I know that the peer disagreement literature is pretty developed, but is there research that dives into what you should do if multiple peers disagree with you? For example, if an expert believes X but the majority of experts believe Y. Should the expert abandon his/her beliefs on X?

Really I don't even know enough about the subject to elaborate on the request, but it's something I've been interested in lately and I couldn't find an SEP article to mine the bibliography. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

• Citation: Christensen, D., & Lackey, J. (Eds.). (2013). The epistemology of disagreement: New essays. OUP Oxford.

• DOI/PMID/ISBN: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698370.001.0001

• URL

Introduction

Greetings! This here is a very basic outline of epistemology, the philosophical discipline that studies knowledge. I hope this guide will be helpful to theists and atheists alike. Be forewarned, I am not an expert, not even close - merely an interested lay-person. My goal is simply to give an overview of the various concepts and positions, to facilitate informed discussion. Although, to be honest, it is also to get these ideas straight in my own head :)

I will not present every position. Nor will I present any arguments for or against the various positions (both to remain unbiased and for brevity). I would ideally like to give many examples for each concept, but unfortunately, I feel I must cut most of these for brevity (please add some in the comments if you like!)

Everything I say is up for debate and constructive criticism. I may accidentally say something that is misleading, or straight-up incorrect. Please correct me if I do, preferably with a source

Key terms (ie google-able words) have been bolded. Italics are for emphasis

My sources are the SEP, IEP, and Wikipedia

Theories of truth

Let’s start with the most basic concept. What is [“truth”](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/)? There are a few theories of truth, with some subtle distinctions between them, but most aren’t relevant here

The most widely held view is the [Correspondence Theory of Truth. This holds that “a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to reality”. So, for example, the proportion “snow is white” is true if and only if is actually the case that snow is white.

Another popular view is the Deflationary Theory of Truth. This view is based on the observation that the sentence "it is true that snow is white" doesn't seem to add any substantial content to simply asserting "the snow is white". The main idea of the deflationary approach is (a) that all that can be significantly said about truth is exhausted by an account of the role of the expression ‘true’ or of the concept of truth in our talk and thought, and (b) that, by contrast with what traditional views assume, this role is neither metaphysically substantive nor explanatory (SEP)

A minority view is the [Coherence Theory of Truth]([https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tru

Synopses also welcome.

Hello I am a social science student who has never taken a formal philosophy course. I have at my own leisure dived into what I know now as continental philosophy, existentialism and bits and pieces of ontologies and phenomenology.

I am now a grad student and have the liberty to take classes across disciplines so I thought Id try my first formal philosophy class. My thoughts was 'Lets take a Class on Epistemology because I should know what can count as knowledge as I love to study subjective phenomenological perspectives'

I was however introduced to Probability sets on whether or not one's credence on if our assumption of milk is spoiled. I am kind of disappointed. I thought I was going to read Hume, Kant, Descarte, etc.

The units of the graduate course are Peer Disagreements (so probability sets stuff?), Bias (how it affects epistemological assumptions) and Epistemic Justice (IDK what this is). No deep literature review.

Why study all this and why even assume credence of any sort? How can you even be sure there is a 50% chance milk is spoiled or why or how Bayesian Stats fits in.

Are all Epistemology courses taught this way? Why learn this? Is there any immediate real world applications? What about more academic considerations?

And Finally since I am technically not a philosophy student, I am a social science student (psychology / anthropology) interested in applying my learning and to become a better thinker (maybe many years from now I can switch gears to philosophy but for now casually reading Nietzche and many more profoundly influences me)

Whats the point for me to take a course like this; whats the application? I am seriously considering dropping and that would be disappointing. I wanted to learn some foundational philosophy but now Im not seeing the point.

hello everyone,

I was wondering if there are academic papers or books regarding Don Quixote and epistemology. I recently realized that Don Quixote's way of experiencing the world is similar in a way to how Kant views the way people view the world, meaning they project ideas unto the world that they think is the world in itself. Don Quixote projects his stories about knights unto the world as well and responds to people and things in the world as the things he imagines they are.

If any of you know about something close in any way to what I'm talking about please tell me about relevant papers, books and or researchers.

It's a topic I feel is as important as it's ever been with the amount of misinformation out there.

Or at least has he struck a similar vein to that in an episode,

Hello everyone, I recently joined a chat group with believers, I will summarize the discussion in the form of a dialogue so that you can understand the context:

Me: I am an agnostic atheist; That is, I do not believe in gods because there is no evidence of their existence. Them: What are your sources of knowledge? Me: Perception, but all information requires reasoning. and data must be analyzed before knowledge is yielded. Them: What do you think of the axioms (law of thoughts)? Me: I reject Hamilton's law (which says that everything has a cause) Them: Do you exist and how did you know that?

Here, I didn't know how to answer epistemologically to this question, what theory of knowledge (foundationalism, coherentism..) that I should adopt as an atheist to answer this question?

And to you John haters, go ahead and down vote, nobody cares.

I’m struggling to get my head around the ontology/epistemology and ethos of CBT. On one hand, the theory may be objective and positivist as researchers are wanted to move away from subject Freudian theory of an unobservable unmeasurable “conscious” to a more quantitative research experiments in which focused on faults models of thinking- this is all very objective and positivist.

On the other hand, it may be based on the constructivist belief similar to stoic beliefs that reality is what we make of it and we can change our thought patterns to give us a more pleasant experience, therefore reality is not based on external discoverable truth, but due to how we perceive it- constructivism. The Epistemology may be interpretivism as a persons thinking patterns are subjective, personal and can be impacted by the social world.

I’m really at a loss here, anybody any thoughts? EDIT my research question is to compare and contrast two therapies- I am using CBT vs Psychoanalysis- including discussing differences and similarities on their ontology, epistemology and their ethos- therefore ideally each therapy needs to be assigned a label that I can compare each on (ontology- constructivism vs objectivism, epistemology- positive vs interpretivism vs realism)***

I know that Hume and the logical positivists have different epistemological stances, but they share a feature in common that is relevant to my question: both hold that the justification of a proposition is of two types. Either a proposition is justified by appeal to experience, or it's justified in that it's true by definition (for Hume, this is a relation between our ideas, and for the logical positivists this is an analytic proposition).

So propositions/issues that fall into neither category (although I'm aware that there may be some disagreement about whether these fall into neither category after all) include the causal principle, "God exists", "it's morally wrong to do X", and so on. None of these things are true by definition or derive their truth by appeal to experience. Hume would have us commit them to the flames (I've always found this hilarious). The logical positivists would tell us that they're meaningless. However, plenty of philosophers believe in them.

If one does believe in them, then what are the arguments against the above epistemological classification of propositions, and how are they justified? (I'm aware of Kant's solution to issues like causation, and Quine's attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction already.)

G. K .Chesterton said something interesting . He said that the madman is just as logical as the scientist but his universe is just smaller. In other words a madman always acts rationally given his assumptions. Its not that he doesnt act according to his beliefs as we all do but his assumptions about the world are arranged in a smaller circle than other peoples. If you believed that the government was able to send thoughts into your head electromagnetically then a tinfoil hat is a rational response. The people who stormed the capitol were for the most part acting rationally if someone had subverted the election. They believe this on the flimsiest of evidence so how can we decide whether our own evidence for our beliefs is rational when thats what everyone believes. What kind of safeguards are there to keep us from tinfoil hats and storming capitols. Or are we just fated to believe whatever we happen to believe and just hope we dont cause too much damage by them? Can people be talked down from fox newsitis? Should we believe anything we see on tv? Genuinely curious how people here think about this problem and looking specifically for practical ways to guide ourselves given the catastrophe in epistemology we seem to be enduring.

In Intro to objectivist epistemology rand points out that there is a major problem with Kants formulation. Particularly she days that the gyrating rhinoceros on the beach ball of Kant's thinking was his idea that because consciousness had structure, it must not be perceiving reality and only in unconsciousness was there a possibility of knowing truth. As she put it, "kant was saying because someone has eyes they are blind".

Now what kant was saying was definitely problematic, but I think that it was making more of a subtle point, the details of which are slightly missed in the book. Kant's main point was really what I said, that consciousness because it is structured, must be giving you false information, sorry I am not saying the exact quote. This problematic idea shows up in the modern world alot.

My experience of this idea has actually been in a weird alliance between Christian fundamentalists and progressives when they talk about the bible. The fundamentalist Christians will say that there are no patterns in the biblical stories because if there were patterns in the stories then that would mean that the stories were just made up. The progressives on the other hand will say that clearly the biblical stories have patterns, the story of Moses for example when he is put in the basket on the river, is just like stories of other ancient gods that were put in baskets on rivers, therefore, they conclude, the biblical stories are just fiction. Both sides take kant as their starting point and then go from there.

The problem with Kant's idea is really that reality is made of the union of patterns and matter. Things are noticeable and perceivable because they have meaning. There is an infinite amount of detail in things and patterns are what unite and divide those details into higher objects.

Another way that I've seen people argue using kant is when they will see that someone has done something like put a detail in a depiction of George Washington crossing the Delaware River and say that because there are no historical reasons to think that that detail had actually happened, then the painting isn't really depicting the Delaware crossing, and they will do that even if the detail that is added actually makes the depiction of George Washington crossing the Delaware more noticeable and meaningful, ie is in the spirit of that moment.

What we really need to do to oppose kant in this way is to reject this idea that reality unfolds without us being part of the pict

Has anyone else here been encountering Street Epistemology on podcasts or elsewhere in relationship to theism ?

https://streetepistemology.com/

Arguing with an atheist is like arguing with a naked person about clothing. They have a lot of criticisms, but no solutions.

It seems like the author (Anthony Magnabosco?) doesn't realize how much of a begging-the-question fallacy he is committing with the God question. JudeoChristianity provides an existential answer to our past, present, future, purpose and meaning. The atheist/skeptic position is at best naive nihilism, or whistling past the graveyard.

I've seen Anthony Magnabosco use the method a few times, and he seems to commit a single-cause fallacy by trying to isolate people's justifications. For myself and most true believers I know, we came to know God through multiple lines and levels of reason, logic and experience. Converts tend to state their main reason for believing, but that is usually just the thing we remember as a catalyst on top of a mountain of other reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause

The method is pretty good though, following the Socratic method, so I suspect that Anthony Magnabosco will convert eventually if he keeps following the highest truth.

BACKSTORY:

I'm an atheist now, but I come from a fundamentalist Christian background, and I happen to be the only irreligious person among my family/relatives. Naturally, therefore, my nephews and nieces (all under 10) are being indoctrinated with religion (along with conspiracy elements). My relationship with them is extremely important, especially since I am one of the only windows for them into a alternative life.
My goal is NOT to convert them NOR tell them what to believe, rather it is it be honest with them (at an age-appropriate level) and show them that another way of life exists. I am extremely weary of going "too far" with questioning and potentially having my relationship severed with them (there is one parent in particular that might do this). So, my question is how should I practice SE in a situation like this? Is SE even appropriate here?

Examples of situations where I might use SE (but didn't - yet):
- Nephew (5) asks why I don't go to church and what I'll be doing on Sunday instead. My non-SE approach was to explain that not everyone goes to church and I happen to be one of those people and that I'll be cooking and cleaning that day.

- Nephew (8) says they usually pray before going to bed (as I put him and sister to bed). I say okay, you can pray right now if you'd like. He says he's nervous and that he wants me to pray instead. I tell him, I actually don't pray, but if he teaches me what to say, I can pray with/for him. He says nvm.

I am nervous about applying SE in situations like the above scenarios that are clearly religious because I don't want their parents blaming me (and removing me from their lives) if they find their kids questioning why they go to church and why they pray if they can't see God.

One potential solution that I have been employing is applying SE in non-religious areas like talking about fears or monsters (i.e. "How do you know this animal exists vs the monster from the movie?").

Any insight is appreciated. Please advise if there are better approaches to my situation.

How would Hegel answer the problem of the criterion?

View Poll

Kant says that any metaphysics rests on his transcendental philosophy. However, the pure concepts of understanding that he lays out seem to be metaphysical. So, does Kant believe that any epistemic truth must rest on metaphysical grounding, or that metaphysics must rest on epistemic grounding?

We're still on the same page

Habe am Samstag auf der Party mit Freunden mit jemandem der Street Epistemology kennt aber genau wie ich nie gemacht hat diskutiert. Und das war extrem positiv.

Es ist finde ich sehr schwer nicht in ein "ich versuche die andere Person zu überzeugen" hineinzurutschen. Es ist schwer gerade bei wichtigen Themen die einem am Herzen liegen (auf der Party ging es um Abtreibung).

Warum ich das hier schreibe:

Wenn ihr mit VTlern diskutieren wollt übt vorher. VTler sind der hard mode, was Diskussion angeht und diskutieren ist ein Skill, den man lernen muss wenn man Erfolg damit haben will.

Wenn ich mit Leuten diskutiere, die nicht meine Eltern sind, fühle ich mich oft als würde ich gerade mit einem heißen Messer durch Butter schneiden. Häh, auf einmal wird nicht das Thema gewechselt wenn das eigene Argument Scheiße war? Es werden Studien akzeptiert anstatt über korrupte Wissenschaft zu reden? Es werden Meinungen revidiert und geändert? Wo bin ich hier?

Außerdem hätte ich nicht gedacht wie viel Spaß es macht Street Epistemology anzuwenden. Ich habe enorm viel gelernt und werde das in Zukunft häufiger machen :)

Edith: Was ist Street Epistemology?

Street Epistemology ist eine Art der Gesprächsführung. Entstanden ist sie aus der Atheismus Bewegung.

Ziel ist es anstatt den Anderen von der eigenen Meinung zu überzeugen zu hinterfragen, worauf der Andere seine Überzeugungen und Glaubenssätze eigentlich aufbaut. Es ist dabei viel wichtiger den Gegenüber zum Nachdenken zu bekommen, anstatt irgendeine Agenda zu pushen.

Idealerweise fühlt der Gesprächspartner sich dadurch dann nicht in die Ecke gedrängt und ist dadurch nicht so stark in einer defensiven Haltung gegenüber demjenigen der die eigen Position "angreift".

Kennen gelernt habe ich das durch Anthony Magnabosco

Was-ist-das-Video

Beispielvideo mit anschließender Analyse

Hello I am a social science student who has never taken a formal philosophy course. I have at my own leisure dived into what I know now as continental philosophy, existentialism and bits and pieces of ontologies and phenomenology.

I am now a grad student and have the liberty to take classes across disciplines so I thought Id try my first formal philosophy class. My thoughts was 'Lets take a Class on Epistemology because I should know what can count as knowledge as I love to study subjective phenomenological perspectives'

I was however introduced to Probability sets on whether or not one's credence on if our assumption of milk is spoiled. I am kind of disappointed. I thought I was going to read Hume, Kant, Descarte, etc.

The units of the graduate course are Peer Disagreements (so probability sets stuff?), Bias (how it affects epistemological assumptions) and Epistemic Justice (IDK what this is). No deep literature review.

Why study all this and why even assume credence of any sort? How can you even be sure there is a 50% chance milk is spoiled or why or how Bayesian Stats fits in.

Are all Epistemology courses taught this way? Why learn this? Is there any immediate real world applications? What about more academic considerations?

And Finally since I am technically not a philosophy student, I am a social science student (psychology / anthropology) interested in applying my learning and to become a better thinker (maybe many years from now I can switch gears to philosophy but for now casually reading Nietzche and many more profoundly influences me)

Whats the point for me to take a course like this; whats the application? I am seriously considering dropping and that would be disappointing. I wanted to learn some foundational philosophy but now Im not seeing the point.

I have looked these words up at least twenty times and it just doesn’t stick. Definitions like the study of being don’t initially mean anything to me but worse, don’t match their usage, and then, the words aren’t used in a discernibly consistent way. Is there a simple way to understand what exactly these terms are referring to? Does everyone use them in the same way or are they terms that are a little slippery and everyone has their own idea, even though they have a definite definition?

When doing science and talking about things such as truth, knowledge and the scientific method, what are the necessary assumptions we need to make/positions we we need take about epistemology? Does science itself need to "hold" any particular views on epistemology? What schools of thought/theories of epistemology are most/least "validating" regarding science?