Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> John,
>
> I apologise if you thought I was referring to you in any way: I was just trying to
> make a general point about how we come to accept some beliefs and reject others.
> Perhaps I should not have used the pejorative terms, but I think it is a fair question:
> how do we know if a belief is crazy or stupid? Nature does not care about
> epistemology, only about utility, and brains have evolved to process evidence and
> arrive at conclusions because it assists survival. Psychotic illness disrupts the normal
> reasoning process and leads to delusions. The most important feature of these is not
> that they are false, but that they occur as a result of a pathological process which
> leads to morbidity and sometimes mortality.
>
> You make an interesting point about fixed *true* beliefs, not covered by the definition
> I gave below: it is actually possible to be right but still be delusional. For example, a
> patient believes with utter conviction that his wife was having an affair with his neighbour
> because the neighbour painted his fence green and green is her favourite colour.
> The patient is treated with antipsychotic medication and after a few weeks realises that
> it was crazy to come to the conclusion that he did and apologises to his wife and the
> neighbour, whom he had confronted prior to treatment. Months later, his wife leaves him
> for the neighbour: it turns out that they had been having an affair all along! Nevertheless,
> the patient had still been delusional because (a) most reasonable people would see the
> conclusion he drew from the green fence, and the conviction with which he held it, as very
> dubious, and (b) he himself saw the conclusion as dubious after treatment with antipsychotic
> medication.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
This is an example of Edmund Gettier's theory of epistemology. He pointed out that a true belief can't be knowledge unless it has a causal relation to the thing believed. His example was a man who thought his coworker had bought a new car because he saw him drive a new one to work. In fact the man was trying out his son's car, but coincidentally he had bought a new car. He just didn't drive it to work.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Sat Nov 25 2006 - 00:38:56 PST