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.

Loop Hole

A Loophole is an uncertainty or inability to deal with a situation in the law or a set of rules. 

There is a loophole for everything these days whether they are used or not, they exist. Unbeknownst to us until a situation is presented to figure it out. Whatever "it" may be a problem arises with truths, beliefs and justifications as conditions of knowledge. Gettier's problem states that the three conditions (truths, beliefs and justifications) are not sufficient for a JTB of knowledge; so let's examine theories for each one. 

The truth theories consist of three approaches correspondence, verificationism and pragmatism. All of which, fail for there own reasons dealing with each theories variables. Stemming from questions, experience and potential infinite's. 


Correspondence Theory:
P is true iff, it corresponds with the fact that P. This theory has a circular argument: what is a fact? and what does it take for a fact to correspond to belief. Moreover, a fact is hard to determine without mentioning the truths of the matter. 

Verificationism: 
P is true iff, it is an instance of (idealized) rational acceptability. Verificationism is hard to justify, typically leading to a false belief. Meaning this theory will be an uphill battle to preclude a belief to be possible. Mostly for the fact that each person dealing with P would have to form an opinion based on their education, experience and training. 

Pragmatism: 
P is true iff, it is useful. Pragmatism doesn't hold because it is easy to imagine true beliefs that are not useful at all. Therefore, true beliefs can fail to be useful, and useful beliefs can fail to be true.  

A belief is the attitude a person can have toward P a proposition. For example lets say P = God exists
On one side of the fence believer would be a Theist, in the sense that a theist would believe God exist forming the belief that P is true. The fence would be an Agnostic as judgement is suspended forming an indifferent belief. On the other side of the fence would be the disbeliever known as the Atheist will take P to be false. However, all of these believers are forming a belief to believe, disbelieve or suspend a belief.  Furthermore, occurent beliefs are also important to this matter as they are presently before our mind as a standing (3+3=6) or newly formed belief (I believe in behavior P's domino effect). These beliefs are justified in certain degrees, which we will delve into at a later time. 

Justification seems easy, but it can be a little tricky. The two forms are justified true beliefs (lucky truths) and unjustified true beliefs (lucky guess). A lucky truth is a true belief that is not a lucky guess. S's belief that P is a lucky guess iff, (i) P is true; (2) S believes that P; (3) S has no evidence that P is true. These forms of justification are tricky because evidence or reason has to be presented to convince others, including yourself. Also for the reason that, a belief can have the property of being completely justified without having to show or explain the belief's justification, or we have no idea how to explain a belief yet, the belief is still justified. i.e. reading a blog post and existing.

Making the truth theories, beliefs and justifications fail on every level. This is an under rated phenomenon that has metaphysically created loop holes for laws, knowledge and anything else attempting to prove a point.  

Mr. Gettier succeeded to note the problems with each condition and devised a solution that comes later in the book after further developing evidence for justification. 
Since, these three conditions will not suffice for knowledge to be a justified true belief. He had to solve a problem, that is to say, what kind of condition can prevent a true belief from being a lucky truth? 

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.