Part B Flashcards
What is required for a belief to be acceptable to an empiricist?
The belief must cause the “believer” to anticipate occurrences or the impossibility of occurrences, and then pay off as expected.
Do not become so attached to your beliefs that you will not change your mind given good and sufficient evidence.
Avoid letting beliefs of low importance or relevance or with too low of a support from evidence rule your entire life.
Be careful about belief in belief
If you excuse the dragon in your garage too far, something is epistemologically wrong.
Aumanns agreement theorem
Two rationalists shouldn’t agree to disagree. At least one of them HAS to be wrong and they need to get to the bottom of it. That doesn’t mean they can’t agree that the point is trivial and that it isn’t urgent to come to agreement on it.
Not taking sides isn’t inherently wise.
Judgement should be suspended for lack of information, not to seem impartial or wise. And, if you have the information, failing to side with the oppressed means that you are siding with the oppressor by default. Neutrality IS a judgment, is a side in the conversation. And you should prioritize according to importance, resources, information, etc. Not trying to be seem as wise. Actually being wise is harder.
Claims about the universe can be proven or disproven
Religion isn’t a separate magisterium because it tries to make claims about the state of reality
Processing a belief isn’t the same as actually believing it
Don’t cheer for beliefs without grounds
Anticipation- controlling beliefs are real. What you ACTUALLY believe. All the other things are just things you say or think to improve your status or pretend about reality.
Belief from tribalism isn’t proper belief and may cause other forms of improper belief
Applause signals often don’t shed new light on the subject
One way to identify them is to reverse the statement and see if it sounds newer / weirder than the original statement
