Determining What’s True

Outline

Articulate the question at issue
Frame competing positions on the question
Formulate the arguments for and against the positions
Evaluate the arguments
Judge the epistemic status of the positions
- that is, whether the positions are certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, likely, an open question, doubtful, impossible

Questions should be expressed rather than merely referred to.
- For example
  - Has there been a rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature since the mid-20th century, due primarily to greenhouse gases injected into the atmosphere by human activity
    - versus
  - The question of global warming

It’s better to express a question in open-ended form, other things being equal.
- Closed-ended Questions
  - Is, Will, Was, Does, Did, Do, ……
- Open-ended Questions
  - Why, How, What, When, Where……
The reason is that closed-ended questions risk lumping different hypotheses together and conflating arguments.
Examples
- Beginning of Human Life
  - Does human life begin at conception?
    - Versus
  - When does human life begin?
- Existence of God
  - Does God exist?
    - Versus
  - What supernatural beings exist?
- Afterlife
  - Is there an afterlife?
    - Versus
  - What happens to you when you die?

For example, what happens to you when you die?
- You cease to exist, never to be conscious again
- You are reincarnated as a human, animal, or spirit
- You assume a different mode existence while retaining your sense of self
- You merge with the Divine

Kinds

A Deductive Argument is an argument from premises to a logical consequence.
- For example,
  - John Oliver is not eligible to be president because he’s not a natural-born U.S. citizen (and only natural-born U.S. citizens are eligible).
- View Deductive Arguments

An analogical argument is an inference from known similarities to a further similarity
- For example:
  - Your house will likely sell for about $400,000 because it’s very similar to three recently-sold houses nearby that sold for about that amount.

Other Examples

Afterlife
- Human beings lose consciousness when their brains are deprived of oxygen.
- When human beings die their brains are permanently deprived of oxygen, since blood no longer flows to the brain.
- Therefore, human beings permanently lose consciousness when they die.
Global Warming
- Earth is warming.
- The only plausible explanation of Earth’s warming is the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.
- The only plausible explanation of the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases is human activity.
- Therefore, the only plausible explanation for the Earth’s warming is the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases due to human activity.

The epistemic status of a position is the degree to which it’s supported by the arguments.
David Hume, 1758
- “In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of [probable] evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”

Basic Epistemic Statuses:

Fact-checkers rate claims true, false, misleading, and unsupported by evaluating the arguments pro and con.

The Claim
- Some people know things other than by rational argument, e.g. through faith, intuition, divine revelation, or mystical experience.
The Problem
- Knowing something through faith, intuition, divine revelation, or mystical experience requires that such ways of knowing are reliable sources of truth. But establishing reliability requires a rational argument.