Relation to truth· Belief and knowledge
Evidentialism
Axis: Ethics of belief — Can we legitimately believe without sufficient evidence?
It is wrong, always and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence. Believing carelessly is not merely an intellectual mistake but a moral failing that erodes our shared trust.
Movements 3
Empiricismexplicit
The school makes the regulation of assent an epistemic duty: Locke holds that one should give one's assent in proportion to the evidence and the degrees of probability, and Hume sums up this ethics of belief in his famous maxim about the wise man who proportions his belief to the evidence. To ground knowledge in experience is to require believing only to the measure of what experience attests.
Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 15-16 (of probability and the degrees of assent) · Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section X (of miracles)
Show inferred positions (2)
Rationalisminferable
The norm of assent is evidence: one should affirm only what the understanding perceives clearly and distinctly. Descartes makes error a fault of the will judging beyond what the understanding clearly conceives, and prescribes withholding assent outside of evidence. For Spinoza it is the that carries a necessary and true affirmation. Assent is thus regulated by the clarity of the idea, not by a will to believe.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, IV · Spinoza, Ethics, II, proposition 49
Skepticisminferable
To grant assent to a thesis about the non-evident nature of things is to hold true what one cannot prove: the skeptic sees this as a fault and abstains on principle. But an objection looms: would a life without any belief even be livable? He answers by distinguishing two assents. To the that force themselves upon him (that it is day, that he is hungry) he yields without resisting, for they are not up for dispute; what he refuses is the further assent that would add "and so it truly is, by nature." He therefore acts, guided by phenomena and customs, while never positing a dogma.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 13-24
Philosophers 4
Humeexplicit
Since every factual belief rests on experience, its firmness should be measured by the evidence: to believe beyond what the evidence warrants is an epistemic fault. Hume turns this into a weapon against miracles: a miracle is by definition a violation of the laws of nature, and those laws are established by uniform experience, hence by the fullest proof there is. The weight of contrary experience is therefore maximal; no testimony can overcome it, unless its falsehood would be more miraculous still than the reported fact, which never occurs. The argument does not deny the supernatural a priori: it shows that a mind ruled by evidence cannot assent to it.
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. X (of miracles)
Lockeexplicit
Since our knowledge of matters of fact stays bounded to the probable, the right use of the understanding is not to believe firmly but to measure assent to evidence: the firmness of belief must exactly track the weight of the grounds. Hence a properly evidentialist norm, on which to believe beyond what the proofs warrant becomes a fault, not against prudence, but against reason itself. Locke makes of it the weapon aimed at enthusiasm, the claim to an inner light that dispenses with proof, and grounds on it his demand for toleration: an unexamined conviction entitles no one to impose it on others.
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, ch. 16 (the degrees of assent) and ch. 19 (enthusiasm)
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Pyrrhoinferable
Pyrrho's first move is to withdraw his assent from every opinion: while things remain indeterminate, to grant belief to one rather than another would be to rush. This restraint meets the evidentialist spirit, to believe only in proportion to what shows itself, but in an extreme form, since nothing shows itself enough to deserve belief. The Pyrrhonian nuance is that he makes of this restraint no moral duty: it is the lived effect of the indeterminacy of things, the impossibility of assenting where nothing tips the scale, rather than a rule one would impose on oneself.
Aristocles (after Timon), cited by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV, 18 · Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, IX, 61-62
Sextus Empiricusinferable
The skeptic's first move is to withhold from whatever is not self-evident: while the reasons remain balanced, to grant belief would be rash. This restraint meets the evidentialist spirit, to believe in proportion to the reasons. The Pyrrhonian nuance is that he suspends even where the dogmatist believes he has proofs, and that he makes of this restraint not a moral duty but the lived effect of the balance of arguments: not a duty to believe only the proven, but the impossibility of assenting when nothing tips the scale.
Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 13 (assent) · Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 19-20
Looking for what would prove you wrongExerciseInspired by Karl Popper
For , an idea counts as knowledge only if you can say what, if observed, would refute it: a belief that nothing could ever contradict is not solid, only sheltered. This exercise turns that test on your own convictions: actively looking for what would prove them wrong, so as to hold them as revisable conjectures rather than dogmas. Today it guards against stubbornness and the information bubbles where one meets only what confirms one's view.
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