his work hasn't come up in previous videos actually. I'm sure if I ever get around to doing more on philosophy of logic, I'll cover some of his stuff.

[@justus4684]

Are you gonna make a video on epistemic expressivism?

[@KaneB]

I have covered that briefly in the "Normativity, Moral and Epistemic" video linked in the pinned comment.

[@SmellySquid]

I don't believe that the belief requires a belief in a reason for belief.

[@KaneB]

I'm inclined to agree with this, but then Streumer seems to be using a fairly narrow definition of "belief". I also wouldn't say that belief in P requires being very confident that P... I don't think of myself as being very confident about my beliefs. I guess my reaction to Streumer's argument is that, even if we can't believe error theory per his usage of "belief", this isn't really the kind of belief I care about anyway.

[@lanceindependent]

I agree. I see no reason to suppose that beliefs require reasons for the beliefs. At least, I don't think they require Streuemer's conception of what a "reason" is.

[@lanceindependent]

@@KaneB If Streuemer is using a narrow and idiosyncratic conception of belief, then at best he might be able to say only that we don't have the kinds of beliefs he's referring to by a stipulated conception of "belief," or he'd have to argue that his account of "belief" is somehow the correct account of belief. In which case, is he describing a particular type of psychological state? If so, this is going to entangle his account in empirical questions that may not vindicate his conception of what a "belief" is. I don't think he'd want to go the latter route, so his account ends up seeming like a web of stipulative uses of terms whereby, within that stipulative framework of meanings, if one can't "believe" some position that, by the definition of that view and the definition of "belief" so stipulated, necessarily entails that one couldn't do so. The whole thing seems like an elaborate tautology.

[@prophetrob]

Why do some people seem so hell bent on conflating not-obligatory to believe and self-contradictory? It is perfectly consistent to hold a belief that isn't obligatory to believe, even advocate that others believe it for sound non-obligatory reasons, and it can still be entirely true.

[@souadtounsi9738]

isn't it based on the liar paradoxes, an epistemological extending thought?

[@faeancestor]

The concept is baffling!

[@pmccarthy001]

Thought provoking... I'm going to have to think about that awhile. If nothing else, it keeps the brain cells busy.

[@KaneB]

Glad you enjoyed the video!

[@IAN-rv3hu]

Amazing video!

[@TheGlenn8]

I don't see a problem with this. I think most people would agree that one can fail to believe true things. I don't see it as too much of a stretch that everyone can fail to believe a larger truth.

[@TheLogvasStudio]

What was the 🔴 video about?

[@АртурИванов-ч9э]

I have a question not about this video. What do you think about youtube "philosopher" Jay Dayer and presuppositional apologetics?

[@ostihpem]

For me a belief is just a mental state that holds some idea true. IMO you do not need reasons to believe. If such a belief then is just wishful thinking, guesswork, hypothesis or knowledge is decided on a further (epistemic) level. Isn't that even the "standard model" and wouldn't make it Streumers problem obsolete?

[@exalted_kitharode]

I guess the idea of mental state "holding something true" is itself normativity-laden. What makes this relation of mental state to some other state of the world(which might be mental state or not?) the relation of "holding to be true"? It seems you are just rephrasing that which must be explained in other terms, not explaining it.

[@lanceindependent]

Even if it were somehow the case that you needed "reasons" to believe something, this would be an empirical question about people's psychology, not some kind of logically necessary precondition. I don't know of any empirical evidence showing people literally can't believe things unless they have "reasons." This conception of reasons doesn't seem like something that's been incorporated into our understanding of how human cognition works, and I doubt it does figure into it.

[@lanceindependent]

@@exalted_kitharode A belief that something is true does not necessarily require a relation of a mental state to some state of the world, if by that you are alluding to a correspondence theoretic conception of truth; someone could in principle endorse some conception of truth other than a correspondence theory, and believe things are true in that respect. Even if beliefs were normatively laden, it still strikes me as an empirical question what conditions are necessary for beliefs. Beliefs are mental states, and the factors that give rise to them are going to turn on facts about the psychological mechanisms that cause those beliefs. I don't see why we should suppose human psychological states can be ruled as possible or impossible given a priori considerations about meeting some set of logical or philosophical preconditions. That does not seem like something we could establish without empirical evidence.

[@eapooda]

people can hold beliefs for various different reasons. Most of the time we believe things because they seem true to us. Other times as you said we might believe things for wishful thinking. I think whatever reason we have for believing things, some count as justification for the belief and others obviously don’t. We should be concerned with beliefs that have to do with our pursuit of knowledge. Wishful thinking is obviously not a epistemic task.

[@exalted_kitharode]

@@lanceindependent why would it be empirical question? That's conceptual matter, you'll be able to find in the world only what you've presupposed could have been found from the start. It seems that what to call such fundamental thing as belief is exactly this sort of question: you have to make some decisions on your framework of terms, not trying to find it in the microscope.

[@arinalikes5911]

What do you do for a living Kane? Any career advice?

[@InventiveHarvest]

This makes me think of the proofs that the sum of all positive integers is -1/12. While the proofs are valid, they come against the idea that any suns of positive integers result in a positive integer. -1/12 is neither positive not an integer. So, I think it is impossible to believe in the theory . Of course, there are always hidden lemmas in every theory, so no theory is 100% correct. I find this definition of belief to be suspect. It is both vague and constraining. How much confidence is required? How much knowledge is required? I am never certain of anything, and there can always be some unknown unknown that usurps a theory. Certainty should not be required for knowledge, let alone belief.

[@Junksaint]

Love it!

[@joshclark7220]

Hello, Kane! I want your help with something very important to me. Circumcision. Can you make something about the morality/psychology of Circumcision in both genders? I'm an intactivist looking for any help I can get. Thank you for reading this, if you did.

[@IntegralDeLinha]

This seems like confusion between normative reason and motivation. I don't need normative reasons to believe something, I only need motivation. Knowing error theory is true motivates me to believe it, so I can believe it, even though error theory doesn't give me normative reasons to believe it. It's not the case that I should believe in error theory because it's true. It's the case that I will believe that it's true, knowing that it is. So I guess it's just false that one can only believe something if one has normative reasons for that. Error theory doesn't deny that it has causal powers, that it can motivate you to believe in it by showing you its truth. It just says that its not the case that you should believe it because it's true, but it might still be the case that you will sincerily believe it because it's true and you have the desire to believe what's true.

[@noah5291]

Suhp Dawgz

[@ionwilliams9980]

Came across a postgrad student who said he is a existentialist. He then qualified that to say it means he relieves there are no universal truths. But would that not paradoxically be a universal truth, that there are no universal truths, that he believes in? So his belief is not logically sound 🧐 and is self defeating.

[@KaneB]

I don't think so; you could just say that the proposition "there are no universal truths" is true only relative to some perspective. (I'm also a relativist about truth, by the way.) Of course, somebody might say that there are no universal truths, except the proposition "there are no universal truths". This would be an unusual view though, and I'm not sure how it could be defended -- what could make the proposition "there are no universal truths" special?

[@ExistenceUniversity]

@@KaneB "true only relative to some perspective" "There are no universal truths" "Is that universally truth?" "Maybe depends if you believe in universal truths or not, I don't so therefore it is universally true that there are no universal truths to me, and that's not a paradox for me because maybe it's universally true for you that universal truths exist everywhere." "Ahh I see, you don't know how words or reality work." "Reality is not universally true" "Ok... So it's universally true to some people and not universally true to others? So to me there is at least 1 universal truth, and to you there is a universal truth that truth is relative?"

[@exalted_kitharode]

@@KaneB concerning position that there are no universal truths except that which denies their presence, didn't you think that you are indulging an absolutists letting the play to proceed on their own terms? No doubt it came to your mind that absolutist's conceptual apparatus already presupposes some of the most interesting "conclusions" that they want to come to. So isn't it just linguistic trickery, to constantly put in absolutist's favourite substantive truths into analytic stipulations, so that disputed theses concerning status of universal truth will follow from the meaning of the terms themselves and denial of them will amount to allegedly nonsensical assertions? Aren't we simply misled by language that there's something indefensible in position that the only "universal truth" is that there are none? It seems to me that this appearance might be produced by the absolutist's favoured way of talking, so paradoxical nature of allegedly self-refuting position is not fault of relativist, but that of preferred language used to conceptualise these oppositions which, so happens, is complementary to the absolutist? At least for now. I don't see anything unimaginable in the possibility to construct language (in the broad sense, not that of strict fashion of Carnap or Goodman) in which relativism will verge on the analyticity, and its denial will look extremely awkward as it is now with the denial of universalism. So I'm a little nervous, don't you give up to absolutist too much of what he wants, so he can just leave you alone, not perturbed by dangers of your worldview? Sorry if I was incomprehensible or too verbose, I just felt need to speak out and hear your opinion.

[@exalted_kitharode]

@@ExistenceUniversity calm down, mate, we all know that only platonists, christians and normative realists know how reality works and what words mean. Breaking news, absolutists persuaded each other that anyone not sharing their unwavering faith is not merely wrong, but also incoherent and just plainly silly. That's alright, we all remember, we have to presuppose your x, y, z etc so that our speech will deserve to be called intelligible by good old platonist folks. It's fine you felt need to leave there this relentless line of questioning with the last word, of course, belonging to platonist.

[@ExistenceUniversity]

@@exalted_kitharode Platonists, christians and normative realists don't know anything. The only proper philosophy is Objectivsm. Your comment otherwises says nothing. If you say "there are no absolute truths" you just contradicted yourself as you made it an absolute truth that there are no absolute truths, thus there is at least 1 absolute truth. To say that it's not absolute truth to say there is no absolute truth is to say that you believe it is absolutely truth that truth is relative, therefore you still have at least 1 absolute truth. All you can say if you are consistent is that you have given up on reasoning and thinking and have decided to just let other people tell you what to think and that you never need to settle into reality you can just float abstractly as the rest of us that know reality exist support you through welfare.

[@dogsdomain8458]

I don't agree with struemer because I believe in normative error theory and am a fictionalist about reasons.

[@manchild7675]

This is so crazy 😮 I am a homosexual man