Justified Belief?
There are very few if any proven ideas (that’s why they are called ideas). But some ideas have better proof than others. When we are seeking a justified belief, we are seeking the argument that has the best support for an idea. Ultimately, the support will be imperfect, but we can find arguments that are better than others.
A Justified Belief includes
- A clear, specific and focused thesis in response to an identifiable question
- Reasons that clearly relate to and support the thesis
- High quality evidence that backs up the reasons
- Assumptions that are also supported
- Counter arguments that address the major limitations of the thesis and or reasons
- Identifying a clear, specific and focused thesis:
- Can we identify the question that the thesis is answering?
- Are there any ambiguous terms
- Are the ambiguous terms defined?
- Reasons that clearly relate to the and support the thesis:
- Does the reason include any ambiguous terms?
- Are the terms defined?
- Is the reason clearly stated?
- Does the reason relate to the thesis (not through mental highjinx but on the paper)
- High quality evidence that backs up the reasons (in order of highest to lowest quality)
- Scientific Evidence
- is the science replicated?
- Is it correlational?
- Is it cited?
- Do we have enough information available about the research to judge its validity and reliability?
- Ethos evidence
- What do we know about the author? What are the author’s credentials?
- Does the author have any authority or expertise in the topic?
- Personal or individual evidence
- narratives
- observation
- personal example
- Rhetorical Language
- analogies
- metaphors
- quotations
- Emotional evidence
- is the evidence designed to appeal to our emotions?
- Is there a straw man being attacked?
- Assumptions are supported
- Are the major assumptions that underlie the thesis and reasons supported?
- Counter arguments
- Are the primary arguments against the claim rebutted effectively?
Steps to Justified Belief:
- Identify the question being raised
- Identify the thesis in the argument.
- Identify the reasons to support the thesis
- Identify the evidence behind the reasons
- Identify the assumptions and the support for these assumptions
- Identify the counter arguments and if they are rebutted
- Look for missing information. To what extent does the missing information detract from the argument’s support?
- Ask yourself, what would it take to make this argument justified?
- Look at the question and identify alternative conclusions
Read the following passage:
Surrounded by . . . data brokers, social media, multinational corporations, hackers, and our own intelligence agencies, we have experienced a total breakdown of the boundaries between the state, the economy, and society. We have become digital subjects, sharing everything from our political opinions to our music choices, from our exercise minutes to our medical questions, our random likes and personal photos. And performing all manner of social interactions on the net: shopping, friending, meeting partners, taking classes, tracking our exercise. This fundamentally transforms our citizenship. The liberal ideal — that there could be a protected realm of individual autonomy, a humanistic realm where the self could develop without conforming to majority opinion or censor — no longer has traction in a world in which commerce cannot be distinguished from governing or policing or surveillance or simply living normally in the digital age. We think we are sharing our selves online but instead our selves are being molded, our desires shaped and guided, our searches controlled and directed. Privacy has become private property: for sale to the highest bidder or at the cheapest rate. If we want to maintain a world where our privacy and our self is still in our own hands we must resist the temptation to embrace the digital state.
Go through the steps above under Justified Belief, identifying in full sentences each of the parts of the argument. You should have at least three reasons from the above passage.
When you complete numbers 1-9, determine if this is a justified belief.
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