Philosophy Now Forum

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Nov 17, 2022 4:27 pm

Thanks – I follow what you're saying. I'm going to have a think about how I phrase my argument.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Thu Nov 17, 2022 1:14 pm

Thanks for all of these points Skepdick! I need to have a think...

Thanks – but which step, or steps, in my reasoning do you think is wrong?

Hi Could anyone give me feedback on the below part of the latest version of a blog post that I'm working on? This part argues that any claim, X, and the claim X is true are distinct claims. Do you find the argument convincing? If not, which steps do you think are problematic? --- Compare these two c...

Thanks very much Jonathan - I think I follow what you're saying. However, the latest version of the argument (see: http://www.tryingtothink.org/wiki/How_Belief_Works ) isn't committed to the correspondence theory of truth: The content of any belief is a claim, whether it’s something profound, like ‘...

Good news: my article has been accepted by Think . :D Sincere thanks to all of you for your feedback. I'd still appreciate any further feedback - the article is actually the first part of a bigger article that I've written, and which is available on my personal website here: http://www.tryingtothink...

I've improved the wording of the second paragraph: The content of any belief is a claim, whether it’s something profound, like ‘There’s an afterlife’, or something mundane, like ‘It's raining outside’. Therefore, according to the common theory of belief-formation, we believe claims that we’ve assess...

All right. How about this then: I have no idea what apes eat. But someone working at the zoo tells me that they eat bananas. I trust him and I rely on his expert knowledge to form my new belief. Then my assessment of the Claim is not an assessment. The belief gets created without an assessment. Sor...

This is one possibility, yes. But another one is that it never occurred to me before that apes and human beings loved bananas. Only when the speaker pointed this out to me I thought about it and decided that yes, it was true. And that the inference also was true. So in this case both the Claim and ...

I think I understand you now. To be the product of assessing the truth of a claim, a belief must occur AFTER this process has concluded. As the conclusion depends on the formation of the belief, the belief canot therefore be a product of this process. A process P may be a chain of events but none o...

Unbelief: human beings and apes have common ancestors. Claim: Human beings and apes both love bananas. I assess the truth of the Claim and say: yes, that is true. This assessment results in Belief: human beings and apes do have common ancestors. Is this new Belief a Product of the assessment of the...

The new belief of the Church was NOT a product of its assessment ? Hi duszek, thanks for your feedback. I would say that the new belief must have been formed before the conclusion of any assessment of truth - for the reason given in the first italicised paragraph in my 29 July post. Which step, or ...

Sorry. This just makes the contradiction more obvious to me. ... :D I think I now see the problem. How about this: Therefore, although our belief, or unbelief, in a claim occurs in the process of accessing its truth, that belief, or unbelief, nevertheless occurs before the conclusion of that assess...

I agree that the latter sentence might seem contradictory, and so I've added a few more words to the end: Therefore, although assessing the truth of a claim may indeed result in our belief, or unbelief, in it, that belief, or unbelief, must nevertheless occur before our conclusion that the claim is ...

Step 7 is what I am questioning. ... Sorry - I didn't notice this reply. However, I think the latest version of my argument addresses these objections: Why do we believe what we believe? The answer may seem obvious: we believe what we’ve assessed to be true. And yet this is wrong: belief can't be t...