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Tag Archives: Clifford

Dealing with Uncertainty in a Rational Way

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by Joe in Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Christianity, Clifford, James, Pascal, Pascal's wager, philosophy, rationality, reasonableness, religion

In my last blog I explained that I learned we need to deal with uncertainty.  I have found that many people do a very bad job in dealing with uncertainty.  They demand certainty and if they don’t get it, they sort of mentally turn off.  I think rational people take actions (which I think can include holding beliefs or at least trying to hold certain beliefs) in light of uncertainty.  That’s really what I think being rational is all about.

In doing this we not only need to consider the likelihood that a belief is true but also consider the consequences that would occur if our beliefs end up being right or wrong.   Of course Pascal’s famous wager brings this up.   I am not necessarily going to argue the wager in the same way Pascal did, but I do contend that rational people must weigh the consequences of the actions including the act of trying to believe something or other.

BTW I think Pascal’s wager is likely the victim of the more ill-founded criticisms than about any other philosophical argument.  Here is a good paper on it by Lycan and Schlesinger if you are interested:

Click to access pascalswager.pdf

In my post discussing what it means to be rational I argued that Clifford’s claim “”it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”  was illogical because it was self-defeating.

But I think there is at least one other problem.  It seems to only view one of the essential aspects of making a rational decision to believe or not.  It seems to only address the chance of the belief being true.  It does not address the consequences of believing one thing and being right or wrong about it.

William James gives a good counter argument in this regard.  He says that if it is the case that by believing I will survive cancer, I will actually increase my chances of surviving, then it is rational for me to believe I will survive cancer.  This is so even if the evidence doesn’t suggest I will.   So if my chance of survival doubles from 1% to 2% if I believe I will survive it’s hard to say I have sufficient evidence to believe I will survive.  Yet it seems rational to go ahead and try to double my chances to survive by doing my best to believe.

Is that the only type of situation where this might come up?  I don’t think so.  I think in morals it comes up often.  I believe every time we are tempted to do wrong it is easy to waiver unless we strongly commit to believe certain moral standards.  Often we will commit to believing moral standards well beyond the “evidence” that the moral standards really exist.  Whether there can even be “evidence” that a moral standard exists, and what such evidence would look like, will be the topic of another blog.

If anyone would like to comment on what they think evidence of objective moral standards would look like I would enjoy reading it.  Also feel free to just put a link to it in the comments.

True and Rational

05 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by Joe in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Clifford, definitions, evidence, logic, philosophy, rationality, reason, religion

Rational:
What is rational is subject to a bit more controversy than how truth is understood. Accordingly I am just going to gloss over some ideas that I tend to believe about what it means to be rational.

First I think I would distinguish the irrationality of people who are insane. It seems to me that this sort of irrationality is beyond the person’s control. We are trying to be rational. To the extent we are trying to become rational we to some extent believe we have some control over this. Indeed I would say that an important part of being rational is recognizing what is beyond our control and acting accordingly.
I also tend to think of being rational in terms of game theory. That is make rational or irrational choices. This I think can extend to what beliefs we hold – to the extent we can choose them.
So just a quick outline of what it means to be rational would be:
1) Not be illogical
2) Not be overly concerned with things beyond your control
3) Make choices based on analysis of the risks and benefits of your alternatives
4) Rational people tend not to go on emotion.

Some people will notice that I do not include Clifford’s claim “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” Frankly this claim has always seemed self-defeating and therefore in violation of the first principle I outlined – don’t be illogical.

That is, I do not have sufficient evidence to believe “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” and so believing that principle would violate it.

This is just an off the cuff outline. Perhaps we could add some other concepts to this outline. For example I think rational people consider evidence for and against their position. But I think to the extent there is a difference between being “rational” and being “reasonable” I would say that belongs more along the lines of being reasonable, but think it could fit here as well. And the terms reasonable and being rational are very close anyway.

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