The problem is that if we accept the possibility that we're brains in jars, the vast majority of our information becomes unprovable. I can't disprove the strong skeptical hypothesis, therefore I can't know anything that would be disproven by the strong skeptical hypothesis. Either we have to accept that we have minimal knowledge or we need a conceptualization of "knowledge" that gets around strong skepticism. If we accept the former, we need some other epistemological basis to describe the majority of what we would like to say we "know".

I don't think it's an either/or between belief and knowledge. After all, anything I know is also something I believe. When I say "I possess knowledge" about a topic, I'm describing my belief in some manner. Definitions for knowledge vary, but generally they contain some element of "I have justification for my belief", as well as other things.

What I'm proposing here is that we can have solid justification for holding a belief even in absence of knowledge or proof that the belief is true. On the brain in a jar scenario, I'd say that I can't disprove the hypothesis but that I don't have justification for believing that hypothesis. Between the positions of belief and disbelief, I think that the reasonable position here is disbelief.

If I premise other beliefs on this non-knowledge disbelief of strong skepticism, I'd similarly say those beliefs are not knowledge, but nor are they just things that I happen to believe. They're "reasonable beliefs": the most reasonable positions I can take given the evidence I have, even if I don't possess knowledge.

We either know something or we don’t. A third state is erroneous knowledge, which is something we think we know is true but is actually provably or demonstrably false. When encountering evidence that is contrary to currently accepted knowledge, it’s very reasonable to correct erroneous knowledge.

While belief and knowledge may seem interchangeable or synonymous and to some extent they can be, they have different use applications. Can’t know the answers to unanswerable questions, but can definitely believe any answer to unanswerable questions.

It would seem a difference between knowledge and belief is provability. That which cannot be proven is considered unprovable. Cannot prove that one is or isn’t a brain in a jar, but definitely can believe it either way. I say either way because a seemingly opposing reaction to proposed belief is disbelief. “I believe we are brains in jars” is then countered with “I do not believe we are brains in jars”, then I say “both are unprovable and I neither believe nor disbelieve.”

Other uses and examples come to mind, but I’ve run out of time for now. Having said all of that, I am neither against nor for belief, I just see potential issues with rooting all information in belief.

The flower in the desert

Imagine a vast, empty desert stretching out as far as the eye can see. The sun beats down mercilessly, casting long, dark shadows across the sand dunes. In the distance, you can see a solitary figure walking slowly towards you, silhouetted against the harsh light of the sun. As the figure approaches, you begin to see that it is a human, walking with purpose but seeming to be lost in thought.

As the human draws closer, you can see the lines etched deep into their face, the weariness in their eyes, and the deep sadness that seems to permeate their being. You wonder what has brought this person to the middle of the desert, and what thoughts are occupying their mind.

Suddenly, the person stops in front of you, and you can see that they are holding a small, fragile flower. They hold it out to you, and as you take it, you realize that it is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. Its delicate petals shimmer in the sunlight, and its fragrance is like a balm to your senses.

As you look up from the flower to the person's face, you see that their expression has changed. The weariness and sadness are still there, but now there is a glimmer of hope in their eyes. You realize that, despite the harshness of the desert, the beauty of this small flower has given this person a reason to keep going, a reason to believe that life is not meaningless after all.

As the person walks away, you are left alone in the desert with the flower in your hand. You realize that, like this flower, life may be fragile and fleeting, but it is also full of beauty and wonder. You wonder what other small, beautiful things might exist in this vast, infinite universe, and you feel a sense of awe and wonder at the possibilities that life holds.

Your example of Norman the clairvoyant provides an interesting insight into the relationship between evidence, belief, and truth. While I agree that the "fact of the matter" holds importance in having knowledge, it is also essential to consider the epistemic responsibilities of individuals when forming beliefs. In the case of Norman, even though the clairvoyant feeling turned out to be true, it would be epistemically irresponsible for him to base his beliefs solely on that feeling, given the more robust evidence pointing to the president being in Florida.

Our epistemic responsibility lies in cultivating beliefs based on the most reliable and available evidence. If we anchor ourselves with the principle that evidence should be taken as reasonable in the absence of counter-evidence, then we strive to form beliefs that are more likely to be true, even though we can't guarantee their truth.

In the context of education, the "fact of the matter" still holds value, but the process of refining our beliefs and knowledge should be emphasized. We should teach students to evaluate evidence critically and engage in open-minded inquiry, which can lead them to a better understanding of the world.

While the "fact of the matter" is important for knowledge, focusing on the epistemic responsibility of individuals and the refinement of our belief-forming processes can help address the challenges posed by coherentism and other epistemological theories. This focus on evidence and critical thinking also provides a practical framework for addressing issues in education and countering conspiracy theories.

We agree on the issues with coherentism, and I think the idea of taking the position that accepts the apparent evidence is a good one. But even when using that I still think the “fact of the matter” holds importance in us having knowledge. Let’s take a modified case of Norman the clairvoyant. If Norman were to have for the first time the clairvoyant feeling that the president is in New York, and that turns out to be true (the fact of the matter). But he had more evidence pointing to the president being in Florida say there were news reports and others testimony to the president being in Florida. I feel it would be better to say Norman knows the president is in New York and not Florida. Rather than to say Norman knows the president is in Florida.

If you didn't like the hot dog handjobs and rock talking philosophy then that's on you buddy.

> But if you talk about proportions or the probability of choosing an element from a given subset (what I suppose you actually mean by frequency), then this is exactly the way you define these things in Mathematics when dealing with infinite sets.

The phrase “from a given subset” is catching my attention. Are you talking about defining a probability measure on a finite subset of an infinite set? Because if so, that of course wouldn’t bear on the core issue being discussed of whether and how a unique probability distribution could be defined over an entire infinite set - but I am probably missing what you’re truly aiming at so maybe you can clarify.

I didn't mention frequency if you read again. Frequency - at least in the probabilistic sense - requires a observational component, that is reasonable to assume when discussing possible worlds. But that has nothing to dobwith infinity but with the fact that you can't observe possible worlds.

But if you talk about proportions or the probability of choosing an element from a given subset (what I suppose you actually mean by frequency), then this is exactly the way you define these things in Mathematics when dealing with infinite sets.

The tutorials I took covered what the lectures and readings already covered in more detail, with fewer students to tend to, and with a tutor who's there to answer questions, guide discussions, and do exam preparation. We only had tutorials for survey lectures, so having a dedicated class to actually discuss, say, Kant's First Critique in a bit more detail than two 90 minutes lectures allowed for was actually helpful (but hardly comparable to a seminar on it). And given that freshman students regularly have the weirdest ideas of what studying philosophy actually is like, having a dedicated time slot to practice skills like reading and analyzing isn't the worst idea either.

I wrote this more aimed at the skepticism of "you are a brain in a vat" than with criticism of more grounded ideas. Neither internalist nor externalist constructions of knowledge feel, to me, like they really have teeth when confronting strong skepticism for fundamental beliefs.

For me, I think skepticism is ultimately correct when it says "you don't know that your senses describe reality", but I think I can also make the claim that it would be unreasonable for me to disbelieve my perception of reality, which is what I'm trying to argue here.

Beyond that, 90% of epistemology feels like word games that don't really change anything, including my work, so I agree with you there. Russel probably has the right approach in just brushing skepticism aside and getting on with more interesting work. There's a substrata of beliefs that we need to accept to meaningfully engage with the world, and whether we just accept them axiomatically or struggle to construct a framework for accepting them on other grounds is generally irrelevant. I personally find the axiomatic approach unsatisfying, and think that a framework that can provide those foundational answers can also be useful more generally.

I think truth is the objective of reasonable belief. We can't state that our beliefs are true, but we desire them to be true, which forms the primary motivator of improving our epistemological mechanisms.

I think the problem with coherentism is that it lacks that tie. If I can construct a coherent set of beliefs that I am a brain in a vat, why is that belief set worse than one which believes in my perceived reality? I don't think we can state from a position of pure coherentism why that would be the case. However, I think the argument that it's less reasonable to take a position that denies available evidence than one which accepts available evidence is a reasonable one. Even without being able to describe the likelihood that those foundational beliefs are true, the singularity of evidence in the form of senses and memories gives us only a single point to build off of if we'd like to construct beliefs about the outside world. This also addresses conspiracy theories in a less direct manner: in order to believe a conspiracy theory we generally need to be extremely epistemologically sloppy and disbelieve a lot of available evidence. If we anchor ourselves with the belief that evidence should be taken as reasonable in absence of counter-evidence, denying that evidence to believe a conspiracy is much more difficult.

Free(unbound) will is impossible.

It is so easy to discover this.

Honestly, this just feels like word games. It doesn't really change anything, and it looks like the only motivation to make the change is to get one step ahead of "skeptics" who are criticizing your ideas when you are presenting them as fact.

I’m sympathetic to this view, as I feel knowledge should be decoupled from certainty. But I still think truth has a value. While I say we can’t be certain about the truth of any of our beliefs I still think that there is something that is a fact of the matter about the world. And if someone were to fall onto a belief that lines up with the true fact of the matter, then I think if we were to put our selfs into the boots of an all knowing deity then we’d be more inclined to say the person who stumbled onto the truth has something more than the person who’s beliefs are completely mistaken even if equally justified. The article seem to more or less be making an argument for coherentism (we know something based on how well it coheres with our other beliefs) and I feel this notion of knowledge has practical problems as you can just crate another factious belief to justify your belief in anything. It’s what conspiracy theories come from and it’s why they are often so hard to argue. Furthermore if we were to settle on this as knowledge (the best justified belief) then when it comes to education it will become incredibly hard to choose what we should and shouldn’t learn in schools, where as for now we have value in truth and try to teach what we are most likely to know.

At t=0 there is no entanglement and entropy has not yet occurred right? Nothing has occurred. For lack of a better term, entropy then creates a sequential nature to events from that point. There being no entanglement means that there is no decoherence, which means there is no branching. So at the point in your suggestion that every single world must be created, no decoherence or branching is happening. No physicist I have ever heard says that all superpositions create branches by themselves, it’s when they entangle with another quantum system. As soon as entropy makes sequence 1 happen, the wave function changes and then it’s theoretically possible to predict the rest of the universe, although I still don’t think it makes physical sense for all variations to be created at that point but that is what it is.

The fact that the wave function has to evolve over time/entropy, means reality is evolving too i.e. branching. What you’re proposing would mean every world where this evolution is happening was already created at a point in time before any evolution has begun. That’s not making sense to me

Are you able to link me to any resource that says no branches are created beyond inception? I’m looking everywhere and I can’t find anybody saying it

Edit: notice the language you used about the electron, you said ‘if there are two outcomes’, the electron ‘will be’ created in two universes then outcomes ‘will happen’. If what you’re saying was correct the language should be that those universes already have been created and the interaction effectively already has happened because the wave function must have fully determined the life of the universe as the wave function is reality and all of reality has already been created according to you

I mention it because the relevant passage in the original article is "you cannot have “most” of infinity. The only scenario where it somewhat makes sense is where a finite number of worlds evolved life, but an infinite number did not.", which is blatantly untrue given that you can compare infinite sets with different cardinalities. My point is there's no need to get hung up on the probability space of countably infinite sets to comfortably assert that that's nonsense, which is what was happening here

I deeply agree with this position. It remind me Jamesian pragmatism. For me absolute truths do not exist so I seek the most suitable beliefs. As it is written "These patterns of belief also reflect our day-to-day epistemological processes."

You’re talking about cardinalities of infinite sets, which is not directly relevant to defining proportions or frequencies of the elements within an infinite set.

Y'all are getting worked up about comparing countable infinities. There are other ways to have 'most' of an infinity - e.g. there are more non-rational reals than rationals because the former is uncountable

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I dont know exactly what truth means, probably something similar to what many people think; "what is the case" or "what are the facts" but what does this mean? I don't think it can be specified in some way that reflects some objective standard.

"predictive modeling" maybe is a standard for belief (just in the sense of changing beliefs with regard to evidence), but it is not enough for truth.

>So did you come to this belief via predictive modeling?

ha this is almost like asking "did you come up with this belief via thinking"

What is the point of university philosophy tutorials? I am taking two courses as electives and the tutorials seem to just cover what the lectures and readings already cover

Watch the movie minority report if you haven’t. There’s people who see the future and stop crimes from occurring. Even though they know the future they are not causing the crime. I think, and I could be wrong, it’s argued that In the same way, God’s knowledge of the future identifies what humans freely choose to do; he doesn’t cause them to do anything.

Another argument I’ve heard is that it’s written in plural not singular form. So God’s warning against Judas betraying Christ is a warning to us all.

If that is your faith

Probs