What is a Belief? Belief is often a hot topic and a word that is sometimes said with some distaste by many of us atheists. This SciPhi Short hopes to clear up any misconceptions about the word belief, provide a number of definitions, and give examples of how it is used. The SciPhi Shortz Video on Belief 00:00 – Intro 00:54 – Slideshow Starts 01:04 – Common misunderstandings of Belief 01:25 – What is a Belief? 01:51 – Something accepted…
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Evidence is often a hot topic, and one frequently misunderstood. I covered off a number of different types of evidence before in the post Dirty Words: Belief, Faith and Evidence and we have done a small podcast on the matter too BoPping to The Evidence. Even still, sometimes it is better to see if we can approach things in another way. As such, I present my first SciPhi Short. SciPhi Shortz? The idea of the SciPhi Shortz is a quick and informative video…
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The Rationality Thesis We take a look at the rationality thesis and delve into the rationality debate asking; are humans rational creatures that make performance errors or irrational creatures that sometimes demonstrate rationality? Dave talks about slides in this stream which you can find here: To Be or Not Be Rational – The Video This Podcast was from our Live Video Stream. If you prefer to watch than listen, check out the below: 00:00 – Intro 06:05 – Start of…
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We’ve covered a number of different articles about how ‘Words are funny things!‘ and can have multiple meanings. The word, know, is no different in this regard. As a word by itself or in a phrase can be used to describe a number of things. Knowledge Information Awareness Certainty/Uncertainty Therefore, it can be said that you know something but at the same time do not hold knowledge. This can indeed be confusing. What is Knowledge? There are many theories of…
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I’ve been trying to think of another way to explain beliefs as I still hear folks saying they are ‘absent of belief in regards to x’ or ‘have no beliefs’. Whilst I am sure they believe what they are saying, it makes me feel I have failed in my explanations. Rather than spray out the propositional logic or all the different definitions of a belief, I started thinking about how something like this might be represented in a database, perhaps…
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Knowledge and Certainty Tonight’s chapter continues from the last on ‘Propositional Logic and Beliefs‘ but can be taken as its own entity. Like our last chapter this is also available as a VIDEO, but for the listener we have a PDF with all the information provided in said video. So what’s included in tonight’s show? Theories of Knowledge Justified True Belief Coherence Theory Fallibilism Verificationism Positivism Colloquial Definitions (and their issues) What Counts as Justification? Examples of Justification Types of…
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Knowledge and Certainty Tonight’s chapter continues from the last on ‘Propositional Logic and Beliefs‘ but can be taken as its own entity. Like our last chapter this is also available as a AUDIO podcast, and we have a PDF with all the information provided in said video. So what’s included in tonight’s show? Theories of Knowledge Justified True Belief Coherence Theory Fallibilism Verificationism Positivism Colloquial Definitions (and their issues) What Counts as Justification? Examples of Justification Types of Certainty Psychological…
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Introduction When the word testimony is brought up most people’s minds will immediately be brought to a court room scene, or to someone bearing witness to some religious experience. A witness in the box stands in front of the court and gives their eyewitness testimony as part of the evidence for either the prosecution or defence. Testimony is more than that though, testimony is the act of one agent passing on information to another agent through a speech act alone. …
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A wander through the many Facebook groups, YouTube videos, and Twitter tweeters with atheism as their central subject matter will see many atheists and sceptics making the claim of being rational. One could also look at the ‘memeosphere’ centred around atheism and scepticism to see images making claims like ‘I am a sceptic/atheist because I am rational’, and other similar memes. What does it mean to be rational though? That is a rather large question, and involves many questions about…
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Just wanted to let y’all know that your latest episode literally increased my understanding of atheism/agnosticism. This better understanding will change how I present my position and how I interact with [sic]theist. Thanks!!….🤘🤘🤘🤘…
Joe/Davidian, You have a knack for breaking down things in a way that’s easy to read… and then offering a solution… all without coming across as condescending. Go get a degree in this and start teaching. You’d encourage so many students imo to get more invested in thinking. Hell, if you could get an animator or video producer, you could fit in with Paulogia, Viced Rhino and Rationality Rules….
