Epistemology, from basic to advanced

This talk by Richard Carrier sums up lots of relevant stuff, here's the transcript and resources.

## Intro

"Epistemology" is your theory of knowledge.  It's one of the main branches of philosophy.

It's about things like:

* How do you know what you know?
* How can you figure out things you don't know?
* How can you avoid false beliefs?
* What is "knowledge"?

Knowledge is based on experience, and can be helped by the application of Analytical Thought.

## Basics

So how do we know if something is true? Whether it's something we ourselves think, or something someone else says.

Roughly, I'd say, there are a few considerations to look at:

* semantics, concepts (what do the words mean, what are the concepts?)
* facts, evidence, probability
* logic

That is, you need to always get clear on what claim is being evaluated, what real-world experience and data is relevant and reliable, and what logically can be concluded from that real-world experience/data.

### **What the claim is, from semantics and concepts**

For now, see my page about what we mean when we refer to things, and how names for things work.

### **The relevant pieces of evidence, facts, data, probabilities**

Facts and data can be thought of as the experiences of people. An interpretation of an experience is separate from the experience itself. A report of an experience is also not the same as that experience (for example, people can lie about their experience, or interpret the experience incorrectly). (So it's important to have reliable sources for reports. A reliable source must not simply be sincere in what they say, because people can be mistaken. They must also have the knowledge and skill to avoid error.) Here's a link about Investigation, fact checking.

But there is basically never any belief or claim of fact that we can be 100% sure of. The best we can do is assign reasonable probabilities to our beliefs.

### **Logic**

Logic is basically a property of language and concepts. Understanding the meaning of language and concepts will help you get logic right. And learning more about logic will help you get language and concepts right. Here's an intro to syllogisms, here is a list of formal inference rules, and a taxonomy of fallacies. But there's lots more to learn.

## Advanced Epistemology

In situations that are less common in daily life, more complex, or more important, you'll want to start using some advanced epistemology.

### **Bayesian Epistemology**

Since all empirical knowledge is probabilistic, all correct correct empirical reasoning can be described by Bayes' Rule, a mathematical formula dealing with probabilities.

Video guides:

* Richard Carrier
* Julia Galef

Written guides:

* Richard Carrier
* Bayesian Reasoning - Explained Like You're Five by Satoshi\_Nakamoto
* Bayes' Theorem Illustrated (My Way) by komponisto

Tools:

* Bayesian calculator

### **Ultimate basis of knowledge**

If you ask "how do I know that?" about something, and then think of a reason, you can usually still ask the same question again "how do I know that reason is correct?". See "epistemological end game" for an exploration of this to find the real ultimate basis of discerning what's true.

## Epistemology in the world

Science, philosophy, ideologies, everyone has some kind of epistemology, whether good or not.

In order to correct people, it is often necessary or helpful to first correct their epistemology.

### **Epistemology as a value**

Epistemologies and related values can be culturally learned. It would be nice if we could spread values that made people tend towards correction. Such as:

* strong curiosity and good epistemology
* creating a "Just Culture" ("just" as in justice, fairness) for handling error
* valuing learning more than being right all along (this will even make you have less fear of admitting error):
	+ recognizing that learning happens all our lives, so we might be able to improve past what we currently think.  If so, wouldn't you want to?  The advantages to your own future are clear.
	+ Here's some tips from Julia Galef:  How to want to change your mind.
* it's ok to be unsure, to be unconvinced. On the other hand, discerning the truth is important

(and I think these could be used for conflict prevention, too)