There are claims for which believing the claim would require more confidence than I have in my own thought processes. That is, if I think I have evidence for X, I should first doubt whether my thinking has run astray and ceased to be connected to reality, rather than going ahead and believing X.
After all, it’s not just the claim that can be true or false. My reasoning can run truly or falsely too. There are circumstances under which self-doubt is the correct mental motion: “The fact that I am about to believe this claim is itself evidence. What has been true about others who have come to believe claims like this one?”
Example: Occasionally, a human will come to believe that God is telling them to go murder a bunch of people. As far as anyone can tell, they have all been wrong. And the world would be better off if each of them had thought, “Huh, everyone else who’s ever come to this conclusion turned out to be wrong. I wonder if maybe I’m having a schizophrenia or something?”
There are claims for which believing the claim would require more confidence than I have in my own thought processes. That is, if I think I have evidence for X, I should first doubt whether my thinking has run astray and ceased to be connected to reality, rather than going ahead and believing X.
After all, it’s not just the claim that can be true or false. My reasoning can run truly or falsely too. There are circumstances under which self-doubt is the correct mental motion: “The fact that I am about to believe this claim is itself evidence. What has been true about others who have come to believe claims like this one?”
Example: Occasionally, a human will come to believe that God is telling them to go murder a bunch of people. As far as anyone can tell, they have all been wrong. And the world would be better off if each of them had thought, “Huh, everyone else who’s ever come to this conclusion turned out to be wrong. I wonder if maybe I’m having a schizophrenia or something?”