all the bheads fans of "talking about pointless categories" (philosophy) are going to eat this up with a spoon!

"And don't criticize what you can't understand" -- Bob Dylan Comesaña, by the way, not Comesana.

the ones who "can't understand" (science) are those who choose to have hour long discussions about nothing....along with their defenders.

Cool conversation. Going to take me a couple listens to follow everything. I think when you guys mention Bonjour in passing, it's a guy I had for undergrad philosophy of mind. He's kind of a jerk so there can be no justification for believing in his arguments ergo knowledge of his arguments is impossible thus I deserved a better grade on the final. There's a couple times where you guys sort of mutter and it's hard to make out what you're saying, if you make a sequel to this be sure to speak up. (Confusing epistemology with science is a category error. Confusing formal reasoning with "common sense" is as well. There's a reason why legal arguments aren't usually two sentences long beginning with 'Well, as my pappy used to say..')

there's no confusion, i was inferring that if they could understand science then they wouldn't choose second tier intellectualism. also, i was implying that all this "knowledge" about knowledge is completely unnecessary and is already understood intuitively by most people with common sense. there's really no reason to make one's self feel special because they know big words but no facts.

After this discussion, I'm not sure that I know what a single word in this sentence means.

The first rule of screenwriting is, create a conflict people care about . . . OK, why should I care about the shadowboxing of all these isms, reliabilism and mentalism and supervenienism and justificationism and all the rest? The problem they seem to be treating is knowing something and knowing the cause, which seems to be some version of, did Ptolemy have "true and justified belief" if his predictions were right but his mechanism was wrong? To be honest, I didn't know what they were talking about . . . and I don't think I missing anything. Toothless gums gnawing a dry bone.

That comment was too harsh . . . If smart people find a topic worth investigating, there is often something too it, even if it doesn't seem obvious from the outside. I suggest more philosophers on BHTV . . . maybe some philosophers and historians of science, for instance.

I do think that comment was a bit harsh, I found the discussion about the new evil genius quite fascinating at a minimum. I also enjoyed seeing the points at which their theories met up against what they themselves 'believed' on this topic, particularly the bit on 'actionable intelligence'.

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: there's no confusion, i was inferring that if they could understand science then they wouldn't choose second tier intellectualism. also, i was implying that all this "knowledge" about knowledge is completely unnecessary and is already understood intuitively by most people with common sense. there's really no reason to make one's self feel special because they know big words but no facts.

You claim to know that common sense provides us with an adequate answer to all epistemological questions. (1) Science has itself shown that a lot of our pre-reflective commonsense beliefs are mistaken (e.g., that uniform motion requires a force to explain it).
Can you tell me how you know, then, our commonsense epistemological beliefs are all correct? And how could you provide such a justification without actually doing some epistemology (e.g., trying to distinguish between knowledge and beliefs which are not knowledge)? Even if your view that common sense is completely right is actually correct, no one will have a good reason to believe it until we do some of this "second-tier intellectualism". (2) In science (what was called "natural philosophy" until the 19th century), we philosophers started out

Thank you, Clayton and Juan -- I enjoyed this. And thank you, BloggingHeads (and Templeton) for bringing us a form of entertainment so commercially unviable! It's probably too bad we started epistemology on BHtv with issues so deep in the weeds from the layman's point of view. The most obvious subject for an epistemological discussion on BHtv, given the science vs. religion discussions that constantly break out here, would be questions like "What differentiates science from other forms of knowledge?" or "What differentiates the believer in Zeus from the believer in Christ from the non-scientific believer in evolution from the scientific believer in evolution?" That latter question is very closely related to the question under discussion in this diavlog -- it comes up somewhat tangentially when our diavloggers discuss the Biblical literalist. But the way they get to this point was likely to alienate a lot of non-philosophical viewers. It might have been a good idea to motivate the current discussion of the abstract notion of "justification" by more immediate real-world issues of the sort I raised. To dig just a bit deeper into my second question above, as Anthony

Thanks for the podcast.

Maybe I'm just too much of a philosophy fan, but I find this infinitely more interesting than the usual blathering about politics that goes on here.

well, i thought it was pretty funny. good one!

i was speaking broadly (as i often do) and was merely inferring that we've obviously already got this covered: if you want to know something there's a thing called wikipedia. if the facts change then somebody updates it. hypothesis leads to theory and not dogma which is clearly why science prevails. we figured this out about 400 years ago so there's really no need for someone to get all puffed up because they are an expert in semantics that kinda, sorta deal with reality but not really.
philosophy was nice 2,000 years ago but eventually (most of us) reach a point of disillusionment with such a practice when they start mapping the genome, etc. theoretical physics and other high end theory are still relevant because you already have to be insanely smart to grasp what would be useful to consider in the first place.
if a person is truly smart then they'd be doing something like genetics or physics instead of philosophy. if they were even decent at philosophy then they could at least use their special reasoning skills to realize that they'd been

Quoting 4815162342: Maybe I'm just too much of a philosophy fan ...

And (too much of?) a Lost fan, too?

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: i was speaking broadly (as i often do) and was merely inferring that we've obviously already got this covered: if you want to know something there's a thing called wikipedia. if the facts change then somebody updates it. hypothesis leads to theory and not dogma which is clearly why science prevails. we figured this out about 400 years ago so there's really no need for someone to get all puffed up because they are an expert in semantics that kinda, sorta deal with reality but not really.
philosophy was nice 2,000 years ago but eventually (most of us) reach a point of disillusionment with such a practice when they start mapping the genome, etc. theoretical physics and other high end theory are still relevant because you already have to be insanely smart to grasp what would be useful to consider in the first place.
if a person is truly smart then they'd be doing something like genetics or physics instead of philosophy. if they were even decent at philosophy then they could at least use their special reasoning skills to realize that they'd been

It's great to get to listen to this kind of in-the-weeds conversation on a difficult but fascinating subject, so yay Bloggingheads. On the merits, though, what I can't escape when I listen to epistemology discussed in this way is a nagging sense that people are arguing over the meaning of words (like "justification," "reasonable," etc.) without any good reason to think that there exists a single, unified concept underlying each of these words. They're assuming that there is some abstract thing called "justification," and using test cases as a sort of sonar, bouncing them off it to try to figure out its conceptual shape. This seems somehow wrong to me, though I haven't read enough epistemology (or "meta-epistemology"?) to be able to pinpoint what's going wrong and what the alternative is.

agree with my position? what's my position, actual reality? i'm not really even sticking my neck out here.....it's just reality. the only "high horse" is the one being ridden by those who think it's not only worth dissecting such nonsense but that it needs to be shared and actually takes skill to memorize. this is classic denial from a philosophy fan: thinks WAY to far into it and can't see the big picture. forget nitpicking and look at the big pic: what is the point of this? just do regular science like everyone else.
the entire idea of questioning "what we know" is already the foundation of science. there's no need to (nit)pick it apart. it's a given, obvious, goes without saying, etc. example: "ya know?...i'm thinking of getting into protein folding research." see? there's no reason to have a long-winded discussion about nothing with no answers going on in the background. it's like conservative thought or religion....it's not even on the table anymore. since you are the believer then it's up to you to prove its relevance, not the reverse. cutting too close to the bone? why don't you just get into real science so you

if i dial your name on the phone what's going to happen? random person? is it barack's blackberry number?

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: agree with my position? what's my position, actual reality? i'm not really even sticking my neck out here.....it's just reality. the only "high horse" is the one being ridden by those who think it's not only worth dissecting such nonsense but that it needs to be shared and actually takes skill to memorize. this is classic denial from a philosophy fan: thinks WAY to far into it and can't see the big picture. forget nitpicking and look at the big pic: what is the point of this? just do regular science like everyone else.
the entire idea of questioning "what we know" is already the foundation of science. there's no need to (nit)pick it apart. it's a given, obvious, goes without saying, etc.

example: "ya know?...i'm thinking of getting into protein folding research."

see? there's no reason to have a long-winded discussion about nothing with no answers going on in the background. it's like conservative thought or religion....it's not even on the table anymore. since you are the believer then it's up to you to prove its relevance, not the reverse. cutting too close to the bone? why don't you just get into real science so you

again, you have misread what i'm saying. what's the deal with that? i already did listen to it just to make sure it would be as worthless as expected....it was. there's thought and knowledge behind it? really? what, specifically, would that be? more questions about questions? there's no need to ask "when is belief justified?" real life deals with ,ya know, a scientist, for example, who is dealing with actual concrete subjects like taking a DNA swab to see if someone's guilty or not. that would be, specifically, the realization of all this philosophical nonsense. everyone keeps defending it but they can't offer much, specifically, as far as how it's actually valuable. my side offers all of I like to call "actual science"

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: again, you have misread what i'm saying. what's the deal with that? i already did listen to it just to make sure it would be as worthless as expected....it was. there's thought and knowledge behind it? really? what, specifically, would that be? more questions about questions? there's no need to ask "when is belief justified?" real life deals with ,ya know, a scientist, for example, who is dealing with actual concrete subjects like taking a DNA swab to see if someone's guilty or not. that would be, specifically, the realization of all this philosophical nonsense. everyone keeps defending it but they can't offer much, specifically, as far as how it's actually valuable. my side offers all of I like to call "actual science"

It may have been worthless to you because of your defensiveness about being ignorant about the subject matter. If you were able to admit to yourself there's a field you don't know anything about you wouldn't end up writing these embarrassing screeds. Your example isn't actually the realization of any of epistemology. A realization of it was in the formulation of the tests that were done to show that DNA is a unique identifier, and the arguments

your posturing is laughable. wow.....you and the rest of them STILL don't have anything concrete you can cite. if you can even give ONE example of the relevance of this kind of low-end philosophy then i'll be impressed for now cuz none of you have been able to do it. WHAT are you talking about? what, specifically, is of value?

Now THAT is a pretty good question to raise. It's certainly a danger. But there are ways to guard against that -- I'll try to come back to say more on that. Also, the inquiry itself should help reveal it if there is a mistaken assumption.

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: your posturing is laughable. wow.....you and the rest of them STILL don't have anything concrete you can cite. if you can even give ONE example of the relevance of this kind of low-end philosophy then i'll be impressed for now cuz none of you have been able to do it. WHAT are you talking about? what, specifically, is of value?

I already gave at least two examples:
"A realization of [epistemology] was in the formulation of the tests that were done to show that DNA is a unique identifier, and the arguments that were done over whether the evidence was strong enough to allow DNA swabs to be a court-admissible unique identifier."
If you're curious for more examples there are some at Wikipedia.

yeah, that's called "forensic science." anyway, you're saying that epistemology is useful in that is.....other things? it's so vague that it can describe as few as sixteen different, completely unrelated applications ranging from religion to math?
do you see why people deride this as a game of semantics?

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: yeah, that's called "forensic science." anyway, you're saying that epistemology is useful in that is.....other things? it's so vague that it can describe as few as sixteen different, completely unrelated applications ranging from religion to math?
do you see why people deride this as a game of semantics?

It's not being described as them. It is used in them. A plumber isn't the same thing as a wrench.

oh, ok. that totally clears things up then. hmmm.....you still haven't said anything yet. are we done now?

Every question you've asked has been explicitly, meaningfully answered. If it was beyond your comprehension then you can read the Wikipedia page for an explanation written at a simpler level. You did misread it once already though so be sure to re-read any parts you find strange or confusing. I think a little research will really help you to understand and get value from this diavlogue, as well as help with your understanding of the scientific method.

i like how you challenged what i said, offered zero concrete evidence as a back up.....and then tried to belittle me. that's a new one. i'm gonna have to remember that

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: yeah, that's called "forensic science." anyway, you're saying that epistemology is useful in that is.....other things? it's so vague that it can describe as few as sixteen different, completely unrelated applications ranging from religion to math?
do you see why people deride this as a game of semantics?

Let me choose one from the list pampl linked to: artificial intelligence. Suppose you want to program into a robot the human stock of commonsense concepts -- say the concepts possessed by an average 10-year old child. You're going to need to provide the robot with an understanding of (commonsense, not scientific!) concepts like time, space, object, cause, property, event, motion, quantity, person, purpose, animal, fairness, obligation, possibility, linguistic meaning, beauty, belief, desire, reason, action, explanation,..., knowledge, to mention just a few. Now in order to provide the robot with a commonsense understanding of what knowledge is, you're going to need to understand yourself what the commonsense understanding of knowledge is, i.e., you're going to need to know how to characterize the commonsense concept of knowledge, not merely employ it -- as you and I and any 10-year old child can do effortlessly. And for that you're going to need to do some heavy-duty epistemology, along with a fair bit of empirical science, no doubt. And to provide

What do you mean, "now THAT'S a good question to raise"? Look, I'm SO Awesome/Titstorm/Fedorrovingtonbop/Thanks, Dad! has figured it out: you can't know x unless a scientist proves it. If you ask, "wait, how can a scientist prove, 'you can't know x unless a scientist proves it?'", then you're just arguing word games, man! As I'm SO Awesome has proved--well, proved isn't quite the right word--maybe empirically demonstrated, in, like, a lab?--there's no legitimate disagreement about anything, except when scientists do it with each other. Also, mathematicians can suck the pipe, because they can't prove Goldbach's Conjecture in a lab.

wha?

truth hurts don't it? perhaps you could teach a real science instead??

The project of science itself rests on a philosophical foundation. The concept of falsification, for example, may be a "common sense" starting point now, but this was not the case before philosopher Karl Popper explicitly delineated it as a philosophical category. The same can be said of deduction, inference and causation.

Fascinating diavlog! Thank you Clayton and Juan. It was certainly quite challenging for a layperson, but worth it! Understanding the terminology was difficult at the beginning, but as the diavlog proceeded it became clearer. I found the distinction between suspension of judgment and epistemic dilemma very interesting. Towards the end of that section they talked about degrees of belief as a relatively new concept introduced to solve (?) the problem of suspension of judgment. It would be very helpful to have some follow up on that topic, either by the diavloggers or by our more knowledgeable commenters. Additionally, I would suggest that we give "I'm SO awesome!" a break, considering his/her own dilemma searching for a name...

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: wha?

Hilarious!

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: wha?

You know, ISa, I am made as impatient as anyone when philosophers get to excessive philosophizin', but I do have to say a few things here about your reactions. First, there wasn't nothing to this diavlog. Asking how we know what we know and how much confidence we should have in our beliefs that we know some given things are important questions. That they may be difficult to state precisely (what you dismiss as semantic quibbling) and even harder to answer does not mean they are useless or pointless. Second, I thought mvantony's proposed practical application of epistemology was quite good. His thinking easily extends to the next generations of computer programs, too, and like it or not, these will be an inescapable part of your life in the very near future. I also did not see what was so hard to understand about mvantony's post. Third, even if you don't buy the applicability of this discussion, it is certainly true that many "impractical" intellectual activities can be enjoyed just for their own sake. If this one was not to your taste, fine, and you're well within your rights to register your preference for other types

Quoting mvantony: Let me choose one from the list pampl linked to: artificial intelligence. Suppose you want to program into a robot the human stock of commonsense concepts -- say the concepts possessed by an average 10-year old child. You're going to need to provide the robot with an understanding of (commonsense, not scientific!) concepts like time, space, object, cause, property, event, motion, quantity, person, purpose, animal, fairness, obligation, possibility, linguistic meaning, beauty, belief, desire, reason, action, explanation,..., knowledge, to mention just a few. Now in order to provide the robot with a commonsense understanding of what knowledge is, you're going to need to understand yourself what the commonsense understanding of knowledge is, i.e., you're going to need to know how to characterize the commonsense concept of knowledge, not merely employ it -- as you and I and any 10-year old child can do effortlessly. And for that you're going to need to do some heavy-duty epistemology, along with a fair bit of empirical science, no doubt. And to provide the robot with the rest of the concepts I listed, and others like them, you'll need much of the rest of philosophy (including semantics).

I don't think you're right about this. The most important aspect of this thing you're describing would be its ability to process a

Quoting AemJeff: I don't think you're right about this. The most important aspect of this thing you're describing would be its ability to process a rich set of semiotic data - just symbols and the connections between symbols The hard part wouldn't be predetermining the core data required to function in the way you've described. The important thing is to create a self-organizing system that knows very little, but that can references to symbols and create connections between those references. Connect that semiotic system to sense inputs and provide it with stimulation. Then hope it will create a somewhat consistent model of the world by its own devices. (If this was easy the Turing test would have long ago been beaten.) A lot of the things you listed, e.g. a sense of time, would have to follow from the nature of thing itself. Other things, like language, require underlying structural support, but there's no obvious requirement that they be explicitly built into the system. And for other things, such as those related to providing a "moral sense," it's just not clear, certainly not to me, how they could be supported - other than through explicit

yes, if you'd read what i wrote i already said that about twenty posts back.

i didn't want to hurt his feelings too much

excellent. you, jeff and clay are in my "top three" here cuz you're fooled by little and can instinctively find the weakness in someone's argument. (this one being, of course, that i've already won this debate about three times now.)...and that one wasn't easy, either, it took a combo of abstract thought and, really, just instinct that most don't have. nice job.
anyway, this feels like the last time i'll make fun of the philosopher fans for now.....but i really can't guarantee anything. when i see someone waxing philosophical like they know something important all i can think is: "some kid's gonna watch this and be convinced to pay $100,000 for a degree in this crap." it's kinda like when michael j. murray came on - you really can't not call someone on that shit. ya know? 'cuz no matter how long they repeat it....it's still pretty stupid
that all said, have you ever noticed how painfully biologically/culturally determined people's responses on here are and just in life in general? there's seems to be a certain hierarchy of commenters ranging from those that "get it" to those that don't - and never will! and you can know

That's pretty rich coming from someone indistinguishable from every other nerdy undergrad sophomore hoping to major in science but without the grades or brains to make the cut. I guess one difference is that you aren't a libertarian, but that's really just a matter of time.

well, then that must make you borderline retarded if i handled you that easily! honestly, you have one of the most pathetic and worthless arguing techniques. you still haven't actually said anything of substance in this thread. i can understand you're probably embarrassed so here's a word of advice: don't get into a debate unless you know you're gonna win

Quoting Ocean: Fascinating diavlog! Thank you Clayton and Juan.

It was certainly quite challenging for a layperson, but worth it! Understanding the terminology was difficult at the beginning, but as the diavlog proceeded it became clearer.

I found the distinction between suspension of judgment and epistemic dilemma very interesting. Towards the end of that section they talked about degrees of belief as a relatively new concept introduced to solve (?) the problem of suspension of judgment. It would be very helpful to have some follow up on that topic, either by the diavloggers or by our more knowledgeable commenters.

Thanks! I didn't mean to suggest that the idea of degrees of belief was introduced in order to deal with suspension of judgment. The idea was introduced by Ramsey in the early decades of the 20th. century, laying down the foundations for contemporary theories of rational action. But people working on the same framework today have very interesting things to say about how to model suspension of judgment. A very interesting paper on the topic by Scott Sturgeon can be found here: http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/3755/sturgeon.doc

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: well, then that must make you borderline retarded if i handled you that easily! honestly, you have one of the most pathetic and worthless arguing techniques. you still haven't actually said anything of substance in this thread. i can understand you're probably embarrassed so here's a word of advice: don't get into a debate unless you know you're gonna win

I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. If you studied up on this stuff, though, instead of spamming boards, you wouldn't be intimidated by people who know so much more than you. Alternatively, if you're going to continue acting like you're still at Something Awful/Fark/Penny-Arcade/etc maybe you ought to just stay there.

i don't think you could possibly be a bigger poser.....world record for "lack of substance in a thread."

Quoting Juan Comesaña: Thanks! I didn't mean to suggest that the idea of degrees of belief was introduced in order to deal with suspension of judgment. The idea was introduced by Ramsey in the early decades of the 20th. century, laying down the foundations for contemporary theories of rational action. But people working on the same framework today have very interesting things to say about how to model suspension of judgment. A very interesting paper on the topic by Scott Sturgeon can be found here: http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/3755/sturgeon.doc

Thank you for the paper! I'll be very interested in reading it. I'm glad you stopped by to follow up. Muchas gracias!

Really enjoyed the conversation. I may be a little late to the party, but here it goes. Here is how I would describe the story. The debtor has a justified but false belief that he should club the guy who just reached for something in his pocket. This leads to the justified but inappropriate intention to club him, which leads to the justified but wrong act of clubbing him. I'm going along with the notion that action and belief should be treated in a parallel manner. In my version, whether an action is morally correct is analogous to whether a belief is true. If that works, then you can be an externalist about moral correctness of actions and truth of beliefs, while being an internalist about the justification of both actions and beliefs. Perhaps its controversial to claim that the clubbing was justified? I do say that the action was wrong, which acknowledges the role of bad luck. And I can in addition make the reverse of Clayton's argument. Action and belief are parallel, and the belief that the action would be correct was justified, so the action was as well. But that might

Quoting Dan S: Really enjoyed the conversation. I may be a little late to the party, but here it goes.

Here is how I would describe the story. The debtor has a justified but false belief that he should club the guy who just reached for something in his pocket. This leads to the justified but inappropriate intention to club him, which leads to the justified but wrong act of clubbing him.

I'm going along with the notion that action and belief should be treated in a parallel manner. In my version, whether an action is morally correct is analogous to whether a belief is true. If that works, then you can be an externalist about moral correctness of actions and truth of beliefs, while being an internalist about the justification of both actions and beliefs.

I actually like that line--that's why I granted Clayton his starting point that the clubbing was unjustified only for the sake of argument. That said, here's what I think Clayton might say in reply: We all agree that you ought not to have clubbed the guy. So, you ought not to have formed the intention to do it. So, you ought not

Dan, I think that's a standard response and that it's the standard response because there's lots to be said for it. I didn't get to get into the nitty gritty details, but it seems there's two lines of response to consider. Here's the first. There are some who think that it's never permissible to assist someone who is engaged in wrongdoing it's (sometimes) permissible to assist someone who is engaged in some action they are justified in performing. If you think that's right, then imagine that Juan is standing by in both stories and knows something I don't. In the 'bad' case he knows I'm about to club a thespian. In the 'good' case, he knows I'm going to try to club a loan shark. Now, suppose that he can intervene. It seems to me that he'd be acting rightly if he clubbed me before I clubbed the thespian but it seems that if my clubbing of the loan shark didn't go as I had hoped and he could intervene he ought to intervene on my behalf. I'd say that this difference is due to the difference in the moral status of

Hey Bloggin Noggin, "It's probably too bad we started epistemology on BHtv with issues so deep in the weeds from the layman's point of view." I don't disagree, although one of the nice things about starting with this issue is that we don't feed the impression that epistemology is all about The Matrix. Your suggestions about how to better introduce the topic were right on, if I could have done it over again I probably would have started by talking about the problems of disagreement. Those were the problems that got me interested in these problems from the beginning. Given that Juan and I work a lot on reliabilism, we thought we'd start by explaining why someone might be tempted to be a reliabilist and that meant that the interesting stuff (in my view) had to be shunted off until the back end.

"I can't escape when I listen to epistemology discussed in this way is a nagging sense that people are arguing over the meaning of words (like "justification," "reasonable," etc.) without any good reason to think that there exists a single, unified concept underlying each of these words. They're assuming that there is some abstract thing called "justification," and using test cases as a sort of sonar, bouncing them off it to try to figure out its conceptual shape. This seems somehow wrong to me, though I haven't read enough epistemology (or "meta-epistemology"?) to be able to pinpoint what's going wrong and what the alternative is." I have that nagging sense sometimes as well. Suppose I know that you're trying to figure out what drug to take and know that if what you believe were correct you should give drug A. I also know that given what is best for you in light of the facts is drug B. I also know that given that drug C would knock you out cold and that the guys who want to break into your apartment are hoping you'll take that by accident. If you ask me

I was impressed by the dialectical subtlety and ingenuity of both speakers. I was under the distinct impression, though, that the "epistemology industry," as Dewey once called it, had gone out of business--outcompeted and outargued by one of the following more up-to-date academic industries (take your pick): pragmatism, historicism, cultural relativism, the "linguistic turn." The last, in particular, seemed to be going quite strong a few years ago when Richard Rorty ruled the roost of American academia. Seriously, or semi-seriously, is there any solution to Descartes' evil demon nightmare short of the ontological proof of God's existence? And we all know how convincing that is! Even some of Descartes' contemporaries found it a rather fishy way of proving that 2 + 2 = 4. Or perhaps the attempt to defeat scepticism and "ground" knowledge in the deliverances of consciousness (=subjective certainty) will just have to repeat the entire history of Western philosophy from Descartes to the dawn of the 2Oth century: Locke's "way of ideas", Kant's transcendental idealism, Hegel's absolute idealism etc. etc. only to discover, mirabile dictu, that Descartes' nightmare will never end... until we wake up that is.

I haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but from the the first few comments I skimmed through it seems this diavlog is talks about epistomology. My question is, as someone whose viewpoints on this type of stuff can be loosely described as a positivist*1, why should I care about epistomology? *1 I do not know much about philoposy, so I should probably clarify, my beliefs may not line up perfectly with the type of thinking that the word positivist is commenly used to represent. I view it as the belief that one does not have to justify whether or not one's model actully matches up with reality, as this is an impossible thing to prove, given that we can only hope but to ever have indirect observations of reality. All you can do is find a model that explains a large number of phenomenon, whose inputs/outputs match with observation. sorry if I explained that in a convulted way.

pretty much agree with ya....the "hawking school of thought, etc." is what i call it sometimes.

Hi Franco, I do wonder about your question as well. There are certainly a wide variety of responses to the evil demon question, though. One of them is the O.K. Bouwsma route that the thought-experiment is incoherent. The idea, as I understand it, is that if there's no possibility of "finding a hole" in the skeptical hypothesis, then it's not different from the mind-independent external world hypothesis. There's also G. E. Moore's "common sense" response, according to which the epistemological principles motivating the skeptical hypothesis are ones we should be less sure of than the beliefs they force us to deny. Consequently, we shouldn't accept the epistemological principles motivating the skeptical hypothesis. Finally, there's contextualism, which takes "know" to be an indexical, and so says that when I say, "I know x", we don't really know what that means unless we take account of the context in which it's uttered. On this view, as I understand it, the skeptical hypothesis is silly in some contexts and unanswerable in others. I have a feeling you already were familiar with the first two responses; I don't know if you knew of the last one.

Quoting Starwatcher162536: My question is, as someone whose viewpoints on this type of stuff can be loosely described as a positivist*1, why should I care about epistomology?

*1 I do not know much about philoposy, so I should probably clarify, my beliefs may not line up perfectly with the type of thinking that the word positivist is commenly used to represent. I view it as the belief that one does not have to justify whether or not one's model actully matches up with reality, as this is an impossible thing to prove, given that we can only hope but to ever have indirect observations of reality. All you can do is find a model that explains a large number of phenomenon, whose inputs/outputs match with observation.

In some ways that's the opposite of positivism, which wasn't about relaxing any standard of justification, but instead claiming broad swathes of territory to be unjustifiable. It was pretty much discredited in the 30s so it's a kind of odd way to label yourself anyway. Are you wondering generally or about this diavlogue in particular? Littlejohn and Comesana make their case for their argument's relevance in the

Well, I looked over positivism at wikipedia, and decided I fall more in line with Logical positivism. Also, I don't realy see how the examples you gave met the conditions I gave.

Unless you're satisfied with responses that are equivalent to: "the bible says so." I wouldn't bother

Yeah, logical positivism was what I was talking about. I hadn't known there were other kinds. It's mostly collapsed as the revolution in physics and mathematics in the early twentieth century put to lie the clockwork model of the universe that was the bedrock of the positivist attitude. According to Wikipedia Wittgenstein and Quine played a role but I find that hard to believe. Logical positivism is, by its own criteria, meaningless, as are all criticisms of and responses to it, so I don't think its adherents would have listened to either of those guys. edit: forgot the second paragraph. Every attempt to explain the world explains a lot of phenomena by matching inputs with outputs. We killed a goat at the altar so later the gods made it rain on our crops. Input: a sacrifice, output: rain, explanation: why it rained. Those're very inclusive criteria. If you were interested in talking about epistemology I'd argue that you should also include the ability to make correct and falsifiable predictions, reproducibility, and maybe parsimony. Those are pretty ambiguous terms, though, and hashing out a useful definition would be a lot of work and words.

Yeah, logical positivism is self-refuting if the verification-principle is itself taken to be a statement. But I think contemporary logical positivists (there aren't any in philosophy anymore, but there are plenty in theology departments) admit that the verification-principle isn't a meaningful statement, but is rather a stance one takes to language. I have no idea why I, someone who doesn't take that stance, is supposed to believe in that stance, but I suppose they'd say that I'm lacking the "blik" (to use R. M. Hare's language) that they have.

FWIW, see here for an attack on BonJour's intuitions in the clairvoyance cases (based on the law of fraud, of all things), suggesting that a defeater condition might be enough for an externalist theory of knowledge.

Juan, I agree with everything you just said. The first principle seems false, or if true, only in a very weak sense. Yes, you should not form the intention, but only in the sense that you should only form intentions to do correct actions. That does not mean that your intention was unjustified. Similarly, you should not form the belief that clubbing was the right thing to do, but only in the very limited sense that you should not form false beliefs. Dan

Clayton, Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful response. On your first point: I agree with you that Juan should help you club the loan shark or prevent you from clubbing the thespian. I also agree that if you clubbed the thespian, you might have a reparative duty, or something along those lines. However, I think that the key factor in all this is rightness and wrongness, not justification. A bystander should intervene in order to cause the right or prevent the wrong, not assist the justified or hinder the unjustified. If I witness a conflict between someone who is justified in her intention but doing the wrong thing, and someone who is unjustified in her intention but doing the right thing, I should help get the right thing done. Similarly, I will owe you if I wrong you, even if my intention was justified. Bad moral luck can lead to obligations. I just reeled off a list of claims, not arguments, but that set of claims seems defensible at least. On your second point: I'm not sure I followed all of what you said. I think you are worried about what happens when an action can be justified but not correct. Should you do the right

Quoting mvantony: Just a quick reply. You're of course right that it's more complicated than I made it out to be. I take it you're referring to connectionist or neural network models in AI (see also here). I followed this stuff for a while when it first became popular in the mid-80s but haven't much since then. No doubt connectionist systems can do some nice things, including displaying impressive categorizing behavior without explicitly representing anything like a definition. On the other hand, there were -- and I assume still are -- severe limitations of such systems concerning, for example: (1) the enormous number of training trials such systems need before they start getting things right (involving repeated "tweakings" of the connection-weights based on a correct representation of the desired output); and (2) the fact that lots of more highly-structured features of the mind, like the syntax of human languages, human 3-D vision, conscious problem-solving, etc. don't seem amenable to such modeling. Of course it's an empirical question how these models will develop (if at all) in the future. And although it seems to me far from clear that significant knowledge of the structure of our concepts wouldn't be required even for

Hello Bobby G I'm not familiar with the doctrine "contextualism", but it sounds pretty familiar. I confess that I have little interest in the problems of epistemology as they were discussed in this dialogue. But then maybe I didn't understand the dialogue very well. I tend to regard the "linguistic turn" of 20th century philosophy, coupled with pragmatism/historicism, as having put paid once and for all to the skeptical paradoxes of doubting post-Cartesians fretting over evil demons. As Gadamer said: "Being that can be understood is language." (viz: not sense data or consciousness). I really don't understand how philosophers who have read Wittgenstein, Ryle, Sellars, Davidson, Rorty etc. can go on talking like Cartesian sceptics. I also tend to think that the natural sciences can get along quite well without epistemologists.

Quoting Francoamerican: Hello Bobby G

I'm not familiar with the doctrine "contextualism", but it sounds pretty familiar. I confess that I have little interest in the problems of epistemology as they were discussed in this dialogue. But then maybe I didn't understand the dialogue very well. I tend to regard the "linguistic turn" of 20th century philosophy, coupled with pragmatism/historicism, as having put paid once and for all to the skeptical paradoxes of doubting post-Cartesians fretting over evil demons. As Gadamer said: "Being that can be understood is language." (viz: not sense data or consciousness). I really don't understand how philosophers who have read Wittgenstein, Ryle, Sellars, Davidson, Rorty etc. can go on talking like Cartesian sceptics.

Hi Franco, I think that's a perfectly understandable reaction, and it's one that a lot of contemporary philosophers share--you're not alone! I think it all goes back to Kant--if you buy his arguments that we impose categories and pure intuitions onto the world, and so that the world we make sense of is, in some sense, the world we create, then skepticism won't be much of an issue. On the other hand, if you're not impressed by Kant's arguments--if you think that the reasons he gives for thinking time and

Quoting cmlittlejohn: Hey Bloggin Noggin,

"It's probably too bad we started epistemology on BHtv with issues so deep in the weeds from the layman's point of view."

I don't disagree, although one of the nice things about starting with this issue is that we don't feed the impression that epistemology is all about The Matrix.

Your suggestions about how to better introduce the topic were right on, if I could have done it over again I probably would have started by talking about the problems of disagreement. Those were the problems that got me interested in these problems from the beginning. Given that Juan and I work a lot on reliabilism, we thought we'd start by explaining why someone might be tempted to be a reliabilist and that meant that the interesting stuff (in my view) had to be shunted off until the back end.

Hello Clayton,
I really enjoyed your diavlog, and I didn't really mean that you guys should bear the responsibility of doing all the motivating. I just thought (after looking at some of the other comments) that ideally your diavlog would have been, say, the third in a series of epistemology

Quoting Bobby G: I think it all goes back to Kant--if you buy his arguments that we impose categories and pure intuitions onto the world, and so that the world we make sense of is, in some sense, the world we create, then skepticism won't be much of an issue..

That says it nicely. But I agree, as you go on to say, that there are many legitimate questions contemporary philosophers may want to raise with regard to Kant's "transcendental" arguments.

Quoting Bobby G: It's when natural scientists start drawing philosophical conclusions from their work (there is a mind-external world, there is no free will, etc.) that things get more complicated.

Precisely. I think that is why I am interested in Kant and Hegel, despite their Germanic obscurity. I am also very much indebted to the tradition of French Kantianism...still going strong after two hundred years!

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: The most obvious subject for an epistemological discussion on BHtv, given the science vs. religion discussions that constantly break out here, would be questions like "What differentiates science from other forms of knowledge?" or "What differentiates the believer in Zeus from the believer in Christ from the non-scientific believer in evolution from the scientific believer in evolution?"......Twin Clayton (deceived by an evil demon) might be seen as just an extreme and especially clear case that might help us (along with other more realistic cases) reflect on exactly what we should say about the justification of beliefs vs. the justification of a person in holding that belief vs. the rationality of the person who holds that belief.

FWIW, I would LOVE to hear such a diavlog, or many such diavlogs.

Quoting Me&theboys: FWIW, I would LOVE to hear such a diavlog, or many such diavlogs.

Second that.

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: The most obvious subject for an epistemological discussion on BHtv, given the science vs. religion discussions that constantly break out here, would be questions like "What differentiates science from other forms of knowledge?" or "What differentiates the believer in Zeus from the believer in Christ from the non-scientific believer in evolution from the scientific believer in evolution?"

I have no idea what differentiates a believer in Zeus from a believer in Christ, other than the fact of being born at a certain place and at a certain time and accepting on authority certain edifying and supernatural tales which someone born elsewhere and at another time would find unbelievable and probably ludicrous as well. But what exactly is a non-scientific "believer" in evolution? Either you understand the evidence and scientific arguments for evolution or you don't. I have no doubt that many people accept evolution "on faith," just as they accept on faith (as in your next example) that electricity somehow works. But they do so because they know that there are competent experts on these subjects who could explain how evolution and electricity "work" in a

I think we agree about a lot of things, as it turns out. Not surprising, considering you did your doctoral work on Rousseau, and I did mine on Kant. Hopefully, if things get acrimonious between us again, we'll remember that common kinship.

Quoting Francoamerican: I have no idea what differentiates a believer in Zeus from a believer in Christ, other than the fact of being born at a certain place and at a certain time and accepting on authority certain edifying and supernatural tales which someone born elsewhere and at another time would find unbelievable and probably ludicrous as well. But what exactly is a non-scientific "believer" in evolution? Either you understand the evidence and scientific arguments for evolution or you don't. I have no doubt that many people accept evolution "on faith," just as they accept on faith (as in your next example) that electricity somehow works. But they do so because they know that there are competent experts on these subjects who could explain how evolution and electricity "work" in a way that should satisfy any rational human being.

There will certainly be many ordinarily "rational" people (i.e., people who can get by in life -- perhaps quite a bit better than you or I) who cannot be convinced of quantum mechanics or relativity or any number of things. You invoke a notion of epistemic rationality here about which

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: There will certainly be many ordinarily "rational" people (i.e., people who can get by in life -- perhaps quite a bit better than you or I) who cannot be convinced of quantum mechanics or relativity or any number of things. You invoke a notion of epistemic rationality here about which it would surely make sense for philosophers to enquire. (And I presume that this notion of epistemic rationality would bear some very close relationship to "justification.").

Philosophers do enquire and will no doubt continue to enquire into the notion of rationality, which, as you rightly point out, has both a "practical" ("getting by in life") and a "theoretic" component. I was questioning the relevance of epistemology, as exemplified in this dialogue, to explain the rather obvious difference between religious "belief" and scientific "belief". No one needs a lesson in Cartesian doubt to understand how ordinary science goes about the business of collecting data and elaborating causal connections to explain them. It would very much surprise me if a rational person (in the practical sense) could be so irrational (in the theoretic sense) as to reject the science of evolution (or any other science) without

Quoting Bobby G: Yeah, logical positivism is self-refuting if the verification-principle is itself taken to be a statement. But I think contemporary logical positivists (there aren't any in philosophy anymore, but there are plenty in theology departments) admit that the verification-principle isn't a meaningful statement, but is rather a stance one takes to language. I have no idea why I, someone who doesn't take that stance, is supposed to believe in that stance, but I suppose they'd say that I'm lacking the "blik" (to use R. M. Hare's language) that they have.

Could you explain that in a little more detail?

Quoting Francoamerican: Philosophers do enquire and will no doubt continue to enquire into the notion of rationality, which, as you rightly point out, has both a "practical" ("getting by in life") and a "theoretic" component. I was questioning the relevance of epistemology, as exemplified in this dialogue, to explain the rather obvious difference between religious "belief" and scientific "belief". No one needs a lesson in Cartesian doubt to understand how ordinary science goes about the business of collecting data and elaborating causal connections to explain them.

This diavlog wasn't about Cartesian doubt -- the "new evil demon problem" is explicitly non-skeptical. And the reliabilist theory under discussion is distinctly anti-Cartesian. I now wonder whether your opposition to the diavlog isn't founded on a misapprehension. At the same time, Descartes believed (and philosophers down the centuries believed with him) that foundationalism was true -- that justifications can't go in a circle or end with a belief which was itself unjustified. And Descartes (and most philosophers after him at least until fairly recently) thought the difference between science and what ordinaryily passes for knowledge was that it rested on such foundations. The original evil demon problem was extremely relevant

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: This diavlog wasn't about Cartesian doubt -- the "new evil demon problem" is explicitly non-skeptical. And the reliabilist theory under discussion is distinctly anti-Cartesian. I now wonder whether your opposition to the diavlog isn't founded on a misapprehension..

Maybe it was. But in the light of what you say next I don't think so:

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: The original evil demon problem was extremely relevant to finding such foundations (of knowledge). Reliabilism, which is the starting point of the current discussion, was itself originally seen as a way out of all these worries about evil demons -- it was supposed to be a way to bracket the evil demon and proceed with a more naturalistic and more practical conception of knowledge. It's a great irony that the evil demon seems to have a come-back against reliabilism..

Ironic but perhaps inevitable? The evil demon will always make a comeback if the starting point of the quest for certainty is self-consciousness. As soon as you begin asking yourself such deliciously absurd questions as, Does the external world exist or Do our senses deceive us, you are bound to start wondering if life is the

Sure. The principle of verification says: "A statement is meaningful if, and only if, there is a way to verify its truth through a sensory experience." Thus, "fire is hot" is meaningful because there is a way to verify the truth of that statement--touch fire, or measure its temperature with a device. On the other hand, "God loves me" or "killing is wrong" aren't meaningful statements because there is no possible sensory experience that would prove that God loves me or that killing is wrong (at best, all I could say is that I feel loved or I feel dislike for killing). Because you can't verify these statements, the verificationist says they are literally nonsense. Thus, "God loves me" or "killing is wrong", if taken literally, make no sense. The problem with the verificationist principle is that, by its own lights, it is a meaningless principle. After all, what possible sense experience could verify "A statement is meaningful if, and only if, there is a way to verify its truth through a sensory experience"? Verificationists thought for a long time about what could do that, they didn't come up with anything, so many of them just abandoned verificationism. After all, if the principle of verification is literally

Quoting Francoamerican: Ironic but perhaps inevitable? The evil demon will always make a comeback if the starting point of the quest for certainty is self-consciousness. As soon as you begin asking yourself such deliciously absurd questions as, Does the external world exist or Do our senses deceive us, you are bound to start wondering if life is the nightmare of an evil demon. Or a dream?

But we are not in a quest for certainty. We're looking for an account of justification. The reliabilist even allows that you are quite justified in believing that you have two hands and any number of things you believe based on your senses -- even though these beliefs are not certain and are not based on a foundation of self-justifying beliefs. So long as they are based on a reliable process (and perhaps meet other conditions as well), they are justified and counta s knowledge.
But if we consider twin-Franco who (we can imagine) is a brain in a vat being manipulated by evil scientists, his beliefs about the physical world are seemingly all based on unreliable processes. It follows from

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: Nothing in this puzzle rests on any assumption about certainty or any quest for certainty. The puzzle does not in the least depend upon believing even for a second that we might really be in Twin Franco's position. It's simply an attempt to determine whether an entirely imaginary Twin Franco would count as justified.

I am in transit and can only jot down a few remarks. Brains in vats, twins, doubles and other self-mirroring thought experiments dear to philosophy professors have as about much appeal to me as the literary figure of doppelgänger dear to German romantics and Nabokov, which is to say only a little. An amusing jeu d'esprit perhaps, but in the end aren't these clever hypothetical duplicates indistinguishable from the Cartesian theatre of self-consciousness, the only difference being that in one case the philosopher René Descartes plays both roles at once, the self-doubting philosopher and the evil genius, whereas in the other cases the role of the evil genius is played by the double? When you say that the "puzzle does not in the least depend upon believing even for a second that we might really be in Twin Franco's position," I confess my bewilderment

I have listened to this, not carefully enough, twice. Those among us who are NBA fans will understand a reference to Charles Barkley, who said to his sidekick Kenny Smith recently about their gig as NBA commentators on the TNT network, "I can't believe we get paid for doing this." To some extent, I feel that it is the listeners to this who should get paid, if anyone is to be paid. It is an interesting sociological fact about the American university that philosophy departments have enough muscle to get enough funding to continue with this kind of discourse, but my own sense would be that a bankruptcy filing is imminent. I don't want to be too harsh, but my basic reaction is that the discussion would have seemed less bizarre if its terms of debate had been placed within the context of the history of philosophy, some of which occurred before 1930. It's OK for people who already know about these seminal papers of the last 30 years by Stu Cohen and others. What is actually new about the "new evil demon?" I did not get that. And was the old evil demon really radical enough? Does

Oh boy, how did I miss this discussion? I gotta listen to this one soon.