lmf
June 19, 2024, 5:41pm
30
Elliot:
A point of bringing up problems like “Should I believe X?” as an alternative to “Is X true?” is it helps clarify points like:
we’re fallible
we can only reach tentative conclusions about X’s truth, not final, omniscient conclusions
morality (“should”) is relevant
our goals/purposes are relevant (what you should do depends on what you’re trying to accomplish)
what we should believe depends on rational methodology , not merely truth. if you reach a conclusion rationally that you later discover is false, it doesn’t mean you were incorrect about what you should have believed
since methodology is relevant, methodological criticisms are appropriate (this is how this issue came up – I was defending/explaining the use of methodological criticism in CF)
It’s often unnecessary to talk about details like this, especially in simple or easy cases, but sometimes they do come up, particularly in epistemology discussions. And there are many cases where we can reach a conclusion without using methodological criticism, and that’s fine.
To put it in more Objectivist terms, we might phrase it as “Is X contextual knowledge (for me, in my current context)?” instead of “Is X true?” That also makes rational methodology relevant. Contextual knowledge means, roughly, conclusions reached using rational methodology within a context with limited information.
This now sounds reasonable to me.
Next, I want to try to understand how this idea of recasting factual statements as IGC triples extends to probabilistic statements (which I think is also relevant to understanding your ideas about degree arguments). You touched on it a bit in the other thread but I don’t have a clear idea yet.
Does CF take a stance on what probability means ?