scholarly journals The Radicalism of Truth-insensitive Epistemology: Truth's Profound Effect on the Evaluation of Belief

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Epistemic Evaluation ◽  
Two Agents ◽  
Brain In A Vat ◽  
Brains In Vats

Many philosophers claim that interesting forms of epistemic evaluation are insensitive to truth in a very specific way. Suppose that two possible agents believe the same proposition based on the same evidence. Either both are justified or neither is; either both have good evidence for holding the belief or neither does. This does not change if, on this particular occasion, it turns out that only one of the two agents has a true belief. Epitomizing this line of thought are thought experiments about radically deceived “brains in vats.” It is widely and uncritically assumed that such a brain is equally justified as its normally embodied human “twin.” This “parity” intuition is the heart of truth-insensitive theories of core epistemological properties such as justification and rationality. Rejecting the parity intuition is considered radical and revisionist. In this paper, I show that exactly the opposite is true. The parity intuition is idiosyncratic and widely rejected. A brain in a vat is not justified and has worse evidence than its normally embodied counterpart. On nearly every ordinary way of evaluating beliefs, a false belief is significantly inferior to a true belief. Of all the evaluations studied here, only blamelessness is truth-insensitive.

scholarly journals Theory of Mind Abilities and Social Competence in Preschool Children

2019 ◽  
Vol 09 (01) ◽  
pp. 09-11
Author(s):  
Shrunga Manchanapura Shivalingaiah ◽  
Fathimath Ramseena ◽  
Nafeesath Shareen
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Social Life ◽  
True Belief ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Clinical Population ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Objective Theory ◽  
Mixed Responses

Abstract Background and Objective Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability that can be attributed to mental status beliefs, intents, emotions, proficiency, etc., to oneself and to others, and the understanding that others also have intentions, conceptions, desires, and perspectives that are different from one’s own. Daily social life depends on the ability to evaluate the behavior of other people on the basis of their mental state such as their beliefs, intentions, compassions, and goals. This study was conducted to explore the ToM abilities in preschoolers. Methods A total of 36 preschoolers participated in the study. Two stories were narrated to the children, the classic Sally-Anne Task and the Smarty’s Task. In both the tasks, the responses of the children were scored as either true belief or false belief. Results The results of the present study revealed mixed responses among the preschoolers. It was found that 3- to 4-year-old children had more false beliefs for both the tasks when compared with 4- to 5-year-old. Conclusion This study highlights the importance of ToM abilities in typically growing children and other clinical population. It can be concluded that the ToM abilities were improved in typically developing children. Future studies are required to explore the higher levels of embedding of ToM, and also to incorporate it in the clinical population.

Intuitions

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Ichikawa ◽  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Hypothetical Case ◽  
Belief Theory ◽  
Contemporary Work

Philosophy often proceeds via appeals to intuition. In a prototypical instance, a theory is rejected on the basis of its counterintuitive verdict about a real or hypothetical case. A famous example is Edmund Gettier’s rejection of the justified “true belief” theory of knowledge; the dominant view was that knowledge was equivalent to justified true belief, but Gettier provided thought experiments involving subjects with beliefs derived from justified falsehoods, which happened by luck to be true—these thought experiments generally gave rise to intuitions to the effect that they described cases of justified true belief without knowledge. And on this basis, 20th-century epistemologists generally rejected the justified true belief theory. In recent decades, significant metaphilosophical attention has turned to such uses of intuitions in philosophy. What are intuitions? In what sense do arguments such as Gettier’s rely on the use of intuitions? Why should we trust them? What can they show us? This entry focuses on contemporary work on these and related topics.

4. The analysis of knowledge

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Nagel
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Classical Analysis ◽  
Alvin Goldman ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Analysis Of Knowledge

‘The analysis of knowledge’ begins with Edmund Gettier who challenged the ‘classical analysis of knowledge’ that equates knowledge with justified true belief. His no-false-belief proposal had some flaws. Alvin Goldman then proposed the causal theory of knowledge: experience-based knowledge that requires the knower to be appropriately causally connected to a fact. Goldman went on to launch a fresh analysis of knowledge, focused on reliability. Reliabilism is when knowledge is true belief that is produced by a mechanism likely to produce true belief. But can knowing be analysed at all? The relationship between knowing and believing is considered in the knowledge-first and belief-first movements of epistemology.

Temporo-parietal Junction Activity in Theory-of-Mind Tasks: Falseness, Beliefs, or Attention

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1179-1192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Aichhorn ◽  
Josef Perner ◽  
Benjamin Weiss ◽  
Martin Kronbichler ◽  
Wolfgang Staffen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Test Question ◽  
Teleological Reasoning ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Right

By combining the false belief (FB) and photo (PH) vignettes to identify theory-of-mind areas with the false sign (FS) vignettes, we re-establish the functional asymmetry between the left and right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). The right TPJ (TPJ-R) is specially sensitive to processing belief information, whereas the left TPJ (TPJ-L) is equally responsible for FBs as well as FSs. Measuring BOLD at two time points in each vignette, at the time the FB-inducing information (or lack of information) is presented and at the time the test question is processed, made clear that the FB is processed spontaneously as soon as the relevant information is presented and not on demand for answering the question in contrast to extant behavioral data. Finally, a fourth, true belief vignette (TB) required teleological reasoning, that is, prediction of a rational action without any doubts being raised about the adequacy of the actor's information about reality. Activation by this vignette supported claims that the TPJ-R is activated by TBs as well as FBs.

scholarly journals Right Temporoparietal Junction Encodes Mental Experience of Others More Than Evaluating False Versus True Belief

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Branden J. Bio ◽  
Arvid Guterstam ◽  
Mark Pinsk ◽  
Andrew I. Wilterson ◽  
Michael S. A. Graziano
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Cartoon Character ◽  
Visual Reaction ◽  
Alternative Hypotheses ◽  
Right Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
The Right

When people make inferences about other people's minds, called theory of mind (ToM), a network in the cerebral cortex becomes active. ToM experiments sometimes use the false belief task, in which subjects decide whether a story character believes A or B. The "false" belief occurs if the character believes A when B is true. We devised a version in which subjects judged whether a cartoon head "believed" a ball to be in box 1 or box 2. The task was a visual, reaction time version of a ToM task. We proposed two alternative hypotheses. In hypothesis 1, cortical regions of interest within the ToM network should distinguish between false and true belief trials, reflecting outside information that the subjects have about the cartoon character. In hypothesis 2, the ToM network should distinguish between conditions only if the subjects think that the cartoon character can distinguish between the conditions, thus reflecting a model of the internal contents of the cartoon character's mind. The results supported hypothesis 2. Events that the cartoon could not "see" did not affect activity in the ToM network; the same events, when the cartoon could apparently "see" them, significantly affected activity in the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ). The results support the view that the right TPJ participates in modeling the mental states of others, rather than in evaluating the accuracy of the beliefs of others, and may help explain why previous experiments showed mixed results when directly comparing false belief to true belief conditions.

The Inescapability of Gettier Problems

2020 ◽  
pp. 311-319
Author(s):  
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
The State ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Proper Function ◽  
Good Luck ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter argues that any definition of knowledge as true belief + x will be subject to Gettier-style counterexamples as long as the connection between x (justification, reliability, proper function, etc.) and getting the truth is close but not inviolable. The recipe for generating a counterexample uses the idea of double luck. It starts with an instance of bad luck (A belief is false but has component x) which is canceled out by an instance of good luck (Make the belief true after all for reasons that have nothing to do with the believer). As long as the truth is never assured by the conditions which make the state justified, there will be situations in which a false belief is justified. With this common, in fact, almost universal assumption, Gettier cases will never go away.

scholarly journals Additional Reflections on Putnam, Wright and Brains in Vats

Metaphysica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold W. Noonan
Keyword(s):  
General Significance ◽  
Brain In A Vat ◽  
Brains In Vats

AbstractPutnam’s argument against the sceptical Brain-in-a-Vat hypothesis continues to intrigue. I argue in what follows that the argument refutes a particular kind of sceptic and make a proposal about its more general significance. To appreciate the soundness of the argument, I explain, we need to appreciate that the sceptic’s contention is that I cannot know that I am not a brain in a vat

scholarly journals Epistemic Supervenience, Anti-individualism, and Knowledge-First Epistemology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesper Kallestrup ◽  
Emma C. Gordon ◽  
Duncan Pritchard
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Twin Earth ◽  
Environmental Properties

This chapter investigates connections between Knowledge-First epistemology and a meta-epistemological thesis defended elsewhere by the authors (and in opposition to robust forms of virtue epistemology) under the description of epistemic anti-individualism. Epistemic anti-individualism is a denial of the epistemic individualist’s claim that warrant—i.e. what converts true belief into knowledge—supervenes on internal physical properties of individuals, perhaps in conjunction with local environmental properties. The chapter has two central aims. First, it argues that ‘epistemic twin earth’ thought experiments which reveal robust virtue epistemology (RVE) are problematically committed to epistemic individualism also show that evidentialist mentalism is likewise committed to individualism. Second, it argues that, even though a knowledge-first approach in epistemology is in principle (unlike RVE and evidentialist mentalism) consistent with epistemic anti-individualism, this approach fails to offer a plausible account of epistemic supervenience. The chapter suggests this point is a reason to pursue epistemic anti-individualism outside the knowledge-first framework.

scholarly journals Brains in vats and model theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Button
Keyword(s):  
Model Theory ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Modern Logic ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain In A Vat ◽  
Brains In Vats

Hilary Putnam’s BIV argument first occurred to him when ‘thinking about a theorem in modern logic, the “Skolem–Löwenheim Theorem”’ (Putnam 1981: 7). One of my aims in this paper is to explore the connection between the argument and the Theorem. But I also want to draw some further connections. In particular, I think that Putnam’s BIV argument provides us with an impressively versatile template for dealing with sceptical challenges. Indeed, this template allows us to unify some of Putnam’s most enduring contributions to the realism/antirealism debate: his discussions of brains-in-vats, of Skolem’s Paradox, and of permutations. In all three cases, we have an argument which does not merely defeat the sceptic; it also shows us that we must reject some prima facie plausible philosophical picture.Published in S. Goldberg (ed.), The Brain in a Vat, Cambridge University Press: 131–54.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document