Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Ethics of Belief

  • Wrong to Believe on Insufficient Evidence? Contra Clifford

    Is it wrong always and everywhere for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence? (W. K. Clifford) If so, the young would never be right to believe in the realization of their potentials. But they are right so to believe. If they didn't, none of them would ever have 'made it.' But many of us…

  • Limited Doxastic Voluntarism and Epoché

    Are there any beliefs over which we have direct voluntary control?  I am a limited doxastic voluntarist: I hold that there are some beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control. That is, there are some believable contents — call them propositions — that I can bring myself to believe at will,…

  • Fake it and Make it

     When we started out, did we know what we were doing? We do now. A bit of posturing and pretense may be needed to launch a life. Posture and pretense become performance. The untested ideal becomes the verified real. At the start of a life scant is the evidence that you can do what you…

  • The ‘Summons’ of Meditation

    This has happened often. I go to the black mat to begin my session.  I go there and assume the cross-legged posture. My purpose is  to enter mental quiet and elevate my mind to the highest. But a petty thought obtrudes. I begin to enact or realize this 'centrifugal' thought by attending to it. But…

  • When I Recall My Moral Failures . . .

    . . . I find it hard to doubt  a) My strict numerical identity over time.  When I regret what I did, I regret what I did, not what some other person did, and not what some earlier temporal part of me did.  The fact that the passage of time does not lessen my sense…

  • Once More on Romans 1: 18-20 and Whether Atheism is Morally Culpable

    Brian writes, In Van Til and Romans 1: 18-20 you accused Paul of begging the question in Romans 1 when he characterizes the natural world as ‘created’. The question you have in mind – the one presumably being begged by Paul – is whether the world is a divine creation. BV: That's right, but let's…

  • An Irrational Attitude for Human Beings?

    Is the following attitude irrational for beings of our constitution? I refuse any truth I cannot know to be true. Hence I refuse any truth that can only be believed, or can only be accepted on the basis of another's testimony. I will not allow into my doxastic network any truth that I cannot validate…

  • Is She Believable?

    It depends on what 'believable' means.  Many find Christine Blasey Ford 'credible' or 'believable.'  But there is a tendency among the commentariat to conflate her believability with the believability of the content of her allegation against Judge Kavanaugh. Those of us who want to think clearly about this SCOTUS confirmation business need to keep some…

  • Is it Psychologically Impossible to Assent to a Proposition for which the Evidence is Divided?

    Seldom Seen Slim comments and I respond in blue: Enjoyed your Sunday post on Pyrrhonism. It’s been a while since I worked on Sextus, but it strikes me that your essay on the Skeptics’ route to adoxia passes by an important premise: the attainment of equipoise and proper role of philosophy. The skeptics don’t depend…

  • Could it be Morally Wrong to Philosophize?

    A Czech reader sent me some materials in which he raises the title question.  One of them is a YouTube video.  I will unpack the question in my own way and then pronounce my verdict. Suppose what ought to be evident, namely, that we are morally responsible for our actions.  Among actions are those that…

  • Is ‘Justified Belief’ a Solecism?

    Panayot Butchvarov, Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: Realism, Antirealism, Semirealism, Walter de Gruyter, 2015, p. 33: As used in epistemology, "justified" is a technical term, of obscure meaning and uncertain reference, indeed often explicitly introduced as a primitive.  In everyday talk, it is a deontic term, usually a synonym of 'just' or 'right,' and thus 'justified belief'…

  • Evidence and Actuality: A Modal Punch at W. K. Clifford

    W. K. Clifford is often quoted for his asseveration that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."  Now one of my firmest beliefs is that I am an actual individual, not a merely possible individual. A second is my belief that while there is an infinity of possible…

  • Three More Putative Instances of Valid Is-Ought Inferences

    I thank Tully Borland for pushing the discussion in this fascinating direction. A Affirming the Consequent is an invalid argument form.ErgoOne ought not (it is obligatory that one not) give arguments having that form. B Modus Ponens is validErgoOne may (it is permissible to) give arguments having that form. C Correct deductive reasoning is in…

  • Truth and Normativity

    I am on the hunt for a deductive argument that is valid in point of logical form and that takes us from a premise set all of whose members are purely factual  to a categorically (as opposed to hypothetically or conditionally) normative conclusion.  Tully ( = Cicero?) the Commenter  offered an argument that I make…

  • In the Absence of Knowledge, May One Believe? Remarks on Magee

    According to Bryan Magee ("What I Believe," Philosophy 77 (2002), 407- 419), nobody knows the answers to such questions as whether we survive our bodily deaths or whether God exists. Citing Xenophanes and Kant, Magee further suggests that the answers to these questions are not only unknown but impossible for us to know. Assuming that…