I think you’ve just talked yourself into a circle. You can’t both believe something and doubt it. Doubt is the opposite of belief.
What you’re talking about is possibly belief in belief. That’s the belief that you should believe, or belief that you do believe. That is not the same as actual belief.
If your bar for believing something is that you’re 100% certain that it is true (i.e., a complete lack of doubt), then you’ve rendered the whole concept of belief useless as there is no proposition this applies to.
Me, if I see a cat sitting on a mat, I will believe there is a cat on the mat. But it might be that it’s a capybara wearing an incredibly convincing cat costume. Very low odds, but the possibility is there. It could also be that I was a bit careless in looking, and the cat is actually sitting on an especially mat-like section of the newspaper. There is always doubt. Sometimes there’s more (maybe the lights were off), sometimes there’s less (I spend a good hour examining the cat-mat situation, consulting biologists and mat experts), but there is always doubt.
Asserting you have no doubt is asserting you made no mistake in assessing reality, i.e., that you’re perfect. And call me a dick, but I don’t think you are.
I have beliefs about what I think is the most probable truth. That means I can both believe something is true, and acknowledge the probability that I’m wrong. Whenever my beliefs change, there’s necessarily a period where I gradually come to see the probability that I’m wrong as larger than the probability that I’m right, at which point my beliefs about what is right change. However, the acknowledgement that I may still be wrong remains.
I think you’ve just talked yourself into a circle. You can’t both believe something and doubt it. Doubt is the opposite of belief.
What you’re talking about is possibly belief in belief. That’s the belief that you should believe, or belief that you do believe. That is not the same as actual belief.
If your bar for believing something is that you’re 100% certain that it is true (i.e., a complete lack of doubt), then you’ve rendered the whole concept of belief useless as there is no proposition this applies to.
Me, if I see a cat sitting on a mat, I will believe there is a cat on the mat. But it might be that it’s a capybara wearing an incredibly convincing cat costume. Very low odds, but the possibility is there. It could also be that I was a bit careless in looking, and the cat is actually sitting on an especially mat-like section of the newspaper. There is always doubt. Sometimes there’s more (maybe the lights were off), sometimes there’s less (I spend a good hour examining the cat-mat situation, consulting biologists and mat experts), but there is always doubt.
Asserting you have no doubt is asserting you made no mistake in assessing reality, i.e., that you’re perfect. And call me a dick, but I don’t think you are.
Anyway, death to Israel.
I have beliefs about what I think is the most probable truth. That means I can both believe something is true, and acknowledge the probability that I’m wrong. Whenever my beliefs change, there’s necessarily a period where I gradually come to see the probability that I’m wrong as larger than the probability that I’m right, at which point my beliefs about what is right change. However, the acknowledgement that I may still be wrong remains.
look who isn’t familiar with uncertainty
If there is uncertainty, there is not belief. There is hope.