Notes for 2/16/2026

2/18/2026
[Philosophy Club every Monday, 4-5 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave")]
[Bioethics Club: Mondays from 5:30pm-6:30pm in Leigh Hall 408]

Do you believe space aliens have visited Earth?
 Doxastic voluntarism: We choose our beliefs

Epistemic voluntarism: We choose whether or not to be rational



 There is some disagreement over the question of whether there can be degrees of belief or only degrees of confidence.

Some people think there can be cases of “in-between belief” while others think beliefs can shift depending on circumstances.

Some examples:

Do you believe in ghosts?

Do you believe that bridge is safe?



For our purposes, let’s assume that belief consists in an attitude toward a claim to take it as true.
Doxastic attitudes:

-    Belief
-    Disbelief
-    Suspension of judgment 
What is truth?
The most common account is the correspondence theory: A claim is true if it corresponds to the facts (accurately describes how things really are).

For purposes of this course, we’re going to assume the correspondence theory, but I encourage you to flag this as worthy of deeper investigation.

There is a difference between the question of whether a claim is true and the question of why we might think the claim is true.

This difference might seem unimportant, but it isn’t.

In particular, it allows us to ask about cases where we might be rational in believing a claim is true when it is really false.

We know cases of being blamelessly mistaken or misled exist.

This suggests that it is possible to be rational in believing a false claim (that you don’t know is false).

Many philosophers in history have thought that human rationality can be improved by appropriate methodologies. 
The “scientific method” is probably the best-known example.

We offer a course in critical thinking that also consists of methodologies to promote rationality and discourage irrationality.

Critical thinking can be summarized as the re-examination of thoughts (especially one’s own) with a view to assess the quality of those thoughts. (“Did I get this right?”)


A belief is rational when the weight of supporting reasons is greater than the weight of undermining (opposing) reasons.

If a claim is overall more supported than undermined, you should believe it. If the claim is overall more undermined than supported, you should disbelieve it. If the claim is neither more supported nor undermined, you should suspend judgment about it.



What, exactly are good reasons (from the standpoint of content) = evidence

Evidence = information that can be used in support of or opposition to a claim

Information is whatever is capable of being made into a premise of an argument.