Fallacies And Assumptions

In my Theory of Knowledge class, I learned that belief and truth can be very contrasting ideas. In my opinion, I can believe something that may not necessarily be true. However, there can also be truth that is impossible for me to believe. Belief is a mental state in which someone is confident in the existence of something, but may not necessarily have objective proof to support their claim. Truth is objective and public; it is eternal and unchanging without biast.

I think that Clifford did make a mistake in saying that anything without sufficient evidence is considered wrong. As a reasonable person we have the capacity to decide which of our desires, if any, we will act on. I do approve that we do have to have evidence to believe in something, but I don’t agree that if we don’t have enough evidence then it’s wrong. We can’t say that without having sufficient proof that, that statement is false. And everything depends on what you believe, because what you believe is what you hear.

When someone states that they know something they must also believe that, that something is so. If they did not believe in it then how could they take it in as knowledge ?, they would instead be doubtful of it and look for evidence or justification as to why they should believe it. Secondly for someone to believe in something they must also believe that it is true. If they did not believe that it was true then what is mentioned above would not occur. So, so far it is decided that knowledge should be true belief.

It is not just the case that we can have all kinds of good reasons for what we believe, though those reasons do not quite measure up to the standards required by genuine knowledge. The radical sceptic questions whether we ever have the slightest reason for believing one thing rather than another, so we can never even get to the point of justified belief, never mind whether our justifications are sufficient for knowledge, in some more restricted sense. The second crucial feature of philosophical scepticism concerns its scope. The philosophical sceptic's negative verdict on human knowledge is highly general. This generality explains why philosophical scepticism formulates its challenge in terms of the possibility of knowledge.

as something more complicated than a request for a reason. The trouble is that Sterba’s "altruistic reasons" are among the things Foot calls moral considerations. Thus, he has not engaged Foot’s argument; he has made exactly the assumption her argument challenges. (9) A similar objection has been used against Foot. See Robert L. Holmes, "Is Morality a System of Hypothetical Imperatives?"

In the article, "The Will to Believe", William James responds to W.K. Clifford who argued that it "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence". James held the belief that it 's more important to accomplish truth than to avoid error a and that it can in fact be reasonable to hold a belief without sufficient evidence. Both philosophers, in my opinion, offer persuasive arguments; however, I feel that beliefs are often a moral issue and the choice to believe can be an emotional or instinctual one rather then an intellectual one. Therefore, I don 't support Clifford 's argument that it its wrong in every situation to maintain beliefs based on insufficient evidence and plan to argue against

Second, it could be unsound: even though the conclusion is entailed by the premises, at least one of the premises is false. INDUCTIVE ARGUMENT A successful inductive argument is an argument whose conclusion is supported by its premises. If the premises are true, the conclusion is likely to be true, but it is still possible that the conclusion is false. So inductive arguments are not described as ‘valid’ or ‘sound’. © Michael Lacewing But they can also go wrong in just two ways.

Many believe that there is something inherently irrational about accepting each element of an inconsistent set of propositions. However, arguments for this doctrine seem lacking other than those that appeal to the principle that the set of propositions that one rationally accepts is (or should be) closed under logical consequences, or those that note that error is made inevitable when one accepts an inconsistent set. After explaining why the preceding sorts of arguments do not succeed, I consider a novel attempt by Keith Lehrer to undermine the chief argument in favor of the claim that it can sometimes be rational to accept inconsistent sets. For reasons that will be described, Lehrer’s argument fails. I. Inconsistency and Deductive Closure One cannot accept both that it is rational to accept inconsistent sets, and that the set of propositions that one rationally accepts is closed under logical consequences.

p. 57). Sentences too are criticised as they can be interpreted as both false and true at the same time, additionally both statements and beliefs as truth bearers mean that there are unstated statements and unbelieved beliefs, which is a paradox. The first theory of truth to consider is correspondence, this theory states that stat... ... middle of paper ... ...which appears to be more convincing as this gives a whole definition of the question of what is true rather than Rescher’s ‘internal’ truths. In conclusion, both conceptions of the theory of truth appear to have contradictions within them, however correspondence theory appears to be more flawed. It must be taken into consideration that other theories of truth exist, and one could argue that neither of these appear to be a satisfactory account of truth in a general context.

Intuitions This paper examines two attempts to justify the way in which intuitions about specific cases are used as evidence for and against philosophical theories. According to the concept model, intuitions about cases are trustworthy applications of one’s typically tacit grasp of certain concepts. We argue that regardless of whether externalist or internalist accounts of conceptual content are correct, the concept model flounders. The second justification rests on the less familiar belief model, which has it that intuitions in philosophy derive from one’s (often tacit) beliefs. Although more promising than the concept model, the belief model fails to justify traditional philosophical use of intuitions because it is not clear a priori that the beliefs at issue are true.