Yes, there are trillions of possible religions that differ from one another as much as Islam differs from Judaism, or whatever. But only a few of these are believed by human beings.
Privileging the hypothesis! That they are believed by human beings doesn’t lend them probability.
No. It doesn’t lend probability, but it seems like it ought to lend something. What is this mysterious something? Lets call it respect.
Privileging the hypothesis is a fallacy.
Respecting the hypothesis is a (relatively minor) method of rationality.
We respect the hypotheses that we find in a math text by investing the necessary mental resources toward the task of finding an analytic proof. We don’t just accept the truth of the hypothesis on authority. But on the other hand, we don’t try to prove (or disprove) just any old hypothesis. It has to be one that we respect.
We respect scientific hypotheses enough to invest physical resources toward performing experiments that might refute or confirm them. We don’t expend those resources on just any scientific hypothesis. Only the ones we respect.
Does a religion deserve respect because it has believers? More respect if it has lots of believers? I think it does. Not privilege. Definitely not. But respect? Why not?
You can dispense with this particular concept of respect since in both your examples you are actually supplied with sufficient Bayesian evidence to justify evaluating the hypothesis, so it isn’t privileged. Whether this is also the case for believed in religions is the very point contested.
A priori, with no other evidence one way or another, a belief held by human beings is more likely to be true than not. If Ann says she had a sandwich for lunch, then her words are evidence that she actually had a sandwich for lunch.
Of course, we have external reason to doubt lots of things that human beings claim and believe, including religions. And a religion does not become twice as credible if it has twice as many adherents. Right now I believe we have good reason to reject (at least some of) the tenets of all religious traditions.
But it does make some sense to give some marginal privilege or respect to an idea based on the fact that somebody believes it, and to give the idea more credit if it’s very durable over time, or if particularly clever people believe it. If it were any subject but religion—if it were science, for instance—this would be an obvious point. Scientific beliefs have often been wrong, but you’ll be best off giving higher priors to hypotheses believed by scientists than to other conceivable hypotheses.
No. It doesn’t lend probability, but it seems like it ought to lend something. What is this mysterious something? Lets call it respect.
Privileging the hypothesis is a fallacy. Respecting the hypothesis is a (relatively minor) method of rationality.
We respect the hypotheses that we find in a math text by investing the necessary mental resources toward the task of finding an analytic proof. We don’t just accept the truth of the hypothesis on authority. But on the other hand, we don’t try to prove (or disprove) just any old hypothesis. It has to be one that we respect.
We respect scientific hypotheses enough to invest physical resources toward performing experiments that might refute or confirm them. We don’t expend those resources on just any scientific hypothesis. Only the ones we respect.
Does a religion deserve respect because it has believers? More respect if it has lots of believers? I think it does. Not privilege. Definitely not. But respect? Why not?
You can dispense with this particular concept of respect since in both your examples you are actually supplied with sufficient Bayesian evidence to justify evaluating the hypothesis, so it isn’t privileged. Whether this is also the case for believed in religions is the very point contested.
No, it’s a method of anti-epistemic horror.
Yes, this seems right.
A priori, with no other evidence one way or another, a belief held by human beings is more likely to be true than not. If Ann says she had a sandwich for lunch, then her words are evidence that she actually had a sandwich for lunch.
Of course, we have external reason to doubt lots of things that human beings claim and believe, including religions. And a religion does not become twice as credible if it has twice as many adherents. Right now I believe we have good reason to reject (at least some of) the tenets of all religious traditions.
But it does make some sense to give some marginal privilege or respect to an idea based on the fact that somebody believes it, and to give the idea more credit if it’s very durable over time, or if particularly clever people believe it. If it were any subject but religion—if it were science, for instance—this would be an obvious point. Scientific beliefs have often been wrong, but you’ll be best off giving higher priors to hypotheses believed by scientists than to other conceivable hypotheses.