03 - Certainty Flashcards
Three ways of Justifying Knowledge?
(theories)
(Bayesian) Confirmation Theory
Risk Minimisation
Normic Support
What is Bayesian Confirmation Theory?
statistical dependence (of belief) on evidence
What is Risk Minimisation?
Justification does not require evidential certainty but evidential likelihood
What is Normic Support?
(Justifying Knowledge)
A proposition is justified if it requires more explanation for it to be false than for it to be true.
Lottery: 1:1,000,000 chance, do I know that I will not win? “more than probability, but less than certainty” (Martin Smith)
What distinguishes subjective certainty from objective certainty, according to Wittgenstein (1951)?
Subjective certainty: Expresses complete conviction and absence of doubt, often conveyed to convince others.
Objective certainty: Occurs when a mistake is not possible.
(However, Wittgenstein questions what it means for a mistake to be “not possible” and whether it must be logically excluded)
Whats the difference between Fondationalism and Fallibilism?
Foundationalism: Belief that knowledge is built on certain foundations (basic beliefs) that justifies all other beliefs.
Fallibilism: Acknowledges that all beliefs, including foundational ones, can be subject to error and are not absolutely certain, yet can still be rationally justified
3 subcomponents of Foundationalism?
Infallibility
Internalism
Externalism
What is Infallibility (Foundationalism)?
Epistemologically Basic Propositions (EBP) are beliefs that cannot be mistaken
What is the problem with Infallibility (foundationalism) and how is this called?
We may have the strongest possible justification for a belief without the belief being true = Incorrigibility
What is Internalism (Foundationalism) ?
Beliefs about the world are justified by further mental states = experiential beliefs
What is Externalism (Foundationalism) ?
Belief about the world are justified if they are produced reliably
What is Falibilism?
Someone’s beliefs could be false in spite of justification
Problem of Fallibilism?
What about necessary truths?And truths of fact?
What is Truncated Foundationalism?
A modified form of foundationalism that accepts the existence of basic beliefs but acknowledges they may not be absolutely certain
What is Versimilitude?
Complete certainty cannot be achieved in empirical science
Even successions of false theories may progress towards the truth
What are the 3 types of Fallibilism a coording to Dutant (2016)?
Ruling out one may know p even though one has not “ruled out” every possibility that is not-p
Possibility: roughly, one may know p even though, for some q incompatible with p
Feature of belief: one may know p even though the evidence, reasons, basis or justification has for one’s belief are ones a false belief
What are the key principles of Logical Positivism?
Elimination of Metaphysics
Verification
What is understood within the Elimination of Metaphysics in Logical Positivism?
(1) Logical analysis of language: Empirical statements must be analyzed into elementary propositions (meaning comes from linguistic entities, not experiences).
(2) Observation/Protocol sentences: Directly verifiable sentences using:
(a)*Phenomenalism*: Language of "sense-data." (b)*Physicalism*: Language of natural events.
(3)Foundationalism: Indubitable knowledge of the immediately given (but no philosophical foundationalism).
What is the Münchhausen-Trilemma?
The demand of justification runs into one of three aporias:
Dogmatism (Posing any statement as certain: EBP)
Infinite Regress (Beliefs depend on beliefs which depend on beliefs etc.)
Circularity (Propositions presuppose their own justifications)
What is Dogmatism?
Posing any statement as certain: EBP (Epistemologically Basic Propositions)
What is Infinite Regress?
(Münchhausen Trillema)
Beliefs depend on beliefs which depend on beliefs etc.
What is Circularity?
(Münchhausen Trilemma)
Propositions presuppose their own justifications
“High-crime neighborhoods have more police presence because they are dangerous.”
Breaking the Circularity would be “Higher police presence in some neighborhoods may lead to more recorded crime, as more minor offenses are detected and reported compared to less-policed areas.”
What’s the Duhem-Quine Dilemma?
(DCI)
Dogmas of empiricism
Confirmation holism
Immunization
What are the Dogmas of Empiricism?
(Duhem-Quine Dilemma)
1rst dogma: matters of fact vs relations of ideas
2nd dogma: reductionism (theories can be decomposed into parts)
What is Confirmation Holism?
(Duhem-Quine Dilemma)
Pierre Duhem says that its an experiment that can never falsify an isolated hypothesis but a whole theorical group
Williard von Orman Quine: Our statements face the tribunal of sense experience not it individually but only as a corporate body
What is Immunization?
Theories can avoid falsification by changing the context
What is Quine’s critique of Epistemological Reductionism?
Epistemological Reductionism = everything can be broken down into simple fundamental elements
Statements about the world cannot be individually reduced to statements about immediate experience
What is Epistemological Reductionism?
Claims every meaningful statement can be translated into a true or false report of immediate sense experience.
Requires terms to originate directly in sense experience or be compounds of such terms (e.g., sense-data language)
