Letters to the Editor
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So it's nihilism then.
Believe in nothing. Everything is everything else. There is no truth, every idea is equally valid. Ok I'm good with that.
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The Certainty Epidemic
Recent findings: (Science Daily, Feb.22, 2008), Weill Cornell Medical College, indicate that long-distance signaling in developing neurons may be the 'hidden layer' of conceptualization the author is seeking. There is additional evidence that genetic tags inside neurons involved in specific memory are activated when that memory is retrieved. Memories are associated with the emotional centers of the brain and this network associates memories with pain or pleasure, fear or comfort before they are associated with specific recall.
The problem is that all memories are "real" even when they are based on our limited perceptions of reality. Conviction is not truth. It is the security of successful behavior within a limited cultural learning process. Reality becomes the acceptable standard. It is no more than an appropriate opinion within a social environment. Fact is no more than a predominance of evidence. Reality is not a democratic process that requires a majority decision.
Belief is an attitude promoted by repeated successful learned behavioral responses within a culture. It is an emotionally sustained memory. That the reaction to any belief is an overwhelming emotional defense of that belief is proof of the source of belief.
The reactions to this article exhibit the emotional defense expected in rejecting the statements. Personality, the sum of beliefs, becomes the center of discussion rather than the objective consideration of the ideas represented.
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Contradictions
One of the posters says that we have to choose between Evolution and Creationism. A more scientific attitude would be to consider a theory that allows both to be true. What if our loving God decided to play a game with us, and do his creating by means of Evolution? I do not propose this as a valid theory, but its on the right track. Progress in Science, or "knowledge" has often been by way of resolving "contradictions"; I think the method is very useful in Theology as well, although its going to be pretty hard on some of the classic forms of religion. To believe that therefore we are all condemned to be isolated in an unfeeling material Universe, unless we sign onto mindless redneck salvation is by no means the only possible alternative. disigny
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Philosophy 101
The author could stand to take a class in philosophy. The topic of knowing versus believing is part and parcel of epistemology. Put very briefly, there are at least three conditions that must be met before one can be said to know some proposition x. 1) One must believe x. 2) x must be true. 3) One must have a justification for believing x. In short, knowledge is justified true belief. This is not final as there a many clever counter-examples that famously cause problems for this definition of this note, it will do. Consider a lottery. When I pick the numbers 10, 29, 33, 47, 34, and 74 as my lottery entry and then win, would anyone say that I knew that these would be the winning numbers? Not likely. For while I may have believed this to be the case and it turned out to be true, one what basis was I justified in believing this? My gut? Not many would want to go to the bank based on my gut. Usually, we like a much higher standard for justifying our beliefs.
What I think the author is really pointing out is the phenomenology of knowing and believing; that is, how do believing x and knowing x differ in terms of how it feels to the individual. This is certainly an interesting question and one with many implications. We are all too familiar with people who are entirely too confident about propositions which do not seem to merit such confidence. However, this has nothing to do with distinguishing between belief and knowledge. It is not possible to KNOW that the Rapture is coming or whether or not the Earth was created in 7 days. To know X, X must be true but in these cases we have no way of ascertaining the truth of these propositions.
As the author points out, this has some strong implications for the sciences as they are commonly considered. But this is only due to a misunderstanding about science. Science is not a deductive art. It is an inductive art. Laws of nature are nothing more than predictions about future events based on observations of the past; one notes that in the past that all unsupported objects fall and based on this observation of this past regularity predicts that in the future this pattern will persist. This is not a guarantee, just a prediction. Nelson Goodman pointed out how fallible inductive line of thought can be in his classic article "The New Riddle of Induction". Science is always open to reinterpretation based on new evidence. No law of nature is absolute in the sense that it is not open to future evidence. The only sorts of statements that are immune are essentially tautologies.
The author would do better by staying clear of a discussion of knowing and believing and leave that to philosophers. What's more, his topic has been well discussed in social psychology. See Nisbett and Wilson and their research on why people are so fallible with regard to their own thoughts.
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Epistemology?
You mean the wannabe, quasi-theological handmaiden to science that, more than anything else, tries to answer the question, "What is the basis for our knowledge?" And to which the best answer has been: that there is the basis for our knowledge is a theoretical presupposition that by definition exists out of any epistemic framework (i.e. what we know)? This is where the quasi-theological part of it comes in, because the thing about "justified true belief" is that it relies on a foundationalist notion of truth as a lala-land talked about not at all unlike the way most people talked and still talk about God.
Except for very boring quarters of the analytic tradition, philosophy of the last 200 years has been a decided backing away from (foundationalist) epistemology starting with Hegel. Burton's conclusions aren't like drinking a pan-galactic gargle-blaster, but it's good to see them in more mainstream publications. What's most important about this article is that its giving us another example of how to be materialists and talk like materialists about very personal issues without feeling like something is really lost.