REASONS FOR BELIEF AND DOUBT:
Reasons for Belief and Doubt: Lecture Notes
Reasons for Holding a Belief:
- Conflicting Claims:
- Both cannot be true.
- Justification is not obtained until it is resolved.
- Conflict with Background Information
- because it works most of the time, we use it most of the time.
- Common Sense isn’t Always Right
- the degree of belief is based upon the amount and quality
Experts and Evidence
- Can a claim be justified if it is made by an expert?
- Who is an expert?
- Experience and practice in a particular field?
- Must we rely on experts?….
- with CAUTION, we must always question.
- When do you doubt a claim?
- Claim conflicts with expert opinion.
- Experts disagree.
- Fallacy def. A mistake in reasoning.
- i.e. Appeal to Authority
Appeal to Authority
- i.e 20,769 Physicians say Luckies are less irritating”its toasted”
- Physicians are not experts on smoking. How would they even know they are less irritating?
- To be considered an expert consider:
- Amount of Education and Training
- Experience
- Reputation among peers
- Professional Accomplishments
- Reasonable to except personal experience if there are good reasons to except it:
- 3 Good Reasons:
- 1) Impairment: i.e physical impairments
- 2) Expectation: i.e. confirmation bias
- 3) Innumeracy: lacking ability to make accurate calculations of beliefs. i.e. making assumptions of probability
- Another Problem: Fooling Ourselves
- Ignore
- Deny
- Manipulate
- Distort Evidence
- Looking for evidence that confirms our theory, but disregarding contrary evidence. (CONFIRMATION BIAS)
- Resisting Contrary Evidence
- We may misread or mis remember evidence to the contrary of we want to believe.
- Looking for confirmation bias
- Preferring available evidence
- (AVAILABILITY ERROR) preferring evidence because it is psychologically available