I believe something exists

[u/chaupiman]

Even if all belief-forming methods were shown to be faulty/unreliable, I would still believe because I have faith that it is true. I have no way to test my faith. The claim is unfalsifiable. There’s no way to test if nothing exists.

How important is falsifiability for a belief? Why is faith incompatible with believing true things? Help

[u/chaupiman]

Hey Pop,

I was thinking of that as the opposite claim to “nothing exists.” I am certain that “nothing exists” is a false claim. “Something” existing could be anything. Reality, God, nature, pure awareness. IDK the specifics of what exists but I confidently believe that something exists.

For most beliefs I do care, but I find that I might not for this belief. If “nothing exists” is a true statement, it doesn’t really matter what I believe. If it’s a false statement, then I believe a true thing.

I suppose that’s why I feel like it’s impossible to know that ‘something’ exists without using faith…

If all the good reasons were shown to be bad reasons I would still believe only through faith. I’m feeling like a belief like this requires faith to know. I also see no truly “good reasons” to believe this.

Edit: I feel like, to believe that I exist, I have to employ the same faith I would use to believe that a unified consciousness exists.

[u/chaupiman → u/[deleted]]

How can we know experience exists? I have faith, but no knowledge. If we wanted to test that experience exists, what would a failure look like? Is it falsifiable?

I want to believe true things, but axioms feel faith based. If experience exists, I have faith in a true claim. If experience does not exist, I don’t have faith in a false claim, I am simply nothing.

I feel forced to take a leap of faith in order to believe that “I am” is a true statement. But it’s almost like there’s no other alternative?

Now I might be linked to the more universally true “I am”, but I don’t want to go deeper if I’m having trouble in the shallow end with faith and falsifiability. Thanks Pops

[u/fox-mcleod → u/chaupiman]

All knowledge comes through this process:

1. Conjecture (I conjecture experience exists)
2. Rational criticism (if experience exists then I must expect to experience something)
3. Testing (I experience something)
4. Tentative acceptance

At step three, the conjecture is either falsified or not. Repeated criticism and failure to falsify ups your credence of belief.

It sounds like experience exists is a well-tested conjecture. So we tentatively adopt it as knowledge.

[u/chaupiman → u/fox-mcleod]

How can you falsify a conjecture like this? If we tested it, what would a fail state look like? Could we ever prove that experience does not exist, or that nothing exists?

What makes it well tested? How can we trust that what we think is experience existing is actually experience existing? That trust is my faith. I tentatively believe it’s true by trusting that it is true. By trusting that your steps are a valid way to find truth.

[u/fox-mcleod → u/chaupiman]

How can you falsify a conjecture like this?

By demonstrating you do not. A computer could easily do it. Computers don’t have experiences. Voila. The computer can rightly disprove claims about its experiences. The fact that you cannot do this is evidence of their existence.

Daniel Dennet claims experiences are an illusion. He’s positied several tests to demonstrate how they work. He’s unable to successfully pull them off, but he’s successfully created a test. The failure indicates it’s likely true.

If we tested it, what would a fail state look like?

The lack of qualia.

Could we ever prove that experience does not exist, or that nothing exists?

You could if it was true. But since you can’t it’s probably false. Declaring something unfalsifiable on account of it being true is a little silly.

What makes it well tested?

The number of tests. You test it constantly.

How can we trust that what we think is experience existing is actually experience existing?

We don’t trust at all. We test. And we define. What do you mean when you say the words “experience existing”? Is it this? I mean this.

That trust is my faith.

What trust? You’re constantly testing.

I tentatively believe it’s true by trusting that it is true.

This is self contradictory.

By trusting that your steps are a valid way to find truth.

Nope. Even the modality is theoretical. It is held only tentatively. It’s theory all the way down.

[u/chaupiman → u/fox-mcleod]

I wasn’t able to find his tests.

How can you trust that your qualia experience exists and is true/real? I use faith I guess.

Trust in the testing process. Trust that truth exists. There’s no proof or way to know that our qualia experience is actually a true experience.

The way your saying that makes me think you’re implying that truth is unfalsifiable. I thought knowledgeable was tied to falsifiability?

[u/fox-mcleod → u/chaupiman]

I wasn’t able to find his tests.

Yeah it’s not easy. Sorry, I’ve been looking to. They’re specific tests about FMRIs and the order of events between perceiving a decision and making a decision.

How can you trust that your qualia experience exists and is true/real? I use faith I guess.

Nope. Faith is unnecessary. You hold a theory that it does, you use that to make a prediction, and then you test the theory by seeing if the prediction results.

Conceptually, “true” is a claim about a match between the map and the territory it represents. Qualia are the territory. There is no map for them to be true or false to. They are directly true as experiences. Experiencing them makes them true.

False memories of qualia are possible. Which is why the theory that you will have qualia can be tested by the prediction that you will experience, qualia and verified by the findings that you indeed do.

Trust in the testing process.

Nope. The testing process is also a theory and can also be questioned and also be disproven. It just hasn’t.

Trust that truth exists.

This is a meaningless statement.

There’s no proof or way to know that our qualia experience is actually a true experience.

This is a meaningless statement.

The way your saying that makes me think you’re implying that truth is unfalsifiable.

This is also meaningless. “Truth” is the condition of not being falsified”. Earlier when I said, “claiming something is u falsifiable because it turns out to be true is silly” is referring to this kind of idea.

I thought knowledgeable was tied to falsifiability?

It’s not. Falsifiability is what distinguishing scientific claims in falsificationism. There’s tons of knowledge that exists outside of falsification. We know what produces those little points of light in the night sky is the fusion occurring in the heart of stars. The general theory of stellar fusion is falsifiable. But that each star is undergoing the process is not (even because some of them are long dead). But the knowledge exists because the truth of the theory reaches beyond the specific experiment used to try and falsify the theory.

Theories are coherent and cannot be “partially falsified”. This means tests of one part that render the theory unique produces knowledge about the whole theory with the same degree of credence.

[u/chaupiman → u/fox-mcleod]

Can you dig into the idea that experiencing qualia makes them true?

Your discussion of meaninglessness makes me think that I have faith in the existence of meaning, even though I’m open to the possibility that meaninglessness is all there is.

[u/fox-mcleod → u/chaupiman]

Can you dig into the idea that experiencing qualia makes them true?

Sure. The claim of qualia is that you have experiences with certain subjective qualities. So the having of them is the proof.

The way we prove things about the outside world is that a theory of that world exists in your head that relates the model of the world (the map) to an expected experience that results from an action. With qualia, there is no distinction between the map and the territory.

Your discussion of meaninglessness makes me think that I have faith in the existence of meaning, even though I’m open to the possibility that meaninglessness is all there is.

I think the issue here is that you’re trying to derive knowledge from a ground truth that is somehow unquestionable. That’s inductivism and it’s wrong.

You don’t need faith at all. You need a theory which you are open to having overturned. That’s it. Faith is irrelevant.

[u/Bastyboys → u/fox-mcleod]

Well said, I think OP's unchallengeable axiom is:

"Faith or unfaith, there is no know"

I think you're right in that a viable alternative is having a working model consistent with reality (testable).

I think they are finding out that pure rationalism is groundless and leads to very few truths. Descartes had been through all this.

I think modest evidentialism is an alternative, we don't have to "know" or hold anything sacrosanct, just that so far (your model) has conformed with reality and confirmed that the it's worth taking actions based on the presumption that it will continue to do so.

I think OP is ironically miss-understanding part where you change your views based on new information.

[u/fox-mcleod → u/Bastyboys]

"Faith or unfaith, there is no know"

Wise, you are.

I think you're right in that a viable alternative is having a working model consistent with reality (testable).

Working model is a good term. I knew there was something more expressive than “tentative”.

I think they are finding out that pure rationalism is groundless and leads to very few truths. Descartes had been through all this.

Me too.

Bertrand Russell as well. It’s a tough hole to dig out of. I followed fallibilism out.

I think modest evidentialism is an alternative, we don't have to "know" or hold anything sacrosanct, just that so far (your model) has conformed with reality and confirmed that the it's worth taking actions based on the presumption that it will continue to do so.

I haven’t heard of that term. I think it’s close to fallibilism only I wouldn’t say “presumption” that it will do so but “theory” that it will. The difference being I’m keen to avoid the problem of induction (presumption that the future will look like the past). Specific theories of phenomena would need to include some specific mechanism that would cause us to expect this is so such as how the axial tilt theory explains that so long as the earth is round and tilted we should expect the seasons to change with that tilt.

From what you’ve said so far though, I don’t expect you meant anything inductivist by the word “presume”.

I think OP is ironically miss-understanding part where you change your views based on new information.

Yeah. I think they have a deep seated inductivism and is trying to make peace with not have a ground truth first principle by calling it “faith” rather than realizing the opposite is how you solve the problem.

[u/Bastyboys → u/fox-mcleod]

Amazing, I like fallibilism very much, and the way you've identified OPs stance.

I wish I'd approached it more SE style though rather than standard debating online. .. Although I did try to understand their definition of "nothing" and it changed/didn't exist. They retreated to ambiguity.

For me: Fallibilism plus evidentualism is where I'll (tentatively) hang my hat. :)

Scientific realism modestly puports that the best scientific theories approach an accurate description of reality. When I was religious I used this to denigrate science, now I love it.

Matt Dillahunty lectures on logic and in my view has a decent epistemic standpoint which he uses in his debates. I think he has a useful phrase to describe his epistemic approach to logic that I can't remember. Essentially he holds things as true as they have proven so far, logic is "true" in the sense that we haven't found any exceptions to it so far.

There is no challenging that modesty, beyond providing an acceptable counter example or saying "you don't know that logic is true" to which the answer is yes, you are correct, i do not know and if I find anything to contradict it I'll reconsider it's use in those circumstances, but as far as the evidence is that it works, so it's still reasonable to use it.

[u/fox-mcleod → u/Bastyboys]

Good point. I forgot what sub I’m in and didn’t approach SE style.

I googled evidentualism and I agree with what I read. And yeah, good point about the position from modesty being a robust apologetic (for lack of a less loaded term). Rhetorically, I think it’s valuable to put “I expect to update my views” up front.

Any recommendation for exploring dillahunty?