Great video! I'm interested in this idea of epistemic values or virtues that we might advocate for others as opposed to practicing ourselves. Like, I could see how being stubborn in one's beliefs could cause me to be mistaken, though I would want some scientists to be stubborn in their beliefs to make sure that every avenue of inquiry gets properly investigated. This amounts to a hope that some people are radically wrong for a long time in their own epistemic endeavors, just so that I can benefit indirectly from the collective epistemic endeavor of which they are a part! That seems really weird!
Huh. That's interesting! I wonder if the distinction between _acceptance_ and _belief_ is any help here? Maybe the scientist qua scientist should obstinately _accept_ their thesis (i.e. act _as if_ it's true, continue defending and promoting it in the literature, etc.) but the scientist qua rational thinker should not _believe_ their thesis (i.e. not take it to be actually true, not assign it a high probability of actually representing the world accurately). Something like that? That's just off the cuff. I'll have to think about it some more!
Did you heard for presuppositional apologetic method? By checking someone's worldview, you are trying to see is that worldview can account preconditions for reason, for intelligibility, morality etc Jason Lisle is very good at this topic.
Yes, presuppositionalism has been around a long time. It's not discussed much in professional academic philosophy, but I'm familiar with it because I do a lot of reading in philosophy of religion and so have come across Van Til and company.
@@vinkosusac1130 I don't buy it. But I don't dismiss it, either. It's a respectable line of argumentation that deserves attention. In the end, however, I don't find their arguments compelling.
This requires too long a reply for RU-vid comments. But in a nutshell, the presuppositionalist stance is too strong, in my view. That is, they claim _too much._ They argue that all non-theisitc worldviews are irrational; that all atheistic points of view are logically self-defeating. Now I'm open to claim that theism-as a whole-is more probable than the alternatives. Who knows, maybe theism is even the most rational position in a cumulative case type argument. But to claim that naturalism (or atheism, if you prefer) is _irrational,_ to claim that it is _incoherent_ , just seems a step too far. I would not be at all surprised to find that the world turns out to be wholly natural, with no supernatural entities.
Very interesting! My opinion on this is probably not very thought out, but I always like forming an opinion on stuff to wrestle with it to understand it better. What about this: *If two people disagree on something, at least one of them **_has_** to have made a mistake.* It's not possible to rigorously proof two conflicting things. Two people might be experts in their field and they might have very high IQ (whatever that means), but if they disagree, still, at least one of them has to have made a mistake. In complicated subjects it's not that unlikely that even smart experts make mistakes. There is no threshold where an argument is just "good". Like, if some one has three PHDs, everything they say is a "good" opinion. Every opinion is based on knowledge (premises?) and reasoning and if the way you come up with an opinion is without faults, you can't come up with multiple different conclusions. (But practically we are often forced to make decisions based on incomplete knowledge and complicated circumstances that aren't easy to reason about with exact mathematical logic. That might be a problem. When someone says a tax should be raised by 10% and another says lowered by 10%, we can be nearly be sure that neither of the numbers are exactly optimal, but we still have to make a choice.) I'd say that makes me team steadfast, although if I _know_ that an opinion I hold isn't very well founded and just a guess because I'm forced to choose, then I should change my view when someone presents an alternative and they seem smart and confident. For example, I like coffee prepared a certain way, but I know I'm not an expert, so if an expert claims they know a better way, I will probably believe them. When a child tells me that Santa Claus exists, then I _won't_ change my view, because I feel like I know the reasons why it believes in him are bad. (Yes, god isn't exactly Santa Claus.) In case of the climbers, I'd have to compare the evidence that my path is better vs the evidence that my friend is a good climber. I would certainly reconsider my assessment extra carefully and maybe try to debate and argue about our particular reasons. I guess my personal reasoning and my trust in the friend can outweigh each other and there _is_ a point of balance, where I'd consider both paths equally safe and if I had to choose, I'd choose randomly. My personal evidence and reasoning counts more, but trust in authority _can_ outweigh it. Another person is like a second pair of eyes. Two eyes make you see things better (3D) than one eye and another person you can talk to, makes you see things _even_ better. It's the whole "argument from authority" thing: You should trust what a person says exactly if that person is trustworthy.
Like, if you were comparing the results of your math homework with a friend and you got "12" as a result and they got "210" as a result, then it wouldn't make sense to conclude with the "working hypothesis" to now believe that the result is half-12 and half-210. You would just think that one of you is right and one is wrong. In case of math homework, I wouldn't assume that both are wrong, because the teacher expected you to come up with the correct solution. Maybe it's controversial to say that metaphysical or political reasoning can be flat out correct or wrong, just like mathematical reasoning. I like your video on facts vs opinions. You would probably agree that mathematics is not a "realm of fact" while politics or religion is a "realm of opinion", like some other people think. It's just that some realms are more _complicated_ than others.
Similar to what you were saying about experts, two equally matched chess players will not always play to a draw. And you're right: if I say X and you say not-X, one of us has to have misread the evidence or made an error along the way.
What if you disagree on if someone's your'e epistemic peer? Can that factor in to the equal weight view? ie, I know slightly more than my peer therefore I'll give my own argument a higher weight?
I’d say: if you’re justified in believing someone is _not_ your epistemic peer, then you’re justified in giving your own view more weight. (But you can’t use the disagreement itself as evidence that you’re not peers!)
As one calling myself an atheist I think theism is not comparable. It would be better if another religion challenged Christianity or even some pseudoscience models clashing. Atheism is not making any claim --- you are only stating that you are not convinced and that you will not regard as true what according to you lacks sufficient evidence. Its like saying: I am not convinced that A is a safer route than B, so I will not start climbing. Another religion or worldview could convince you, or maybe theism suddenly does.
There are three doxastic attitudes you can take toward any claim. (1) Affirm it. That is, take it to be true. We call this _belief_ . (2) Deny it. That is, take it to be false. We call this _disbelief_ . (3) Neither affirm nor deny it. That is, neither take it to be true nor take it to be false. We call this _suspension of belief_ or sometimes just _not having a view on the matter_ . This general schema applies to the claim "God exists." And we already have widely-used names for the groups that track the three possible doxastic attitudes. (1) Those who affirm God's existence (i.e. believe) are called _theists_ . (2) Those who deny (i.e. disbelieve) God's existence are called _atheists_ . (3) And those who neither affirm nor deny God's existence (i.e. don't take a view on the matter) are called _agnostics_ . I know, I know... internet atheists have put in a lot of time and effort trying to counter this language and general schema. But the result is always a muddle. (NB: May I suggest the term "non-believer" for the way you are using the term "atheist"? Given the schema above, both atheists and agnostics fall in the category of non-belief.) EDIT: Forgot to say... thanks for engaging in the comment section! Appreciate the thoughtful push-back. 👊🏼
