Link to all Classes. Video Links: YouTube Twitter Rumble It still feels like I’m rushing things, but the videos are already a half hour. I can’t see your faces so it’s difficult to tell. Let me know about the tempo. I also said I could not think of a homework in the video. Well, I have.
On faith and being an idiot for believing things without evidence.
Do cells exist? Not only brain cells, but any kind of cell.
I have heard the argument that cells do not exist in vivo, in physiologically good conditions, but that they form as living tissue is damaged or decays. The analogy here is: when a plate or a dish falls and breaks, it breaks into pieces, but the pieces are not constitutive parts of it. And if you use glue to put all the pieces together, you don't have a plate, but something that looks like a plate, but is only pieces of glass or ceramic glued together.
Now, I have always believed, without evidence, that histology and cytology are true. But, after I looked into that, it turns out that both sciences assume the cell exists normally. So there is some circular resoning involved in all this.
I have never seen cells in vivo. Has anyone seen them? I mean cells in an actually functioning organ inside a living being.
Do medical doctors and biologists assume this on faith, or do they know this as a fact?
I don't think it's rational to argue: cytology explains the phenomena we see in living organs, so cells (the assumption of cytology) do exist.
Am I wrong in having faith, without evidence, that the brain is composed of cells?
If cells do not exist normally, as we are taught, all the science of physiology and all the science of pathology, and the accompanying philosophy of disease, have to be rethought.
Which is not a task for mathematics or probability, but these two branches of knowledge have something to say about rethinking.
Notice that I don't claim that diseases do not exist. But I have doubts that the current dominating idea that all disease starts in cells is a true proposition.
Also notice that I don't claim that we have to be able to see something (a cell) to say that it exists (although, if something exists and it's visible, it would be great to see it.) My claim is that the current model may be false if the argument I have presented is true: that cells appear or are formed as a consequence of a disease.
I disagree: I think diseases exist. I also think there is something else besides natural reality. I also think that people have always being abused by exaggerations about their physical conditions. This abuse has been mostly political. I also believe that most people cannot even begin to imagine that political power invents diseases all the time and haunts people with lies. Quackery is the province of Power, and individual quacks are merely poachers.
I also dispute the implicit slight to philosophy. In philosophy, you can get easily fooled with wrong notions like the non-existence of reality. But it is also philosophical thought the one who can dispel those errors. So philosophy is both a poison and a cure. And medical philosophy is probably mostly wrong, about everything, because doctors are in general not clear-thinkers and they are more interested in being right than in learning truth, and the thinkers who enter the field of "medical philosophy" have not seen wounds, disease, pain, suffering, deformities or death, much less normal physiology. And yet, medical philosophy is a field that can be useful in order to contribute to the multidisciplinary effort of ending the many errors of medical practice. The main problem of medical philosophy ***right now*** is that this field completely ignores economic thought. By questioning the existence of 'disease' you are engaging in medical philosophy, with the purpose of helping out.
In general, I think the approach of Dr. Cowan can be very beneficial to those who sell service as health practitioners, and those who seek to buy therapies, and that approach implies a change in language and vision of any disease process. He does not say 'diseases' don't exist in physical reality, but that each patient has a story, and the practitioner has to listen to that story to help the patient write the end. So, for example, if a man has an accident and loses his legs, and he 'has' depression and the wounds hurt even years after the accident, and pain medication does not help, maybe the patient needs a different perspective on why he has pain, rather than more surgery (which he may not be able to afford) or experimental treatments or the Kanadian National-Socialist approach to 'compassion'. Maybe, I speculate, the labor of most doctors is to help people write their own script.
And maybe it would be a good idea for doctors in general to stop scaring to death their patients, for the fun and profit of communist organizations, like insurance companies and banks. At the very least, if they want to continue prostituting themselves to power, they should ask for more money.
There is an illness. An illness is not a disease. What man suffers is different than what disease a patient gets diagnosed with by a physician some place some time for some purpose.
The meaning of a word depends on the context of a speaker, situation, and some purpose of this word. In any formal knowledge, such as understanding how medicine works, words an illness and disease are not synonyms. They are formal concepts that later can be analyzed and ordered to be increasingly programmed as data. Without such understanding how philosophy is the foundation of some kind of medical knowledge and practice, it is impossible to understand the use of statistics and how to use or avoid using medicine. You simply can’t know how to use it without understanding the meaning of words in context.
But you are confounding things here. In your first message to me you don't explain that you use the word 'disease' in a technical sense, but you seem to be using it as an everyday term.
Which sounds a lot like a tactic of rhetoric.
You and I agree that there is major fraud in medicine, and it's not a recent development. But I say that if a person actually has an illness or disease (as commonly understood) it's morally wrong to tell him that he doesn't. And if a person does not have an illness or disease, it's also morally wrong (perhaps even worse) to tell him that he does have it. That seems to be the the first step of this method of slavery.
And in the world we live in now, if a person has a real disease, and you have a cure, it may be impossible or even illegal for you to inform that hypothetical person.
Which is even worse than fraud. Censorship has killed more people than any virus.
Any person who believes that there is such thing as "homicide by failing to give assistance" should also be against any form of medical censorship for a comparable reason, including the subtle bludgeon of deplatforming and debanking.
If by 'existing as a philosophical concept" you mean it does not exist in reality, because philosophical concepts in general do not match to anything in reality, then you are wrong. I can give you a disease easily: drink too much beer. Your head will hurt. I warantee it will happen. Same effect with ingesting too much edculcorants or sweeteners. One argument goes that these substances sequester water and the resulting dehydration somehow produces pain. But, in any case, that pain is a disease, literally.
It will resolve on its own very fast. Maybe it will take a few hours. But probably you will survive. And you may learn to not drink too much beer.
But there is a metaphorical use of disease, which is thrown at people who have exactly zero pain. That should be a crime, in my opinion. You just don't tell a person 'you have a disease X and you will have pain X' or any other future symptom. Jinxing people is a bad action.
On the other hand, when people have discomfort, irritation, or some kind of unsual stuff going on on some part of the visible parts of their body, maybe it would be best to study if some kind of poison has harmed them, and inform them that their body is trying to get rid of the poison, and help them detoxify, a teaching that may include a change in habits and practices. But people wish for easy cures, like an antibiotic, which may really harm them internally, in some cases. And people are not informed of the risk and benefit balance.
In short, doctors act more as drug-pushers to willing customers, than as teachers of health or healing.
Perhaps a more time-consuming cure can help people learn, and time-saving cures enable people to continue hurting themselves. Isn't that philosophical?
What you described is some self inflicted suffering that is not a disease. In medicine, a disease is something that a physician diagnoses based on some set of agreed upon parameters (symptoms, numbers, etc) in some school of medicine for the purpose of medical treatment. A random drunk in pain does not “have” any “diseases” until he encounters a medical practitioner who transforms a drunk into a patient by the actions of assessment and diagnosing.
You and I agree that medical diagnoses are evil communist bullshit from hell, like public schooling and the income tax, all meant to confuse reason and make as many people as possible out of touch with virtue.
But you claim that diagnosis equals disease. I say they don't. A disease is real, a diagnosis is mere propaganda, or a hex, if you will.
The real reason why you confuse diagnosis and disease is one of these two: a) you are genuinely confused about the difference of the two terms, or b) you are taking too far a rhetorical technique to attract attention to your argument.
If a, I beg you consider the possibility that a disease is different from the errors of the doctors.
If b, you have to hone your rhetorical skills, and learn when to stop, lest you commit the fallacy of proving too much.
And let me repeat, sadly we see a lot of people living under the delusion that they have a disease, when they don't. They become enamored of their condition. That's an error they are making, and they may actually receive a lot of damage if they continue the farce. But we also have to realize that this type of malingerers are not autonomous, but marionettes in the hands of very evil people who hate normal human life. It is near impossible to help these people rebel against the fantasy that enslaves them by telling them that diseases and diagnoses are not real. This talk of the non-reality of disease is only useful with people with a tendency to rationalism, everyone else are impervious to it. And the people who want to be slaves are not rationalists, and the masters aren't either. They're thinking exists in a very far away province from rationalism.
When Thomas Szasz argued that people should bite the hand that feeds them when that hand is also poisoning them, he was talking about the difficulties in explaining reality to people who hate reality. I doubt that he had any rational hope in convincing any slave or master to stop their immoral actions. Rather, his rational hope was to make clear to other rationalists that it is best to be warned that these fantasies are harmful and persistent, and the strategy to defend oneself from these people is complex and requires some working knowledge of the reality of human moral slavery, how it starts and how it develops over time. But many rationalists are simply to naive and prefer to imagine that there is no such thing as evil. So they disregard the wise observations and advice of a true expert, and they will also end up taking pills, and repenting from doing that.
In my experience, logic has as much to do with science as it has religion or politics or any other human endeavour. Novel writing, music, or gold-mining.
That is to say, it is an occasional passenger but I have never met any person nor seen any human endeavour where it is driving.
I've heard of some but investigation has shown them to be mythological creatures, not amenable to capture and inspection.
Well you have my attention. Now I have to prepare a flowchart for myself and see if I fully understand what you wrote or whether I am just not smart enough.
Wait a second, maybe I just created my own Uncertainty and Probability experiment.
Thanks. Love this stuff. I wonder where/how you became interested in philosophy? In seven years of graduate school I cannot recall ever learning any of this. You know William, it was a real analysis, mathematical statistics (Shao … ugh) and the like. Really appreciate what you said about applying probability theory (necessary truth) to the real world (it’s now local truth) where we have problems like not knowing that your wife lied. That is what’s wrong with modern science. The application is full of local truths.
William, thank you for all this. 55 years ago I completed a degree in math and statistics but encountered nothing about philosophy. So I’m finding it all fascinating! And the pace is fine.
Love your content , *especially* the philosophy. Look forward to more. A few comments from my initial reaction..
1) A point where our views seem to diverge, that I've noticed before, regards belief as an act. I regard it as something that happens to me, but not something I directly do. I didn't choose or act to believe the world was round, it just happened. If I picked an issue on which I was undecided, I could do and act such as to examine evidence on both sides, and my belief might toggle back and forth as a result of that, but I'd be "doing" the evidence part and the belief part would just be "happening" to me.
2) In the example of "X=1 Y=1 hence X=Y", while I agree you couldn't enumerate all possibilities to check, why would you need to? That seems "deductively true" to me from the meaning of "=". Aren't you just expressing that something is itself? But I completely agree that at the bottom of thought rest axioms that can't be proven.
3) One concern I have with your definition of "faith" is it puts one who accepts the preconditions of thought and intelligence (law of non contradiction and other things) that can't be doubted (because doing so entails contradiction) in the same category as someone who believes they are a bird and can fly, or any number of infinite ad hoc possible beliefs. I consider it the goal of correct thinking to minimize the latter while keeping and building upon the former.
I also note on topics of both (2) and (3) you mention "can't be EMPIRICALLY proven". I wasn't sure if you were leaving room for "deductively proven" to apply differently, or just meant more generally "any sort of proof".
Having gone over your post (previously I had just watched the video), you seem to be setting up your foundational words quite a bit differently than I use them. I want to understand your points, so I'll work through it. Fortunately I have your book to help! For instance, in addition to not thinking of "belief" as an act, I regard it as mapping to the mental state of how certain someone is about a proposition. So it would range from 0 to 100% just like probability itself. And in the "rational / correct" case would match the probability "warranted by" the evidence. So I'd typically say we CAN have "knowledge" of uncertain things (probabilistic propositions), in that sense. I think this conflicts with your model. And I need to think through necessary vs contingent vs knowledge. I'll try to understand your system and restrict future comments to concise questions about its meaning. Look forward to the next one.
I say belief is an act , because beliefs are used as premises in Local Truths. And because we sometimes have to move from uncertainty to act. We must in these cases fill in missing premises with beliefs. This will make more sense when we get to decision analysis.
Yet you're right. My use of the language is a bit different than normal.
Thanks for response. You're "belief" seems to map to how I'd use "bet". I might be misrepresenting your position, but it sounds like you are reducing uncertainty in the premises / argument by moving it to "belief as act" -> "assume premise is true". But an alternative would be to keep the uncertainty explicit as part of the premises?? Just pondering, no need to respond, I look forward to digging in further!
Very inspirational class today.
On faith and being an idiot for believing things without evidence.
Do cells exist? Not only brain cells, but any kind of cell.
I have heard the argument that cells do not exist in vivo, in physiologically good conditions, but that they form as living tissue is damaged or decays. The analogy here is: when a plate or a dish falls and breaks, it breaks into pieces, but the pieces are not constitutive parts of it. And if you use glue to put all the pieces together, you don't have a plate, but something that looks like a plate, but is only pieces of glass or ceramic glued together.
Now, I have always believed, without evidence, that histology and cytology are true. But, after I looked into that, it turns out that both sciences assume the cell exists normally. So there is some circular resoning involved in all this.
I have never seen cells in vivo. Has anyone seen them? I mean cells in an actually functioning organ inside a living being.
Do medical doctors and biologists assume this on faith, or do they know this as a fact?
I don't think it's rational to argue: cytology explains the phenomena we see in living organs, so cells (the assumption of cytology) do exist.
Am I wrong in having faith, without evidence, that the brain is composed of cells?
If cells do not exist normally, as we are taught, all the science of physiology and all the science of pathology, and the accompanying philosophy of disease, have to be rethought.
Which is not a task for mathematics or probability, but these two branches of knowledge have something to say about rethinking.
Notice that I don't claim that diseases do not exist. But I have doubts that the current dominating idea that all disease starts in cells is a true proposition.
Also notice that I don't claim that we have to be able to see something (a cell) to say that it exists (although, if something exists and it's visible, it would be great to see it.) My claim is that the current model may be false if the argument I have presented is true: that cells appear or are formed as a consequence of a disease.
Is this claim wrong?
Disease is pure medical philosophy. It is not an occurrence in physical/natural reality.
https://open.substack.com/pub/medicalnemesis/p/jaws?r=fqn5o&utm_medium=ios
I disagree: I think diseases exist. I also think there is something else besides natural reality. I also think that people have always being abused by exaggerations about their physical conditions. This abuse has been mostly political. I also believe that most people cannot even begin to imagine that political power invents diseases all the time and haunts people with lies. Quackery is the province of Power, and individual quacks are merely poachers.
I also dispute the implicit slight to philosophy. In philosophy, you can get easily fooled with wrong notions like the non-existence of reality. But it is also philosophical thought the one who can dispel those errors. So philosophy is both a poison and a cure. And medical philosophy is probably mostly wrong, about everything, because doctors are in general not clear-thinkers and they are more interested in being right than in learning truth, and the thinkers who enter the field of "medical philosophy" have not seen wounds, disease, pain, suffering, deformities or death, much less normal physiology. And yet, medical philosophy is a field that can be useful in order to contribute to the multidisciplinary effort of ending the many errors of medical practice. The main problem of medical philosophy ***right now*** is that this field completely ignores economic thought. By questioning the existence of 'disease' you are engaging in medical philosophy, with the purpose of helping out.
In general, I think the approach of Dr. Cowan can be very beneficial to those who sell service as health practitioners, and those who seek to buy therapies, and that approach implies a change in language and vision of any disease process. He does not say 'diseases' don't exist in physical reality, but that each patient has a story, and the practitioner has to listen to that story to help the patient write the end. So, for example, if a man has an accident and loses his legs, and he 'has' depression and the wounds hurt even years after the accident, and pain medication does not help, maybe the patient needs a different perspective on why he has pain, rather than more surgery (which he may not be able to afford) or experimental treatments or the Kanadian National-Socialist approach to 'compassion'. Maybe, I speculate, the labor of most doctors is to help people write their own script.
And maybe it would be a good idea for doctors in general to stop scaring to death their patients, for the fun and profit of communist organizations, like insurance companies and banks. At the very least, if they want to continue prostituting themselves to power, they should ask for more money.
There is an illness. An illness is not a disease. What man suffers is different than what disease a patient gets diagnosed with by a physician some place some time for some purpose.
Why do you think that the term 'illness' is not a synonym of the term 'disease'?
The meaning of a word depends on the context of a speaker, situation, and some purpose of this word. In any formal knowledge, such as understanding how medicine works, words an illness and disease are not synonyms. They are formal concepts that later can be analyzed and ordered to be increasingly programmed as data. Without such understanding how philosophy is the foundation of some kind of medical knowledge and practice, it is impossible to understand the use of statistics and how to use or avoid using medicine. You simply can’t know how to use it without understanding the meaning of words in context.
But you are confounding things here. In your first message to me you don't explain that you use the word 'disease' in a technical sense, but you seem to be using it as an everyday term.
Which sounds a lot like a tactic of rhetoric.
You and I agree that there is major fraud in medicine, and it's not a recent development. But I say that if a person actually has an illness or disease (as commonly understood) it's morally wrong to tell him that he doesn't. And if a person does not have an illness or disease, it's also morally wrong (perhaps even worse) to tell him that he does have it. That seems to be the the first step of this method of slavery.
And in the world we live in now, if a person has a real disease, and you have a cure, it may be impossible or even illegal for you to inform that hypothetical person.
Which is even worse than fraud. Censorship has killed more people than any virus.
Any person who believes that there is such thing as "homicide by failing to give assistance" should also be against any form of medical censorship for a comparable reason, including the subtle bludgeon of deplatforming and debanking.
Disease “exists” as a philosophical concept. The word “disease” encoded in letters has a meaning that corresponds to something.
If by 'existing as a philosophical concept" you mean it does not exist in reality, because philosophical concepts in general do not match to anything in reality, then you are wrong. I can give you a disease easily: drink too much beer. Your head will hurt. I warantee it will happen. Same effect with ingesting too much edculcorants or sweeteners. One argument goes that these substances sequester water and the resulting dehydration somehow produces pain. But, in any case, that pain is a disease, literally.
It will resolve on its own very fast. Maybe it will take a few hours. But probably you will survive. And you may learn to not drink too much beer.
But there is a metaphorical use of disease, which is thrown at people who have exactly zero pain. That should be a crime, in my opinion. You just don't tell a person 'you have a disease X and you will have pain X' or any other future symptom. Jinxing people is a bad action.
On the other hand, when people have discomfort, irritation, or some kind of unsual stuff going on on some part of the visible parts of their body, maybe it would be best to study if some kind of poison has harmed them, and inform them that their body is trying to get rid of the poison, and help them detoxify, a teaching that may include a change in habits and practices. But people wish for easy cures, like an antibiotic, which may really harm them internally, in some cases. And people are not informed of the risk and benefit balance.
In short, doctors act more as drug-pushers to willing customers, than as teachers of health or healing.
Perhaps a more time-consuming cure can help people learn, and time-saving cures enable people to continue hurting themselves. Isn't that philosophical?
What you described is some self inflicted suffering that is not a disease. In medicine, a disease is something that a physician diagnoses based on some set of agreed upon parameters (symptoms, numbers, etc) in some school of medicine for the purpose of medical treatment. A random drunk in pain does not “have” any “diseases” until he encounters a medical practitioner who transforms a drunk into a patient by the actions of assessment and diagnosing.
We're getting somewhere here. Excellent.
You and I agree that medical diagnoses are evil communist bullshit from hell, like public schooling and the income tax, all meant to confuse reason and make as many people as possible out of touch with virtue.
But you claim that diagnosis equals disease. I say they don't. A disease is real, a diagnosis is mere propaganda, or a hex, if you will.
The real reason why you confuse diagnosis and disease is one of these two: a) you are genuinely confused about the difference of the two terms, or b) you are taking too far a rhetorical technique to attract attention to your argument.
If a, I beg you consider the possibility that a disease is different from the errors of the doctors.
If b, you have to hone your rhetorical skills, and learn when to stop, lest you commit the fallacy of proving too much.
And let me repeat, sadly we see a lot of people living under the delusion that they have a disease, when they don't. They become enamored of their condition. That's an error they are making, and they may actually receive a lot of damage if they continue the farce. But we also have to realize that this type of malingerers are not autonomous, but marionettes in the hands of very evil people who hate normal human life. It is near impossible to help these people rebel against the fantasy that enslaves them by telling them that diseases and diagnoses are not real. This talk of the non-reality of disease is only useful with people with a tendency to rationalism, everyone else are impervious to it. And the people who want to be slaves are not rationalists, and the masters aren't either. They're thinking exists in a very far away province from rationalism.
When Thomas Szasz argued that people should bite the hand that feeds them when that hand is also poisoning them, he was talking about the difficulties in explaining reality to people who hate reality. I doubt that he had any rational hope in convincing any slave or master to stop their immoral actions. Rather, his rational hope was to make clear to other rationalists that it is best to be warned that these fantasies are harmful and persistent, and the strategy to defend oneself from these people is complex and requires some working knowledge of the reality of human moral slavery, how it starts and how it develops over time. But many rationalists are simply to naive and prefer to imagine that there is no such thing as evil. So they disregard the wise observations and advice of a true expert, and they will also end up taking pills, and repenting from doing that.
In my experience, logic has as much to do with science as it has religion or politics or any other human endeavour. Novel writing, music, or gold-mining.
That is to say, it is an occasional passenger but I have never met any person nor seen any human endeavour where it is driving.
I've heard of some but investigation has shown them to be mythological creatures, not amenable to capture and inspection.
Well you have my attention. Now I have to prepare a flowchart for myself and see if I fully understand what you wrote or whether I am just not smart enough.
Wait a second, maybe I just created my own Uncertainty and Probability experiment.
William, please direct me to the course blog.
Sure (and the link should be at the very top of the post, under the picture), but it's https://www.wmbriggs.com/class/
Thanks. Love this stuff. I wonder where/how you became interested in philosophy? In seven years of graduate school I cannot recall ever learning any of this. You know William, it was a real analysis, mathematical statistics (Shao … ugh) and the like. Really appreciate what you said about applying probability theory (necessary truth) to the real world (it’s now local truth) where we have problems like not knowing that your wife lied. That is what’s wrong with modern science. The application is full of local truths.
Mostly after grad school, but a bit during, while reading Jaynes, which I got lucky to see because I started out in physics.
Took me several years of reading and thinking before I came to all this.
An excellent class professor! Thank you for putting in the effort to share your knowledge to us outside of academia.
My answer to the homework:
Necessary Truth:
p1 - Humans differ from each other
p2 - Some of these differences are considered valuable
p3 - Humans generally value what is actually valuable
1. Valuing properly benefits individuals and groups
2. Those who have received benefits from something are more capable of survival
3. Those who are more capable of survival will out-compete those who are less capable.
p4 - Those with valuable differences are valued for their differences, given a sane society
p5 - Those without valuable differences, or with negative differences, are not valued for their differences, given a sane society.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Those with valuable differences are more valuable than those without them.
This seems basic, but is utterly rejected and indeed reversed by the left.
Local truth:
p1 - My mother says I am a good person
p2 - I trust my mother
---------------------------------------------------------------
I am a good person.
Flesh that became data is incapable of discerning meaning because it is deprived of senses therefore sense.
William, thank you for all this. 55 years ago I completed a degree in math and statistics but encountered nothing about philosophy. So I’m finding it all fascinating! And the pace is fine.
Thanks, Allan.
Love your content , *especially* the philosophy. Look forward to more. A few comments from my initial reaction..
1) A point where our views seem to diverge, that I've noticed before, regards belief as an act. I regard it as something that happens to me, but not something I directly do. I didn't choose or act to believe the world was round, it just happened. If I picked an issue on which I was undecided, I could do and act such as to examine evidence on both sides, and my belief might toggle back and forth as a result of that, but I'd be "doing" the evidence part and the belief part would just be "happening" to me.
2) In the example of "X=1 Y=1 hence X=Y", while I agree you couldn't enumerate all possibilities to check, why would you need to? That seems "deductively true" to me from the meaning of "=". Aren't you just expressing that something is itself? But I completely agree that at the bottom of thought rest axioms that can't be proven.
3) One concern I have with your definition of "faith" is it puts one who accepts the preconditions of thought and intelligence (law of non contradiction and other things) that can't be doubted (because doing so entails contradiction) in the same category as someone who believes they are a bird and can fly, or any number of infinite ad hoc possible beliefs. I consider it the goal of correct thinking to minimize the latter while keeping and building upon the former.
I also note on topics of both (2) and (3) you mention "can't be EMPIRICALLY proven". I wasn't sure if you were leaving room for "deductively proven" to apply differently, or just meant more generally "any sort of proof".
Having gone over your post (previously I had just watched the video), you seem to be setting up your foundational words quite a bit differently than I use them. I want to understand your points, so I'll work through it. Fortunately I have your book to help! For instance, in addition to not thinking of "belief" as an act, I regard it as mapping to the mental state of how certain someone is about a proposition. So it would range from 0 to 100% just like probability itself. And in the "rational / correct" case would match the probability "warranted by" the evidence. So I'd typically say we CAN have "knowledge" of uncertain things (probabilistic propositions), in that sense. I think this conflicts with your model. And I need to think through necessary vs contingent vs knowledge. I'll try to understand your system and restrict future comments to concise questions about its meaning. Look forward to the next one.
aon,
I say belief is an act , because beliefs are used as premises in Local Truths. And because we sometimes have to move from uncertainty to act. We must in these cases fill in missing premises with beliefs. This will make more sense when we get to decision analysis.
Yet you're right. My use of the language is a bit different than normal.
Thanks.
Thanks for response. You're "belief" seems to map to how I'd use "bet". I might be misrepresenting your position, but it sounds like you are reducing uncertainty in the premises / argument by moving it to "belief as act" -> "assume premise is true". But an alternative would be to keep the uncertainty explicit as part of the premises?? Just pondering, no need to respond, I look forward to digging in further!