Let us suppose that there is pirate treasure on an island. I have a map to the treasure, which I inherited from my mother. You have a different map to the same treasure that you inherited from your mother. Our mothers are typical flawed humans. Our maps are typical flawed pirate maps.
Because I have the map I have, I believe that the treasure is over here. The non-epistemic generator of that belief is who my mother was. If I had a different mother I would have a different map and a different belief. Your map says the treasure is over there.
To find the treasure, I follow my map. An outsider notices that I am following a map that I know I am only following for non-epistemic reasons and that I have Moorean confusion. Perhaps so. But I cannot follow your map, because I don’t have it. So it’s best to follow my map.
If we shared our maps perhaps we could find the treasure more quickly and split it between us. But maybe it is hard to share the map. Maybe I don’t trust you not to defect. Maybe it is a zero-sum treasure. In pirate stories it is rarely so simple.
Similarly, Alice is a committed Christian and knows this is because she was raised to be Christian. If she was raised Muslim she would be a committed Muslim, and she knows this too. But her Christian “map” is really good and her Muslim “map” is a sketch from an hour long world religions class taught by a Confucian. It’s rational to continue to use her Christian map even if the evidence indicates that Islam has higher probability of truth.
I anticipate the reply that Alice can by all means follow her Christian map as long as it is the most useful map she had, but she should not mistake the map for the territory. This is an excellent thought. It is also thousands of years old and already part of Alice’s map.
Many of my beliefs have the non-epistemic generator “I was bored one afternoon (and started reading LessWrong)”. It is very easy to recognize the non-epistemic generator of my belief and also have it. My confusion is how anyone could not recognize the same thing.
Let us suppose that there is pirate treasure on an island. I have a map to the treasure, which I inherited from my mother. You have a different map to the same treasure that you inherited from your mother. Our mothers are typical flawed humans. Our maps are typical flawed pirate maps.
Because I have the map I have, I believe that the treasure is over here. The non-epistemic generator of that belief is who my mother was. If I had a different mother I would have a different map and a different belief. Your map says the treasure is over there.
To find the treasure, I follow my map. An outsider notices that I am following a map that I know I am only following for non-epistemic reasons and that I have Moorean confusion. Perhaps so. But I cannot follow your map, because I don’t have it. So it’s best to follow my map.
If we shared our maps perhaps we could find the treasure more quickly and split it between us. But maybe it is hard to share the map. Maybe I don’t trust you not to defect. Maybe it is a zero-sum treasure. In pirate stories it is rarely so simple.
Similarly, Alice is a committed Christian and knows this is because she was raised to be Christian. If she was raised Muslim she would be a committed Muslim, and she knows this too. But her Christian “map” is really good and her Muslim “map” is a sketch from an hour long world religions class taught by a Confucian. It’s rational to continue to use her Christian map even if the evidence indicates that Islam has higher probability of truth.
I anticipate the reply that Alice can by all means follow her Christian map as long as it is the most useful map she had, but she should not mistake the map for the territory. This is an excellent thought. It is also thousands of years old and already part of Alice’s map.
Many of my beliefs have the non-epistemic generator “I was bored one afternoon (and started reading LessWrong)”. It is very easy to recognize the non-epistemic generator of my belief and also have it. My confusion is how anyone could not recognize the same thing.