Today I had my first lecture on epistemology. Interestingly this lecture was talking about something I've been discussing with Andre and Fiora yesterday during lunch time. It also has something to do with my recent introspection.
First of all, a lot of things we do with our sentences are more than just illustrating a proposition. For example "The cup is half full" and "The cup is half empty", which have the same proposition, but are different sentence. Here we usually say people have different attitude. I do know all about these and I do know having a different sentence delivering the same proposition would influence people perception and acceptance, however the lecture reminds me about this once again. Eventually I am not sure whether it is a good thing to construct sentence in a different way just to affect the outcome. James Wilson is a good example as House referred him as "a buddy of mine people say 'Thank you' to when he tells them they are dying." Not that I don't bother to do it to make people feel better, it's just that I feel guilty for being manipulative - when what I am manipulating is other people's perception, emotion, feeling, acceptance, belief, understanding, judgement, etc. However as I've been told by Little-Prince and some other people, apparently that's what I have to learn and it is right to do so.
We also talked about necessary VS sufficient conditions. I've been thinking about it and found that it is a mistake basically everyone around me and myself always exercise. However, usually people around me are in different spectrum to mine when we all fall into this kind of fallacy. Maybe some disagreements just come from the understand (or misunderstanding) of what is necessary for causing what and what is sufficient for causing what.
Then we talked about belief, truth and justification. These are the topic we touched during our lunch time discussion. First of all, [s knows p = s believes p] is obviously problematic because p can be false, so there is no point to talk about this. Secondly, [s knows p = s believes p & p is true] also runs into all sorts of problem. For example I believe in God existence and let's suppose God really exists (let's assume we found out at the end of our lives), it does not mean I have evidence, reasoning and good justification why I believe in God existence. So maybe I don't really know God exists in this case although I believe it and at the end it is true. [s knows p = s believes p & p is true & s's belief in p is well-founded ] is the closest we get in this lecture, although "epistemically justification" is still a myth at this stage. Basically, using God existence example, I believe God exists and I have good evidence believing he exists and it is true that he exists, then it means I have such knowledge. I am still not satisfy with this and I can see some problems in this definition, but let's not go in too much until we have another lecture on the definitions.
These topics and discussions make me rethink about the concept of "belief". Being a justified atheist is actually as difficult (or easy?) as being a justified Christian. For me, the things I see and the things I experience are good reasons for me to believe there is a God and he loves me. However things that someone else see and experience may suggest the opposite. No matter which one it is, the reasons and justification for the belief (for there is God or there is no God) are equally not necessary conditions of the belief. Somehow reasons and justifications are very personal things, depending on the subject's education, culture background, family brought-up, life experience, etc.
I told Andre that for believing in a religion, the initial emotional step is necessary, but not enough to sustain. You have to think why you believe, what you believe, and have your own experience supporting your belief. I tried to weigh things happened in my life and "God exists" is a more reasonable conclusion than "God doesn't exists". Do I create a bias understand because I already believe in the first place? It's actually very hard to determine. It is like asking whether our repressed memory (if it really exists) is always correct or not. However, I still believe, mere reasoning and justification can never make someone believe in a religion if there is no emotional engagement. On the other hand, mere reasoning and justification are not enough to make someone believe there is no God as well without an emotional step. So if someone ask me to show God to him, I can only tell him about God, point to my own faith, and then ask himself to experience. I cannot prove to him that there is a God (same as he cannot prove to me that there's no God). Taking other's reasons and justification without building his own experience can never sustain faith (actually not only in religion but in every single small beliefs we have about everyday).
Anyway, this blog is getting a bit too long. Also I am not very clear what I want to say now since in the middle I had stopped writing for dinner and House M.D.. Tomorrow I have my first lecture on Philosophy of Arts. Let's see whether it would be as interesting as this one.
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