Whats justification?

[Fifty]

hi!

First, the usual disclaimer (which will probably be ignored, so this thread has a good chance of suckage, but I like to at least give it a try every few months to see if anybody other than the usual suspects are interested in this stuff):

Spoiler READ BEFORE YOU POST :

This is a philosophy thread. Please do not post in this thread if:

1. You think words like "justification" are crazy meaningless jargon words that don't make any sense to you and in fact make your head hurt.

2. You think the answer is something like "WHEN YOU PROVE SOMETHING BY LOGIC OR SCIENCE!!!!"

So with that out of the way, we come to the substance. A lot of people think knowledge has something to do with justification. That is, you know some proposition P if and only if you have a true justified belief (plus perhaps some anti-Gettier clause) that P. So what does it mean to say that I'm justified in believing that P? In other words, what is justification?

 

[Bigfoot3814]

In the context that you presented it, justification sounds like it means proof beyond doubt. It doesn't have to be scientific, it can be personal. Imagine you believed ice cream grows on trees, and this makes you feel good. There is overwhelming evidence that goes against this belief, but it makes you feel good, and that's a good enough justification. Even if you are exposed to all this opposing evidence, you are absolutley convinced that ice cream grows on trees, so you have personal proof beyond doubt. In other words, you are at peace with your decision, and you're not changing it. You know ice cream grows on trees because you have a true justifed belief that it does. I hope that makes sense to someone.

 

[Defiant47]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to go with Answer 2 Expanded. You (logically) create a probability matrix based on the likelihood of being correct in your belief and the consequences of it.

For example, I am justified in believing the keyboard in front of me exists. Why? Suppose I cannot trust any of my sensory inputs. Then I cannot function in my reality, effectively rendering living useless.

Thus, I believe the keyboard in front of me exists, even though all of this might well be an illusion and I might actually be a brain in a pod somewhere, being fed this sensory input.

 

[Elrohir]

So with that out of the way, we come to the substance. A lot of people think knowledge has something to do with justification. That is, you know some proposition P if and only if you have a true justified belief (plus perhaps some anti-Gettier clause) that P. So what does it mean to say that I'm justified in believing that P? In other words, what is justification?

I'd say true knowledge is "justified" in this sense in one of two cases:

-When there is so much evidence that a conclusion cannot be rationally opposed.

-Or when opposing that idea would be self nullifying. Defiant47 provided one example of this, I can easily think of another: the effectiveness of logic and rationality.

If you assume that you can use logic at least somewhat correctly, and reach true conclusions, then you can use logic as a tool. (Perhaps correctly, perhaps incorrectly - that's not the point) But if you start with the belief that logic itself is inherently flawed and unreliable (Not just your application of it - but rationality itself) then you cannot really conclude anything. Including the idea that you cannot conclude anything, because you arrived at that using some form of rational thought. So what you've effectively done is create a self-destroying "feedback loop" where you can't even conclude that you can't conclude anything. In the face of that, all you can do is believe, but not conclude, that all you can have is some sort of mindless nihilism, which is self defeating.

In short, you're trying to use circular logic but you're "breaking up the chain" - if you can't arrive at true conclusions using logic, then you can't actually come to that conclusion using logic. So I would say that the idea that truth can be found through logic is justified, because any other conclusion is self defeating. (Although of course there's still plenty of room to attack any particular use of reason - just because it works, doesn't mean everyone uses it properly, or doesn't just suck at it)

If that wasn't as clear as I thought it was (I still haven't finished my morning tea, even though it's afternoon ) then just say so, and I'll try to explain it a little better.

 

[scy12]

WHEn YOu PROVe SOMETHINg By LOGIc Or SCIENCe. The short answer.

The other expanded answer is provided by Defiant thinking for me , without me wasting any effort on it ... That reasoning is also used by me to explain the knowledge i have over Invinsible red penguins that will eat me not existing as there is no evidence to their existence and they conflict with the reality i see , understand and can function with.

 

[scy12]

In the context that you presented it, justification sounds like it means proof beyond doubt. It doesn't have to be scientific, it can be personal. Imagine you believed ice cream grows on trees, and this makes you feel good. There is overwhelming evidence that goes against this belief, but it makes you feel good, and that's a good enough justification. Even if you are exposed to all this opposing evidence, you are absolutley convinced that ice cream grows on trees, so you have personal proof beyond doubt. In other words, you are at peace with your decision, and you're not changing it. You know ice cream grows on trees because you have a true justifed belief that it does. I hope that makes sense to someone.

In the context i understand it , justification is always related into logic. Though the justification of why A is the truth and why i believe in A may be different.

One could in that spirit claim that the logic that he is using to believe in A is because it makes him feel good. In which he provided enough to justify the reasons for believing in it but not to justify if it is the truth,

 

[Bigfoot3814]

In the context i understand it , justification is always related into logic. Though the justification of why A is the truth and why i believe in A may be different.

One could in that spirit claim that the logic that he is using to believe in A is because it makes him feel good. In which he provided enough to justify the reasons for believing in it but not to justify if it is the truth,

Yes, that's exactly it. But the truth is different things to different people. And then things get EXTRA complicated.

 

[Gogf]

Okay, I'm not a philosopher, so take this with a grain of salt, but this is how I interpret it:

Spoiler Read this and then tell me if it's the right understanding of "justified true belief" :

Okay, as I understand it, reasonable people would agree that in order to be knowledge something has to be both true and believed. At the same time, though, something isn't knowledge if people just believe it for no reason, so the belief has to be "justified," which is where the question in the OP comes from.

Of course, it's also true that I can be justified in believing something, and that something can be true, but my justification can be based on faulty information. In that case, my belief wasn't knowledge, which, if I remember Fifty's explanation correctly, is what Gettier was talking about. This is where the anti-Gettier clause comes in, so make sure that people are justified for the right reasons.

Is that about right?

So, because we need anti-Gettier clauses, it stands to reason that for something to be a justification for a belief, it does not need to be related to why the belief is actually true. It does, however, need to convince the believer that it is why the belief is true. On the other hand, convincing someone of something isn't a very rigorous standard, because people can be convinced by all sorts of nonsensical things, so a justification needs to have some sort of objective merit. So I would say that a justification for a belief is a belief that, if true, reasonably (as determined by an objective observer) leads to another belief.

 

[scy12]

Yes, that's exactly it. But the truth is different things to different people. And then things get EXTRA complicated.

Well one could claim there are far fewer Justifiable "truths" or theseis than the all the different truths of different people. And i also have to say that believing something to be the truth certainly does not put your belief in the same category as something thoroughly explained as how it is the truth.

 

[Mise]

2. You think the answer is something like "WHEN YOU PROVE SOMETHING BY LOGIC OR SCIENCE!!!!"

What's wrong with that? Is there anything that is justifiable to you, but not "to science/logic"? Is there anything that's justified by science/logic, that you don't find justifiable?

 

[holy king]

hm...

what about "a stance is justified if the probability of it being true exceeds 50 percent"?

 

[scy12]

hm...

what about "a stance is justified if the probability of it being true exceeds 50 percent"?

So ... If there is a lottery that you would win 60% of the times is justified truth to say , when you are going to play it once that you are definitely going to win ?

 

[holy king]

So ... If there is a lottery that you would win 60% of the times is justified truth to say , when you are going to play it once that you are definitely going to win ?

no. but it's more likely i'm going to win than that i'm going to lose.

 

[Mise]

no. but it's more likely i'm going to win than that i'm going to lose.

So you're justified in saying that you're more likely to win than lose...? That doesn't sound very useful.

 

[holy king]

So you're justified in saying that you're more likely to win than lose...? That doesn't sound very useful.

everything's a matter of probability anyway. of course you can be more justified the more the probability closes 1.

 

[scy12]

Unless the lottery is rigged ofcourse in which case your probabilities are mistaken.

 

[Elrohir]

everything's a matter of probability anyway. of course you can be more justified the more the probability closes 1.

Is that statement probably, or definitely true?

 

[Erik Mesoy]

Here's a proposal: we put "knowledge" and "belief" and "justification" on probation and try to build on Bayesian* reasoning and probability distributions instead.

Suppose I place a red box and a blue box on the table in front of you, and I say to you that there is a set of juggling balls in one of the boxes.
If you have a prior** in the category of priors that I consider reasonable, you will assign something like a 50% probability to "the juggling balls are in the blue box" and 50% to "the juggling balls are in the red box". (Rounded off, because I don't care to take into account "0.001% that the boxes contain live skunks or other miscellanea" at the moment.)
If I then say that I put the balls in the red box in four out of five cases where I run this experiment, your posterior probability estimate should shift to somewhere between "50% red, 50% blue" and "80% red, 20% blue" depending on what credibility you assign to what I'm saying.
If you then lift both boxes and find the blue box to be heavier, your posterior-er p) probability estimate should shift again, based on how often you've found similar experimental settings to be placing weights in the non-ball-containing box or the like.
If you then open the boxes and see juggling balls in only one of them, your posterior probability estimate should shift very heavily in favor of that box (>99.5%), unless you've had a lot of events earlier in your life where your eyes give you false information about the presence or absence of juggling balls.

Now, the original question seems like asking "is Pluto a planet?" in this framework. If you know the mass and orbit of Pluto and the other bodies, the question isn't one of whether there's a nebulous property of planet-hood out there, but whether our definition of "planet" includes Pluto. Likewise, "knowledge" and its friends on probation could be defined in terms of, for example, posterior probability distributions assigning over 99% probability to the correct hypothesis, instead of being independent properties.

*named after Bayes' Theorem, which, for the unfamiliar, goes like this: P(A|B) = P(B|A)*P(A)/P(B). Translation to English: "Given B, the probability of A is equal to the probability of B given A, multiplied by the probability of A, divided by the probability of B." If you're still confused, I suggest the "excruciatingly gentle" explanation found here.
**prior: a description of how one assigns probability in the absence of evidence.

 

[holy king]

Is that statement probably, or definitely true?

it would be a paradoxon if it was definitely true, wouldnt it?

 

[scy12]

it would be a paradoxon if it was definitely true, wouldnt it?

So it is possible for it to be possible for it to be possible ? does it ever end ?