Justify The Presence of Your Conscience

Good Day

We like evidence that supports/reaffirms what we already believe, because supporting evidence makes it easier to justify our beliefs to others. Supporting evidence was covered in our last blog posting, click here to read more. This will make it easier to comprehend your beliefs as justification heavily depends on the supported evidence, ultimately making your thoughts and feelings stronger. This is so, because justification comes in degrees due to levels of certainty. 

Non-Conclusive

A lack thereof would lead to non-conclusive evidence with a less than higher degree of justification. Typically beliefs that are about the physical world, the past, future and things that are presently observed contain non-conclusive evidence making levels of certainty lower than 99.9%. The reason for these beliefs being non-conclusive is because the evidence supported leads to uncertainty forcing lesser degrees of justification. 

Conclusive

Stronger beliefs stem from evidence that are conclusive, supporting the truth of the belief with complete certainty. Simply believing about one's own conscious state, axioms of logic and elementary truths of arithmetic are forms of stronger justified beliefs. For example, becoming mindfully aware will lead you to believe in your thoughts and feelings. Simply due the the facts supported by conclusive evidence granting 100% certainty for a specific justified belief. With this said, becoming mindfully aware can take practice and will enhance with time. 

Deductive Reasoning

It is important to note that conclusive evidence must use deductive reasoning as each premise entails the next one. This is done to keep complete certainty of a justified belief, and when a premise doesn't hold a justified belief will be non-conclusive. Furthermore, the premises are held in degrees of justification based on the hierarchical order of entailment. 

Placing beliefs on a high-to-low or strong-to-weak scale of justification based on supported evidence and the deliver of a reliable authority. Making experiences of instances ever so important to each and every one of us as we justify our beliefs for others and more importantly for ourselves. So, believe in your thoughts and feelings, for you are a reliable authority who has the evidence to justify the presence of your conscience.

Go ahead and leave comments below to help me, help you. Note: I use examples from the book and from my own experience.

To be clear, I am taking notes from a book titled An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology by Matthias Steup; if you need a copy to follow along click on the the title in this sentence and a link will direct you.