You can believe that you have JTB knowledge, but at that point what we're talking about is no different than any justified belief we possess. After all, we don't hold beliefs that we consider false. I think you could even reasonably describe a "Reasonable Belief" as one in which we ought to believe is justified and true, or to say it differently, that we believe is JTB knowledge.

The difference comes in terms of how we view a belief that is false. Under a JTB conception of knowledge, we usually say that someone can't actually know something that is false. While you can believe that you know that the Earth is flat, you can't actually know it because it's round. Under a Reasonable Belief paradigm, you can have a reasonable but incorrect belief. If someone believes something that's incorrect because they've got deficient evidence, that doesn't make their belief unreasonable.

What makes something unreasonable is if the justification we use to construct that belief isn't logically sound. For instance, cherrypicking evidence to support a belief is logically fallacious, so any belief that's supported based on cherrypicked evidence is unreasonable. This is the case even if the belief is true: coming to the correct conclusion doesn't mean we used logically sound methods to arrive at that conclusion. The difference between being taught something that's based on cherrypicked evidence and doing the cherrypicking yourself is that in the former case, you don't have the evidence necessary to tell that there's cherrypicking happening. That said, if we're aware that evidence and teaching can be flawed then we logically ought to check our sources. We should understand how our sources constructed their beliefs, as much as possible, and grant credence or disbelief to those sources appropriately.

Different people ought to come to different conclusions about a belief if they start with different evidence or different premises. Conspiratorial thinking is what renders a belief unreasonable, not the conclusions it generates.

The last paragraph is what I disagree with. Suppose that there's a truth value to X, but that truth value us inaccessible to Alice and Bob. We as outside observers can state whether Alice or Bob has knowledge, but that observation isn't relevant to the mental processes of Alice and Bob. We can say "they both believe they have knowledge", but that isn't particularly interesting.

Suppose that Alice has access to evidence {A, B} and Bob has access to evidence {B, C}. If {A, B} ⇒ X and {B, C} ⇒ ¬X, stating that both of their beliefs is reasonable says more than "both of these people hold beliefs", it says that both people hold the best beliefs that can be constructed on the basis of their evidence. It would be unreasonable for Alice to believe ¬X or for Bob to believe X.

Suppose, furthermore, that {A, B, C} ⇒ X, but ¬X is ultimately true. If Bob gains access to A, he ought to believe X, and X would be the reasonable belief for the premises he holds. Saying that Bob knew ¬X and lost that knowledge when he changed his belief centers our assessment of Bob's mental processes on the wrong thing: what Bob should be concerned with is what conclusions he can draw on the basis of his available evidence, and we should concern ourselves similarly with the best conclusions that can be drawn from Bob's reference point, not from the reference point of an outside observer.

Perhaps another way of stating this would be to say that Bob ought to believe he knows X as a result of {A, B, C}, and that whether he knows X (or that he cannot know X because ¬X is true) is irrelevant.

For strong skeptical confrontations of knowledge, it's not a question of whether we can be certain but of whether we can actually be justified in stating that many of our core beliefs are true. Either we run into infinite regress or into things for which we don't have a solid basis for stating truthfulness for, such as that our senses are a reasonable basis for knowledge or that our memories have a degree of reliability. Moving from a position of knowledge to a position of reasonability allows for forms of justification that are rooted neither in truth nor in cohesion, which is what I'm trying to present in this paper. (Admittedly, I may not be doing a very good job in doing so!)

Beyond that, we can believe anything is knowledge, regardless of whether it actually is. I can believe I possess knowledge even if my premises are not knowledge, but at least for externalist conceptions of knowledge like JTB this is not generally considered to constitute "knowledge" in the philosophical sense.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to abstain from forming a belief, but I think there's plenty of situations in which it's reasonable to form beliefs even in absence of proof.

This is the case in many ordinary situations. Suppose I meet a couple and they tell me they're married. They wear wedding rings and act like a couple. I can't prove that they're married, but I have a substantial amount of evidence suggesting it's the case and no counter evidence. There are plenty of scenarios I could concoct which could be unprovable, such as that they're foreign spies or visiting aliens with a sham marriage as part of their cover story.

I don't encounter these scenarios and abstain from drawing conclusions on the basis of their unprovability: I construct beliefs on the basis of a preponderance of evidence. Colloquially, I might even say "I know they're married", even if I can't prove true belief.

I think a major difference between math and everyday epistemology is that the vast majority of math I encounter is provable, while the vast majority of everyday "knowledge" is premised on things that are not.

Questions of realism or moral hazard aside, Bentham can donate his $10 to charity and do far more good than he would by preventing some degenerate deontologist from cutting off his finger. If Bentham is a committed utilitarian who believes in taking actions at every turn to maximize utility and has not given that money away already, it's because he ascribes significant moral value to keeping it.

I think there's space for an everyday sort of knowledge if we define it as "beliefs in which I'm highly certain, and for which I'm highly certain I will not encounter contrary evidence." That feels like it falls far short of the general philosophical constructions of knowledge, though. For instance, under that sort of construct I can "know" things that are false, or know things that are contrary to my other beliefs. It's a useful shorthand, but not the same thing as the Knowledge of Descartes, Russell, or Goldman. It's a far cry removed from JTB, in any case.

There's people that subjectively have no doubt that the world is flat. Does that mean they have knowledge that the world is flat? Similarly, I have had dreams in which I've had zero subjective doubt that what I'm experiencing is reality. Does that mean I know my dreams to be reality? I don't think these sorts of edge cases are a problem for a colloquial knowledge-as-strong-belief sort of a construction, but I think they speak to its frailty as a philosophical construct.

I would define "reasonable" as the conclusions you come to that you subjectively feel to be most logical. These may not actually be logically sound, but we have to make do with the best we're capable of. If there's better logic out there that I don't have access to, it's irrelevant to me when I ask the question of what I ought to believe.

The caveat here is that I'm premising that statement on the notion that said logic is inaccessible. If I gain access to new logic, it would be unreasonable for me to discard it out of hand because it disagrees with my conclusions. This applies to most conspiracy theorists: they aren't unreasonable because they've come to false conclusions, they're unreasonable because they've supported their false conclusions on the basis of cherrypicked and/or fabricated evidence that's extensively contradicted. Ignoring those contradictions and ignoring the baseless construction of those beliefs is what renders them unreasonable.

If someone believes the Earth is flat because they're a child in an isolated community that's been told by trusted teachers and parents that the Earth is flat, they're reasonable in holding that belief. If someone is insistent in believing the Earth is flat when confronted with the mountains of counter-evidence and thousand year old proofs of its roundness, those same beliefs are no longer reasonable.

My central tenet for justified belief is basically this: that the evidence we have (e.g. sensory or memory evidence) is a reasonable basis for belief.

This isn't because I think we can argue that the evidence is true, but because we don't have an alternate basis for logically interacting with the world. Our evidence is singular, and we can either accept it with some degree of doubt or we have no basis whatsoever. If we were to accept a skeptical hypothesis instead, then we would have to logically conclude that we have no evidence of the external world and no means of logically interacting with it. I don't know that my evidence is true or accurate (and in fact have good reason to think that at least some of it is untrue), but it's more reasonable for me to accept it ceteris paribus than it is to reject it.

For definitions of knowledge, I would recommend looking up knowledge in a philosophical source, such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. JTB is far from the only definition of knowledge, but it's the core of externalist conceptions of knowledge, which are generally more popular than internalist ones (which have their own issues, such as lack of grounding to reality or the possibility of false knowledge). I stuck with JTB because it's the simplest version and I didn't want to devote 50 pages to different forms of knowledge in this paper.

The clock problem itself comes from Russell's "Human Knowledge" and has been discussed fairly extensively as a proto-Gettier problem, largely as a criticism of JTB.

I think the pull of truth is what motivates Norman's introspection: what he ultimately desires is a true belief, not one which is coherent. At each step, he assesses the evidence in light of that goal, and constructs the belief that is the most reasonable approximation he can make of the truth.

Irrespective of knowledge, it feels correct to say that Norman had a reasonable belief the the president was in Florida until he got more evidence. It also makes sense for Norman to characterize his beliefs as reasonable without the need to invoke an outside observer. That belief is grounded in truth as a goal, but ultimately independent of the actual facts in the matter.

Suppose we say that Norman is actually a brain in a vat, and that the president was a figment constructed by alien epistemologists experimenting on his perception. This doesn't and can't change his beliefs since it doesn't alter his evidence: his beliefs are still reasonable since they're the best approximation of truth he's capable of constructing. Norman can never say for sure if any evidence he gets is actually indicative of the truth, but he's still capable of engaging rationally with his evidence in an attempt to seek it out.

Do you think it's possible to state that some of our beliefs are logical and well founded, even in absence of true knowing?

When you state that you "agree to the notion that we can't ever truly know something", that's the crux of why I want to discuss reasonable belief. I agree with that statement, but think we can nonetheless offer a solid basis for belief. If we can't try know things, then using the term "knowledge" for those beliefs feels hollow.

As a less skeptical example, suppose I have a clock that says it's 2:00 PM, but unbeknownst to me my clock stopped fifteen minutes ago and the time is inaccurate. It doesn't make any sense for me to say that I know that it's 2:00, given that it is not in fact 2:00, but I can state that I have a reasonable belief since I don't have any evidence that my belief is inaccurate. Now, I also have a reasonable belief that clocks in general can be wrong; if it's absolutely critical that I know what time it is I should therefore make sure I'm not reliant on that clock as my sole source of information. I can discuss all of this under the umbrella of "reasonable belief" without issue, but can't really do the same from a position of knowledge.

The question I would ask is: "Can Norman describe his belief as knowledge?" We can do so in this scenario, but only because of our position as an omniscient outsider. Norman does not have that sort of privileged information.

The relevant question for Norman is what he ought to believe on the basis of the evidence he has. He's got his clairvoyant feelings and some other conflicting external evidence. He can give credence to one or both of those and construct a belief appropriately, which he'll likely do on the basis of other beliefs. In this case, the most reasonable belief in absence of other supporting beliefs (supposing Norman values his clairvoyance) is perhaps a middle position: the President is either in New York or the president is in Florida.

On the other hand, if Norman possesses an evidence-based belief that clairvoyance is impossible, he might dismiss his clairvoyant feelings and conclude that the president is in Florida. Norman would possess a reasonable belief in this case, even if his manifest clairvoyance was in fact accurate. If Norman were to gain additional evidence that the president was in fact in New York (such as a first-hand sighting), he'd be reasonable in revising that belief and in giving more credence to further clairvoyant experiences.

We can categorize Norman's belief as knowledge or non-knowledge in all of these scenarios based on privileged information, but Norman cannot, and Norman's case represents the baseline we should consider when assessing our own beliefs. We can't say if our beliefs amount to knowledge since we aren't omniscient, but we can say if they're reasonable.

The problem is that if we accept the possibility that we're brains in jars, the vast majority of our information becomes unprovable. I can't disprove the strong skeptical hypothesis, therefore I can't know anything that would be disproven by the strong skeptical hypothesis. Either we have to accept that we have minimal knowledge or we need a conceptualization of "knowledge" that gets around strong skepticism. If we accept the former, we need some other epistemological basis to describe the majority of what we would like to say we "know".

I don't think it's an either/or between belief and knowledge. After all, anything I know is also something I believe. When I say "I possess knowledge" about a topic, I'm describing my belief in some manner. Definitions for knowledge vary, but generally they contain some element of "I have justification for my belief", as well as other things.

What I'm proposing here is that we can have solid justification for holding a belief even in absence of knowledge or proof that the belief is true. On the brain in a jar scenario, I'd say that I can't disprove the hypothesis but that I don't have justification for believing that hypothesis. Between the positions of belief and disbelief, I think that the reasonable position here is disbelief.

If I premise other beliefs on this non-knowledge disbelief of strong skepticism, I'd similarly say those beliefs are not knowledge, but nor are they just things that I happen to believe. They're "reasonable beliefs": the most reasonable positions I can take given the evidence I have, even if I don't possess knowledge.

I wrote this more aimed at the skepticism of "you are a brain in a vat" than with criticism of more grounded ideas. Neither internalist nor externalist constructions of knowledge feel, to me, like they really have teeth when confronting strong skepticism for fundamental beliefs.

For me, I think skepticism is ultimately correct when it says "you don't know that your senses describe reality", but I think I can also make the claim that it would be unreasonable for me to disbelieve my perception of reality, which is what I'm trying to argue here.

Beyond that, 90% of epistemology feels like word games that don't really change anything, including my work, so I agree with you there. Russel probably has the right approach in just brushing skepticism aside and getting on with more interesting work. There's a substrata of beliefs that we need to accept to meaningfully engage with the world, and whether we just accept them axiomatically or struggle to construct a framework for accepting them on other grounds is generally irrelevant. I personally find the axiomatic approach unsatisfying, and think that a framework that can provide those foundational answers can also be useful more generally.

I think truth is the objective of reasonable belief. We can't state that our beliefs are true, but we desire them to be true, which forms the primary motivator of improving our epistemological mechanisms.

I think the problem with coherentism is that it lacks that tie. If I can construct a coherent set of beliefs that I am a brain in a vat, why is that belief set worse than one which believes in my perceived reality? I don't think we can state from a position of pure coherentism why that would be the case. However, I think the argument that it's less reasonable to take a position that denies available evidence than one which accepts available evidence is a reasonable one. Even without being able to describe the likelihood that those foundational beliefs are true, the singularity of evidence in the form of senses and memories gives us only a single point to build off of if we'd like to construct beliefs about the outside world. This also addresses conspiracy theories in a less direct manner: in order to believe a conspiracy theory we generally need to be extremely epistemologically sloppy and disbelieve a lot of available evidence. If we anchor ourselves with the belief that evidence should be taken as reasonable in absence of counter-evidence, denying that evidence to believe a conspiracy is much more difficult.

This is a topic I've been thinking about for a while: the notion that if we can identify beliefs that we ought to hold, we can utilize them in a knowledge-like matter even if they fall short of being knowledge themselves. Furthermore, if we can state with some degree of certainty that our beliefs are the ones that we ought to hold, whether or not they are knowledge is far less relevant.

This is also my first go at writing and sharing philosophy; I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

If it's possible for a particle to both exist and not exist or to be in multiple positions at once, then those things are not contradictory propositions, even though they intuitively appear to be. Fundamentally, the principle of non contradiction describes logic, and not subatomic particles.

Epigenetics are still structure that could theoretically be replicated.

Talk of replication is hypothetical: we're very far from that level of precise control. It's not theoretically impossible, though, to have something that's a functional replica down to the level of individual proteins. The same is true for neural impulses: no matter how subtle and sublime they may be, they're ultimately chemical/electrical signals that could be precisely replicated with suitably advanced technology. For a brain in a vat, there is no difference between a real touch from a lover and the simulated equivalent, so long as all input is the same.

We can't say whether a 'replicant' (for lack of a better term) would be conscious, but we're also fundamentally unable to demonstrate that other humans are conscious, beyond asking them and trusting their responses.

The replicant wouldn't be devoid of attachment and interpersonal connection, either. If we're replicating the environmental inputs, that would all be part of the simulation. Supposing we can do all that, and that a brain thinks it has lived a normal life and had a normal childhood, why should we expect different outputs because the environment is simulated and not based on input from organic sensory organs?

I think this conflates the way that humans and other animals grow with what is possible. Cats use light to calibrate their rods and cones, but there's no reason that calibration shouldn't be possible in the absence of light. Replicate the structure and you replicate the function.

Does the visual cortex need stimulus to grow? Sure, but there's no reason that can't be simulated in absence of actual light. The visual cortex ultimately receives electrical signals from the optical nerve: replicate the electrical signals correctly and the cortex will grow as it usually does.

That's a bit beyond our current capabilities, but not theoretically impossible. We've done direct interfaces from non-biological optical sensors to the optical nerve, and we could in theory improve that interface technology to provide the same level of stimulation an eye would. If we can do it with a camera, we could input a virtual world using the same technology. Put those same cats in a virtual world and their brains will develop in a similar manner to if they had access to light, even if their eyes are removed entirely.

A brain might die without stimulus, but we can swap out the entire body and still provide stimulus through artificial nerves projecting sensory information that describes an artificial world. There's no difference to the functioning of the brain in terms of whether the stimulus is natural or not, and if the stimulus is the same (in terms of both electrical and chemical/hormonal elements), development will be the same.

If I grow a bunch of human organs, brain parts and whatnot in a lab and put them together into an artificial human, would I then not expect consciousness because of how the structures emerged? It seems most intuitive that, if I compose a physical structure that is the same as a naturally grown human body and functions in the same way, that the brain and mind of that entity would be the same as a "natural" human.

I can extrapolate, then, and ask what happens if I start replacing organic components with mechanical ones. Is it still conscious if it has one fully mechanical limb? How about all mechanical limbs? What if I similarly take out part of the brain and replace it with a mechanical equivalent?

I think a certain degree of wealth-based hierarchy is unavoidable, but there's an inverse relationship between income inequality and happiness that's been documented in numerous studies. Part of our nature as biological beings seems to be a strong negative reaction to what we perceive as unfairness.

While that's a nice ideal, I think in reality wealth has more to do with how wealthy your parents were than it does with personal competence. The best way to make money is to have money, and being gifted a down payment on a house and a debt-free college education sets you on a radically different trajectory in terms of earning prospects.