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Viable Scenarios and Rationality

13 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by Joe in apologetics, atheism, Athesism Christianity, Catholic, christianity, epistemology, metaethics, philosophy, religion, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

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apologetics, Catholic, Christianity, logic, metaethics, philosophy, rationality, religion

A common view is that we are rational when we weigh the evidence for and against any belief we hold, and if the weight of the evidence says it is more likely than not true we can/should continue to believe it.   If not, then we shouldn’t continue to believe it.   Another approach is to say we should “apportion our beliefs to the evidence.”   These approaches are different from each other, but as far as they go they seem ok and I am not trying to parse them out here.  Instead I want to suggest there is more to having rational beliefs than simply following either of those approaches.

Consider the various Cartesian skeptical scenarios.  These scenarios force us to ask how we know anything about the external world. ( BTW throughout this  blog I am using “know” as imprecise short hand for “reasonably  believe.”  I think “knowing” something does require more certainty that what we “reasonably  believe”  but my sentences are awkward enough so I am sticking with the term “know”)     We might be dreaming.  Some god or evil genius may be manipulating a brain in a vat somewhere causing us to have these experiences etc.  If that was the case it would seem there is still something (a thinking thing) having an experience and so in some sense “I” (this thinking thing) would still exist,  but nothing external to my mind would need to exist as I perceive it.  This is where we get the famous “I think therefore I am.”

Perhaps the easiest way to start getting the idea of these scenarios is the dreaming argument.  Everything I know about the external world is due to my experiences.   However, since I have had dreams where the experiences were such that I couldn’t tell I was dreaming it seems at least possible that I could be dreaming now.   Do I have “evidence” I am not in a very detailed dream?   We can’t step outside of our experience to see what is causing our experiences, so no I do not.  Yet I believe I am not in a detailed dream.  So that would seem to violate the notion that rationality involves “apportioning belief to the evidence.”

 

Moreover, my rejection of the dreaming argument seems to violate a notion of parsimony.   Every time I have the experience of oncoming headlights traveling opposite my direction on a highway, not only do I have that experience, but I also believe there are physical people with minds and lives of their own in those vehicles. And not only that I think those people will pass headlights and behind those headlights will be real people with real lives and concerns etc.

 

We do not think there actually are physical things (that may have their own minds) that correspond to the imagery we experience when we dream.  We just think there is the experience of seeing people in our dreams, but those people don’t really exist with minds of their own.   It is possible there are material things existing somewhere that somehow correspond to the dream experiences we have, but our experience does not require that these material things actually exist.   It seems absurd to think any material things exist somewhere corresponding with our experiences – at least when we are talking about “dream experiences.”

But when we talk about experiences we have when we believe we are awake, we somehow think the opposite.   Belief in all those extra material things and minds suddenly seems justified – even though we know from dreams – we could be having the experience without the extra material things or minds existing.

 

My point is not to try to convince people we should believe we are in a dream or other skeptical scenario – I generally don’t try to convince people of things I do not believe myself.   But rather I want to point out that it is not the “evidence” that is apportioning our beliefs here.  The various skeptical scenarios take up a very small percentage of real estate in my mind.  Most of my beliefs are formed around the notion that I am a real person moving around with other real people with minds of their own.   I do this even though I have no evidence against one of the skeptical scenarios being true.     So in doing that I am certainly not “apportioning my belief to the evidence.”   So if it is rational to believe I am not in a skeptical scenario then there must be more to rationality than “apportioning  belief to the evidence.”

 

I think there is at least one other reason we do not orient our  beliefs towards a  Cartesian Skeptical scenario.  That is because it is hard or impossible to know what we should do in such a scenario.  The converse is also true.  If we did know exactly what we should do if we were in one of these Skeptical scenarios then it would be a much more rational to orient our beliefs to account for this scenario.  It would be a possibility we could better account for because we would have an understanding of how we should deal with it.   Thus whether we could have some idea what we should do in a scenario is important to whether we should consider it a viable scenario.   But without any understanding of how we should deal with or act in such a scenario, that scenario seems a dead end.   It is only rational to orient our beliefs to viable scenarios not dead end scenarios.

 

Now let’s get back to reality as we believe it exists.  We see things and believe many of them exist in a material form independent of our experience of them.   But does having this “materiality” actually answer how we should deal with this scenario?   Some would say it does, but I don’t think knowing about how things are tells us how they should be.  So I think just adding materiality to the scenario accomplishes very little if anything.

 

But regardless of where you stand on that question, you still may agree with me that the viability of a scenario does depend on whether we have any hope of knowing what to do if we are in that scenario.   If we don’t know what scenario we are in then, any scenarios where we would have no clue how to act anyway should be discarded from consideration in orienting our beliefs/actions.   This is because by definition whatever beliefs or actions we orient to would not  be  better or worse than any other in those scenarios.  So a rational person focuses on the possible scenarios where we could know what to do and form their beliefs based on the possibility of those scenarios being true.   Those are the “live options” or what I call the “viable scenarios”.

 

But do we have to “really” know what to do or can we make up what to do?  That is, do we have to be a “moral realist” or can we be an anti-realist and just admit we are making things up  based on our experiences.    It seems to me that if we can just make up morality through a form of constructivism it wouldn’t matter that we are in a real world as opposed to a skeptical world.   It would seem we could make up morality if we are dreaming or a brain in a vat.   So if the real world we think we live in does not offer anything better than a form of anti-realist morality, then it is no more viable than a Cartesian skeptical scenario.

 

It seems to me a “viable scenario” requires that 1) moral realism is true and 2) we have a way to know what morality requires.    A scenario where we can’t possibly know what to do in it, is not a viable scenario.  Whether viability is an on off switch, or more of a sliding scale may not be all that clear.  But let’s just say any scenario where 1 and 2 are not met is not a very “lively scenario.”  They would share the same trait that makes the Cartesian doubt scenarios non-viable.

 

Now consider the possibility that naturalism is true.  We can look at the possibility that naturalism is true without any preconditions and we might say the probability is X.  But then let’s consider the probability that naturalism is true if we are in a scenario where moral realism is true.  Some, myself included, would say that if they knew Moral realism was true then they would think the probability naturalism goes down.  So on moral realism the probability of naturalism becomes X minus Y.    Others might not agree.    But one thing I am fairly certain of, is that if the scenario we are in, includes 1 and 2 then the probability of naturalism being true is very low indeed.

 

The logic of the arguments made by Sharon Street, Mark Linville and Richard Joyce demonstrate this.   They persuasively argue that if naturalism and evolution is true, even if moral realism is also true, we have no way to reliably know what morality requires.  Street and Joyce believe in naturalism so they reject the idea we can reliably know what moral realism requires even if it is true.   Linnville, and I, think that in light of this sort of argument we should reject naturalism.

 

For the reasons I stated above I think rejection of naturalism is the more rational option.  That is because holding on to naturalism leads to believing in a non-viable scenario, and rational people orient their beliefs around viable scenarios, naturalism should  be rejected.    If naturalism is a scenario where the probability of 1 and 2 is extremely low, then naturalism implies a scenario that shares the same trait that makes the Cartesian skeptical scenarios non-viable.

 

Of course, people can dispute whether 1 and 2 are necessary for a viable scenario.  They can also disagree whether 1 and 2 make the probability of naturalism low and vice versa.  But I think this is the best way to understand the structure of my moral argument for God.

Two Aspects of Rational “Belief”

06 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by Joe in apologetics, christianity, epistemology, logic, metaethics, philosophy, rationality, Uncategorized

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

Atheism, Christianity, epistemology, philosophy, religion

We see everyone claiming to be rational but then we find that they view being “rational” as having a mindset that leads to their conclusions.  My second blog was on what it means to be rational in general terms here.

Those views seem correct now just as they have for decades before I wrote that blog.  But there is still a tension in what it means to “believe” something that I have been thinking about for decades and I have ultimately concluded that the term “belief” has two different meanings that are essential to our understanding of the term but can sometimes conflict.  This blog is intended more as one that explains a problem that I see rather than provide a solution.  Hopefully others will have a decent solution or at least understand the problem so their discussions can be a bit nuanced.    Here are the two essential aspects of belief that I think most philosophers would at least agree are valid considerations as being part of the term “belief”:

 

  • The first view is that of WV Quine where our “beliefs” are    “…a disposition to respond in certain ways when the appropriate issue arises.”

 

 

  • The second view is that a belief is something you properly hold if you believe the evidence supports the conclusion that the claim is more likely than not true.

 

Although I agree the second definition is a view that seems to capture an essential part of the term “belief” I also think it has problems that I think never get enough press in professional philosophy.    I want to discuss the problems I see with the second view but then, in the end, will explain why I think it is hard to just do away with it.

 

I think this second view of belief leads people to think rational people should be constantly weighing the evidence of each individual belief and then trying to banish those where the evidence does not measure up.  Our beliefs are much more complicated than that.  That simplified view does not even give us an idea of what beliefs should be examined and which shouldn’t or the pragmatic considerations.  For example under that view a rational person could be memorizing facts out of a phone book as much as they investigate whether they should believe it is ok to have an abortion.  Obviously being rational means more than just filling our heads with random facts which the evidence suggests are more likely than not true and expunging those beliefs that seem not to have that evidence.

 

But there is another problem.   A logical problem with this view is that many decisions are not exactly binary.   Either the Christian God exists or he doesn’t.  That’s true.  But that doesn’t mean, unless we think the evidence supports that the Christian God exists is more likely than not true, we are irrational for believing in that God.  We have to consider the alternatives.  And there seem to be many alternatives to believing in the Christian God.  There are Gods as explained by other religions.  There is the possibility to believe in a God that is not explained by a religion.  All of these are possible beyond just either the Christian God exists or no God exists.

 

So lets analyze a hypothetical situation.  Let’s just say I believe:

  • Christian God is 30%
  • non-Christian God(s) aggregate to 40% but all individually are less than 30%

and

  • no God is 30%?

 

Sometimes people say that if we don’t have evidence that supports any of those beliefs are more likely than not true then we should “withhold belief.”   Sometimes people say that means you are “agnostic” and some people would say that an “atheist” might fit that description as well. The arguments about the terminology seem more pedantic than helpful so I won’t address them.

 

But ultimately I still have to decide things like:

  • Am I going to Church Sunday morning?
  • Am I going to treat human life as though it is a sacred gift from God?
  • Am I going to treat all humans as though they are made in God’s image?
  • Am I going to teach my children these things?

These are a few Christian teachings that you are either going to live your life by or you are not.   You need to act now.

If you can pause life then ok.  But I can’t.   So in the meantime my actions are going to reflect my beliefs.  And it is hard to understand what it would mean to be agnostic here.  Would that mean I sometimes go to church on Sunday?  Should I try to go 30% of the time?  If I never go to church on Sunday or act in accordance with the Christian teachings then am I not adopting the belief that the Christian God does not exist? And other religions are even less likely so I would act as though there is no God.    But in my hypothetical the evidence doesn’t support that belief as being more likely than not true either!  Does the agnostic know how to pause his life?  Can he teach me how to do that?

 

Notice these issues arise before I even start to get into the fact that this is only dealing with “theoretical rationality” and not “pragmatic rationality.”   It is irrational to ignore pragmatic reasons which can effect what views we should adopt, but these problems arise when we just consider the theoretical model on its own.

 

But let’s dig a bit deeper.  Some say we can act as though something is true even though we don’t believe it is true.  That sounds a bit like lying to yourself.    But let’s go along with this a bit.   We still need to ask which way should I choose to act when the evidence doesn’t support any relevant belief is more likely than not true?  Should I just act and adopt views however I feel like at the moment?  Ok but are we going to claim that is rational?

 

I’m sorry but the second view (where we rationally believe something if and only if the evidence supports that it is more likely than not true) is too simplistic and just won’t work in life.  Any approach to being rational in a situation must address all the different probabilities and their pragmatic consequences.    Yes it’s complicated but oversimplifying rationality only masks the problems.

 

So I think the first view is important.  But the second view does have this going for it.  If I say “I believe O.J. Simpson murdered Ron Goldman”,  then it seems I am saying it is more likely than not true that OJ Simpson murdered Ron Goldman.    It is hard to remove that aspect of the term “belief” without doing an injustice to language.    I don’t have a solution, but I think we should understand these two different meanings of “belief” especially when we talk about whether beliefs are rational or not.

Ad Hoc Reasoning Suits Moral Subjectivism and Anti-Realism

25 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by Joe in apologetics, atheism, christianity, epistemology, metaethics, Morality, rationality, Uncategorized

≈ 32 Comments

Tags

apologetics, Atheism, Christianity, meta-ethics., morality, religion

The subjectivists I speak with seem to treat the topic of morality as though we can have a reasoned discussion in the same way we might about facts of reality.  I think many times the moral anti-realist doesn’t fully appreciate the problems with this view.   I explain why I think the subjectivist will have trouble with the very notion of having any sort “good reason” to believe here and here.

 

There I argued that there are 3 general types of “good reasons” to believe something.  First are theoretical reasons, second pragmatic reasons (see this blog for a philosophical explanation of the distinction) and third we would have good reason to believe something if not believing it caused a contradiction in our beliefs.  In the earlier blog I merely said that it is simply too low a bar to only ask that the views not lead to logical contradiction.   But I want to discuss the coherency condition more fully here.

 

I do concede that the rationalist can at least appeal internal coherency as a way of preferring beliefs.  Overall, I think this bar is too low but it is especially low when we understand that objective reality itself will not constrain the beliefs we do come up with.  This blog will explain how the rational quality/virtue of consistency/coherency is trivially easy for the subjectivist.

 

Consider the fact that many people thought Hitler had many internal inconsistencies in his thought.  A subjectivist might say this would prevent them from following his moral scheme.  But let’s consider one such inconsistency that we often hear and see how that really would not be a problem for the subjectivist.   Roughly the argument is made that Hitler was inconsistent in saying

 

  1. The proper German must be, blond haired, blue eyed, and have great genes for athleticism.
  2. Yet he had none of those traits

and still he thought

3.He was a proper German.

 

Now if these were the views he held, and for the sake of argument let’s say they were, then I would agree they are inconsistent.

 

So what could he do?  Well he could just add to the first claim that “…. unless that person was Adolf Hitler.”   There that takes care of that inconsistency!  You might say well there might be another Adolf Hitler that he wanted to exclude from being a proper German.  And we can just say that “…. unless that person was Adolf Hitler who was born on such and such a date and hour at such and such a place…”  We could also make these exceptions for Goering and Himmler etc.

 

These exceptions seem dubious because they are “ad hoc.” Ad hoc additions to a theory are those that seem irregular from the overall theory but they are included for the sole purpose of saving our theory or view.  Normally we frown on ad hoc explanations.

One of the reasons Kepler’s heliocentric theory of elliptical orbits was preferred over the Copernican system involving perfect circles (the Greeks like Ptolemy thought circular motion was more perfect) was because the Copernican system had epicycles.  Smaller circular motions of the planets were added as well as the larger orbit.     http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST101/keplers_laws.html

 

Epicycles are I think it is fair to say another example of ad hoc reasoning.  In that I am sure Copernicus would agree he was only including the epicycles to shoe horn his theory of perfectly circular orbits into the reality he observed. That was the sole reason to posit the existence of epicycles.   If the math and observation worked without epicycles then Copernicus would not have suggested them.   Once Kepler showed that the math works with ellipses (no epicycles needed) people tended to prefer that system.   This was all before Newton and his theories about inertia etc.

 

Why should we be suspicious of ad hoc reasoning?  It is because as the products of the culture of Athens and Jerusalem we tend to think A) that reality/truth is not created by our beliefs about it so it is not going to be different so it suits our beliefs, and B) Copernicus was making a claim about objective reality.

 

Of course, if you are subjectivist you think differently.  Subjectivists think the truth about morality is dependent on our view of it.  So in that case A is not something we accept.    To the extent you think our moral constructs are unconstrained by objective reality then you also reject B.     There is no objective reality we are trying to explain.   Rejecting either A or B seems to take all the sting out of the charge or ad hockery.   Morality is what we make it – or so they say.    So there is no reason to prefer the regularity we see in objective reality.

 

I mean I can’t like and dislike the taste of the same pickles at the same time in the same way, but it is just fine that it used to be those pickles tasted bad but now they are good.  No explanation is necessary.  My mental state makes it “good” and that can change in an arbitrary way.   And once we break from objective reality and its apparent regularity, it is ridiculously easy to be consistent.  It was OK for me to kill a minute ago but I wouldn’t do it now?  Ok no problem, it’s just that my relevant mental state is different now.   We are not saying our beliefs about morality corresponds with any objective reality – indeed we are saying no such objective reality exists for them to correspond with – so there is no reason to be against ad hoc views.

 

Do we see ad hockery in moral theories?  Yes I gave a few examples that I think are common.

We should care about well being of all sentient creatures except when we don’t.  See animal rights 

In suffering being the key – except when it is not.  Oral Surgeon case. 

Empathy is great even though it seems to add suffering – well we like it anyway!

Of course, people, especially anti-realists, can have all sorts of views on morality so it is hard to explain any case that will apply to everyone.  But for me it was just a matter of really thinking through moral issues and being honest with myself about the grounds I claimed to have as a basis.  I think most people try to be honest with themselves, but I don’t think people often try to think through moral issues that frequently.

 

In law school we study a huge number of cases involving difficult moral issues. How much the students tried to understand the reasoning as opposed to just learn the law seemed to vary.  Moreover, law school and legal cases do not usually dive into the deep understanding of moral concepts but rather just tends to refer to vaguely worded values.     And, of course, most people have not gone to law school or had any similar exposure to the variety of moral cases that are involved.    Coming to this realization (that creating your own morality with no objective anchor is extremely arbitrary) requires both an inclination and experience that are both uncommon.   So I am not surprised that many people think the amount of ad hoc reasoning might be rare.

 

When what we decide defines a very concept like “pickles are good” means, such and such fact about my view toward them, then we hardly need to come to any principled reasons for why pickles were “bad” before but now they are “good.”    If I didn’t like pickles yesterday but do today, it’s no big deal.

 

I see no reason for the subjectivist to reject ad hoc explanations.  But for me it made this whole exercise of supposedly “deliberating” about morality in order “decide for myself what matters” too much of a charade.  I am constantly reminded of the people in allegory of the cave who keep insisting to the philosopher who saw reality that what they are doing with the shadows is important.  I simply have no interest in playing.  My missing out on this involves extremely low stakes.

 

So yes it may be correct that there is no objective moral realism.  So I don’t discount that possibility.    And if I live my life based on a false belief in moral realism then I agree it was in vain.  But if I just missed out on this big charade, I am perfectly at peace taking that risk.   In fact, I am not sure I can fully express how much at peace I am about taking that risk.

We Know Much More from Hearsay then from Modern Science

21 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by Joe in apologetics, atheism, Athesism Christianity, christianity, epistemology, history, logic, philosophy, rationality, science, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

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apologetics, Atheism, Christianity, epistemology, law, philosophy, religion, science

Lots of times certain atheists will argue that the bible is “just hearsay and that is not evidence.”   As a trial lawyer with a pretty good understanding of the rules of evidence I think there are some important points to be made here.  If people don’t know what they are talking about they may end up with a very odd epistemology (that is the fancy word for what it means to know things or to have your beliefs justified or warranted) if they just repeat the scorn heaped on “hearsay.”  To understand how hearsay fits in to our justified beliefs we have to understand what hearsay is and that will take some explaining.  So the first part of this blog will go into what hearsay is and is not, and the second part will explain why so much of what we believe is based on hearsay.

 

Almost all of the important information we know we learned through what would be considered “hearsay” under typical court rules.    The US Federal Rules of evidence 801(c) defines hearsay this way:

“Hearsay. “Hearsay” is a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted”

 

So any sort of written or oral statement made outside of the courtroom, would be hearsay if it is offered for the truth of what is asserted.   We can ignore the “at the trial or hearing” bit, because I am looking at the substance of the rule.  So if someone is telling you something they saw with their own eyes or heard with their own ears etc, and they are able and willing to answer your questions about that under oath, it would not be hearsay according to the standard I am using in this blog- even if they are telling you this information outside of a hearing or trial.

 

 

There are exceptions to the rule where the courts allow certain hearsay in even though it is hearsay.   Unlike the definition of hearsay I gave these exceptions can vary from state to state and I won’t go into them, other than to say I think  the existence of these exceptions serves my point.  Courts are extremely strict about the evidence they let in, but even they allow hearsay in if it is under certain exceptions.  Again my point is that hearsay is really where we get much of what we consider “knowledge” so the fact that courts might let some in shows it is not always considered invalid.

 

There is no question that courts would consider hearsay to be “relevant evidence.”   So claims that hearsay is not evidence are just false.   Although it is true that it might not be “admissible” evidence.  Hearsay is often excluded because we think people should be able to cross examine witnesses, witnesses should have to formulate their responses by live questions not carefully couch their views in writing, the statements should be under oath,  and the jury should be able see the demeanor of the person and judge their credibility etc.   So courts don’t allow hearsay evidence because they want trials to rely on the best evidence not because they don’t think hearsay is evidence.  The courts want the best evidence if they can require it.  So they do.    But there is no question that hearsay can be “relevant evidence” in that if fits the definition federal rules of evidence definition of relevant evidence.

  “ Rule 401. Test for Relevant Evidence

Evidence is relevant if:

 

(a) it has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence; and

 

(b) the fact is of consequence in determining the action.”

 

I talked about this definition in this blog.

So anyone who says hearsay is not “relevant evidence” simply does not know what they are talking about.   Let’s get a bit better understanding of what “hearsay” is.

What does it mean to be “offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted”?  It means that the person is trying to use the contents of the statement as evidence that what is asserted in the statement is true.  So for example in my post on empathy versus love I quoted a source which said emotional empathy triggers the same brain neurons that relate to direct physical pain.  I was quoting that source as evidence of the truth of what was asserted by that source.  So it was hearsay.  Now unless the person I quoted actually did that experiment himself and looked at the brain mris himself then he likely was just repeating what he read in a journal or some other writing.  And he was doing that for the purpose of evidencing the truth of what they were saying in that writing.  Thus it was hearsay on top of hearsay – AKA, double hearsay.  And that assumes he read the literature directly from the person who made the observations.  So it is likely at best double hearsay.

What would not be hearsay?

A statement might not be offered for the truth of what is asserted if for example you just wanted to prove a person believed it to be true or to attack someone’s credibility.    So an out of court statement is often used when cross examining a witness.  For example  “In a prior deposition, you said the defendant was wearing a red hat didn’t you?  Now you are saying he was wearing no hat at all.”  Well assuming it is not crime to wear or not wear a hat, that fact likely is not directly an element of the case.  So the purpose is not to prove he was wearing a hat or not.  The purpose the prior statement is being used for, is to challenge the witness’s credibility, for example, maybe lead to doubts about the witnesses accuracy in identifying the correct person.    So that prior statement is not being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted (that the person was in fact wearing a red hat) but rather to attack the witnesses credibility.  Therefore that statement would not be hearsay because it is not being used for hearsay purposes.

 

Also if someone is telling you what they themselves heard or saw with their own senses and they are able and willing to answer any questions you have on the matter under oath that would not be hearsay.  (No I am not saying it has to be a courtroom for purposes of this discussion)  But they would only be able to tell you what they saw with their own eyes.  Experts can also share their opinions but again they would need to be able and willing to answer all your questions.  So we can’t just take an article from an expert science journal and enter it in evidence with nothing more.  That would be hearsay.  That said if your sister told you she saw a cardinal in the backyard and she was there to answer questions that would not be hearsay.  Your believing that there was a cardinal in the back yard based on her statement would not be based on hearsay.     If you yourself saw cardinal in the back yard, you knowledge of it being there is also not based on hearsay.  Of course, those things are not known based on science either.

 

But any information you learn about from reading that science journal is based on hearsay.  The journal is telling you about experiments or science and you are reading it for the truth of what they are asserting.     Most of the nonfiction we read, is “for the truth of the matter asserted.” So when I read a history book that says the Ribbontop-Molotov pact was an agreement between the Nazis and Socialist Russia to divide Eastern Europe that is hearsay.  It is communicating that information for the purpose of making me believe the statements are true and that is how I am reading the book.    Hence the vast majority of what we know from reading any sort of nonfiction is hearsay.  All of history, geography, sociology, sports, news, is all overwhelmingly hearsay.  None of it is modern science.

 

Even if you read a copy of a diary explaining what a person saw themselves, it would still be hearsay.  At trial you would not be able to just enter that diary.  You would need to be able to call that person live and that person would have to be able and willing to answer questions under oath.  So hopefully you are starting to see just how much of what we know (or at least “reasonably believe”) is in fact hearsay.

 

Modern science started around 1600.  Before then People lived lives where they knew all sorts of things about those around them. Sure lots of it through hearsay especially after the printing press.  But very little of it through what we would consider modern science.

 

Modern Science is not how we know if we walk on water we will sink or that dead things typically don’t come back to life.  People knew these things before 1600, and really science added very little to these beliefs.    People knew the earth was round.  They even traveled around the world all before modern science.

 

So how much of our scientific knowledge do we know by reading it from books or from people who learned of it from reading books as opposed to doing the experiments ourselves?   All of those experiments you read about other people doing you know through hearsay.   I mean unless you are a very busy scientist who never reads about any other science experiments, probably, the vast majority of what you know about science you know from “hearsay.”  Now at least presumably most of that hearsay does also have a causal root in science as well.  That is the statements would not have been made if it weren’t for the scientific testing done.  So I am willing to call that knowledge as coming from both science and hearsay even though the more proximate cause of our knowledge is hearsay.   Since that knowledge is based on both science and hearsay, let’s call all that knowledge it a wash in our tally.

 

Moreover, we should consider that science is not the only way we can reach what seems like scientific conclusions.  Galileo figured the heavy ball would fall just as fast as the lighter ball by a simple thought experiment.  No scientific testing required.   Consider one cannon ball is heavier than another.  Now attach them to eachother.   If Aristotle was right and the lighter cannon ball would fall slower than the heavier one you would expect the lighter one to slow the heavier one’s descent.   But if they are attached then they are one thing and therefore the combined weight of both balls in this system is more than either individually.    Therefore the two balls attached should both fall faster then either when they were separate!  It is a contradiction to say the heavier cannonball will fall slower and faster if it is attached to the other lighter cannonball.  From this Galileo knew they would fall at the same speed before he ever supposedly went to the Tower of Pisa.

 

Now to be fair I do not think that is hearsay either.  There is a certain type of logical thinking that philosophers do that can yield knowledge that is neither hearsay nor modern science.  Math is neither hearsay nor science.  Math is best understood in ways other than hearsay.  But sometimes people just memorize those times tables and then it could be hearsay.  It would be hard to say how many people know the Pythagorean theorem from figuring it out versus just being told.  If you know it from being told then that is hearsay.  If you know it from being told that is hearsay that is also based on math but it is also hearsay.  But knowing the Pythagorean theorem is clearly not modern science either.   So again that could be something that we know more due to hearsay which may play a part but science clearly does not.

 

Here is another math and hearsay piece of knowledge.   I know there are 73 books in the Catholic Bible.  I could have learned this by counting the books and doing the math myself.  But, I have to admit, I just looked it up and was told – so I know this by hearsay.  How do I know what “modus ponens” means?  hearsay. (If you looked it up then you learned it from hearsay too)   How do I know the word gato in Spanish means cat?  Hearsay.

 

History is huge on this.  Prehistory is usually defined as those times and places before the use of a written language we can access.  This should tell you just about all history is hearsay.  Who was the first U.S. president?  So many facts about the Roman empire etc etc.

 

Now compare all the information that you read or were told about by someone (other than someone who says they were personally there and saw what they are telling you about  and  is able and willing to answer any questions you have) versus that information you have learned from doing a scientific experiment yourself?   Hopefully you are now starting to see that it is not even close.

 

And no I am not even dealing with Humes issue with science.

 

Now it is true that by creating the internet science has spread knowledge.  Similar to how the printing press did before that.  But the knowledge they are distributing is not usually scientific knowledge.  New recipes, history, geography, a different way to do you hair or how build a shed what I did today work matters etc etc.  It’s not science.   But it is hearsay!  Yep most of what we are sharing over the printing press and internet is hearsay.    So again the internet is a win for science and hearsay.  But most of what we are learning is based on hearsay and not scientific knowledge.  And the fraction of information we get about science over the internet is almost always hearsay.   So if we wanted to say there would be no internet without modern science I would agree.  But without hearsay (scientists sharing the results of their experiments in writing) modern science would be so slowed down that we wouldn’t have an internet now either.  Books contain hearsay and they were important to the development of all learning including science.   Hearsay is just as important to the development of the internet as is science and most of what we know from the internet is not science.

 

Even videos that show an event are dependent on hearsay to say they are what they claim to be.  As a lawyer I can’t just show up and start playing a youtube video without a live witness to testify what is actually in the video and that it accurately depicts what it seems to depict.  On the internet we get this writing under the video explaining what it is and that writing is hearsay.    So I couldn’t just pull up a youtube video and say “here judge see the type under the video that says it is what it claims to be?”  No that’s hearsay.    And you rely on that hearsay to know if you are looking at what is supposed to be a real video as opposed to a doctored video.   So even there we need hearsay and most of the videos are not teaching science.

 

Hopefully this posts will help people understand that we base a huge amount of our justified beliefs on “hearsay” but science independent of hearsay accounts for only a tiny fraction of those beliefs.   Hearsay is the basis of so many more of our beliefs it is not even close.

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