What about beliefs being justified by non-beliefs? If you’re a traditional foundationalist, you think everything is ultimately grounded in sense-experience, about which we cannot reasonably doubt.
Yes, Barrtley’s justification munges together to different ideas:
1) beliefs can only be justified by other beliefs
2) beliefs can be positively supported and not just refuted/criticised.
The attack on “justificationism” is actually a problem for Popperiansim, since
a classic refutation is a single observation such as a Black Swan. However,
if my seeing one black swan doesn’t justify my belief that there is at least
one black swan, how can I refute “all swans are white”?
However, if my seeing one black swan doesn’t justify my belief that there is at least one black swan, how can I refute “all swans are white”?
Refuting something is justifying that it is false. The point of the OP is that you can’t justify anything, so it’s claiming that you can’t refute “all swans are white”. A black swan is simply a criticism of the statement “all swans are white”. You still have a choice—you can see the black swan and reject “all swans are white”, or you can quibble with the evidence in a large number of ways which I’m sure you know of too and keep on believing “all swans are white”. People really do that; searching Google for “Rapture schedule” will pull up a prominent and current example.
Why not just phrase it in terms of utility? “Justification” can mean too many different things.
Seeing a black swan diminishes (and for certain applications, destroys) the usefulness of the belief that all swans are white. This seems a lot simpler.
Putting it in terms of beliefs paying rent in anticipated experiences, the belief “all swans are white” told me to anticipate that if I knew there was a black animal perched on my shoulder it could not be a swan. Now that belief isn’t as reliable of a guidepost. If black swans are really rare I could probably get by with it for most applications and still use it to win at life most of the time, but in some cases it will steer me wrong—that is, cause me to lose.
So can’t this all be better phrased in more established LW terms?
Refuting something is justifying that it is false. The point of the OP is that you can’t justify anything, so it’s claiming that you can’t refute “all swans are white”. A black swan is simply a criticism of the statement “all swans are white”.
Fine. If criticism is just a loose sort of refutation, then I’ll invent something that
is just a loose kind of inductive support, let’s say schmitticism, and then I’ll
claim that every time I see a white swan, that schmitticises the claim that all
swans are white, and Popper can’t say schmitticisim doesn’t work because
there are no particular well-defined standards or mechanisms of schmitticism
for his arguments to latch onto.
Yes, Barrtley’s justification munges together to different ideas:
1) beliefs can only be justified by other beliefs 2) beliefs can be positively supported and not just refuted/criticised.
The attack on “justificationism” is actually a problem for Popperiansim, since a classic refutation is a single observation such as a Black Swan. However, if my seeing one black swan doesn’t justify my belief that there is at least one black swan, how can I refute “all swans are white”?
Refuting something is justifying that it is false. The point of the OP is that you can’t justify anything, so it’s claiming that you can’t refute “all swans are white”. A black swan is simply a criticism of the statement “all swans are white”. You still have a choice—you can see the black swan and reject “all swans are white”, or you can quibble with the evidence in a large number of ways which I’m sure you know of too and keep on believing “all swans are white”. People really do that; searching Google for “Rapture schedule” will pull up a prominent and current example.
Why not just phrase it in terms of utility? “Justification” can mean too many different things.
Seeing a black swan diminishes (and for certain applications, destroys) the usefulness of the belief that all swans are white. This seems a lot simpler.
Putting it in terms of beliefs paying rent in anticipated experiences, the belief “all swans are white” told me to anticipate that if I knew there was a black animal perched on my shoulder it could not be a swan. Now that belief isn’t as reliable of a guidepost. If black swans are really rare I could probably get by with it for most applications and still use it to win at life most of the time, but in some cases it will steer me wrong—that is, cause me to lose.
So can’t this all be better phrased in more established LW terms?
I think you’ve just reinvented pragmatism.
ETA: Ugh, that Wikipedia page is remarkably uninformative… anyone have a better link?
Fine. If criticism is just a loose sort of refutation, then I’ll invent something that is just a loose kind of inductive support, let’s say schmitticism, and then I’ll claim that every time I see a white swan, that schmitticises the claim that all swans are white, and Popper can’t say schmitticisim doesn’t work because there are no particular well-defined standards or mechanisms of schmitticism for his arguments to latch onto.