Topics Rationality

Question If you can't believe something as true that you think is false, then: can you believe something is true, and think that you are possibly wrong? If X believes P, can he also believe that it is possible that not P?

Accepted:
July 16, 2007

Comments

The American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce posed this question in a slightly different form when he expressed his belief that some (at least one) of his beliefs are false. Each of us has strong inductive evidence for the analogous belief -- we've all found ourselves compelled to give up a belief as false, and many times. So we have reason to expect that this will happen again. We have reason to believe that some of our beliefs will turn out to be (and thus are) false -- or, in any case, this is what nearly all of us actually believe.

This belief does not commit us to the conclusion that any of our beliefs may (turn out to) be false. But it does commit us to the conclusion that some of our beliefs may (turn out to) be false. To exemplify, take 15 modestly difficult geography questions: about ordering Australia, Brazil, and India by size of area, ordering Japan, Indonesia, and Vietnam by population, ordering Amazon, Mississippi-Missouri, and Nile by length, and so on. There may be two or three questions where you are completely certain of the answer, and another two or three where you are clueless. With regard to the remaining ten, say, you have a belief about what the right answer is, but you are also pretty sure that you won't score a perfect 10. With regard to those ten beliefs, then, you expect that one or more are false, though you don't know, of course, which ones.

Question If you can't believe something as true that you think is false, then: can you believe something is true, and think that you are possibly wrong? If X believes P, can he also believe that it is possible that not P? Accepted:July 16, 2007

Question If you can't believe something as true that you think is false, then: can you believe something is true, and think that you are possibly wrong? If X believes P, can he also believe that it is possible that not P?

Accepted:
July 16, 2007