Philosophy as fact-based discipline: 200 philosophical facts

Appendix

See Sect. 2 for strict instructions on how to interpret the following 200 claims.

• 1. Beliefs can be positive, negative, trivial, controversial, silly, serious, short-term, long-term, and concern just about any topic.

• 2. Some beliefs are true while others are false.

• 3. We believe in things, such as people, political causes, and organizations. These cases of believing-in-X typically involve many positive, favorable beliefs about X.

• 4. We often don’t consciously believe something but are easily disposed to believe it, if we are just asked and given a short time to consider.

• 5. One person can doubt what another believes, another disbelieves, another wonders about, another assumes, etc.

• 6. Evidence can be positive or negative. Positive evidence for a belief B is evidence that suggests B is true. Negative evidence regarding B is evidence that suggests B is false; it’s sometimes called counterevidence.

• 7. In ordinary life we occasionally have both strong positive evidence and strong negative evidence regarding the same particular belief.

• 8. One’s overall evidence is the combination of all one’s evidence regarding that belief.

• 9. We sometimes use the terms “rational”, “justified”, and “reasonable” in such a way that a belief is evidentially rational, reasonable, and justified and when the believer’s overall evidence that she bases her belief on is strongly supportive of the belief. Her belief is evidentially irrational, unjustified, and unreasonable when her overall evidence that she bases her belief on is not strongly supportive of the belief.

• 10. A “mere opinion” (or “just his opinion”) is typically a belief, that may or may not be true, but is evidentially unjustified and doesn’t amount to knowledge because it isn’t based on good overall supporting evidence.

• 11. A particular belief can start out evidentially reasonable, become evidentially unreasonable (with the acquisition of strong counterevidence), and then go back to being evidentially reasonable (when new supporting evidence is found, especially if it debunks the counterevidence).

• 12. There are at least three basic cognitive attitudes one can take to a claim: believe it, disbelieve it, or suspend judgment on it.

• 13. One often does and often should, in an evidential sense, suspend judgment on a potential belief B when one sees that one has virtually no decent evidence at all about B.

• 14. One often does and often should, in an evidential sense, suspend judgment on a potential belief B when one sees that one’s evidence for B is about the same in strength as one’s evidence against B.

• 15. One often does and often should, in an evidential sense, suspend judgment on a potential belief B when one sees that one has no idea what the overall evidence regarding B says, since that evidence is so hard to assess.

• 16. One often does and often should, in an evidential sense, suspend judgment on a potential belief B when one knows that one has a very strong bias or prejudice or something similar that could very easily sway one in the wrong direction regarding B.

• 17. Suspension of judgment is not the same thing as adopting some other person’s view on the matter, pro or con. When you suspend judgment on some belief, you neither believe it nor disbelieve it.

• 18. In some cases, suspension of judgment is temporary. Other times it is permanent, or nearly so.

• 19. Suspending judgment on C ≠ not acting on C. Just because you suspend judgment on some claim (so you don’t believe it or disbelieve it) doesn’t mean that you can’t act on it.

• 20. Tribal signaling is often different from belief. We sometimes seem to make ordinary assertions and seem to express beliefs when really all we are doing is signaling to others that we support a certain group, even if we don’t have the beliefs in question.

• 21. Two people can say the very same words in expressing themselves even though one is expressing an ordinary belief while another is just tribal signaling without belief.

• 22. “Faith” has several closely related meanings that it is easy to get confused about. Sometimes faith = evidential trust, as when you have trust, based on evidence, that something is true. Other times faith is little more than a practically or emotionally useful trust. Still other times it is mere hope in the absence of good overall evidence.

• 23. A person can be entirely evidentially reasonable in suspending judgment on a claim they have some strong evidence for.

• 24. Some beliefs are beneficial, in a practical sense, for a person to have, regardless of whether they are based on good overall evidence. We can call them practically useful.

• 25. A belief can be both practically useful and evidentially rational.

• 26. A belief can be neither practically useful nor evidentially rational.

• 27. A belief can be practically useful in different ways, as when one belief makes you feel much better about yourself and significantly boosts your self-esteem, while another belief need not make you feel better about yourself but spurs you into action that benefits your life.

• 28. Two people could have the same belief but one person’s belief is evidentially irrational while the other’s is evidentially rational, due to the fact that the first person bases her belief on weak overall evidence and the second person bases her belief on strong overall evidence.

• 29. You can have strong evidence for your belief even though it’s evidentially irrational for you to have it.

• 30. You can have strong evidence against your belief even though it’s evidentially rational for you to have it.

• 31. It’s possible for someone to have a belief that you know perfectly well to be false and yet their belief is based on excellent overall evidence.

• 32. There are many kinds of evidence (in one ordinary sense of “evidence”): sensory (you saw your brother making lunch), physical (the sandwich he made), ordinary testimonial (your mother said your young brother did a fine job making lunch), expert testimonial (a repairman says that your car’s carburetor is broken), memorial (you vividly remember her stealing the jewelry), mathematical (you figure out how much money to tip the server at a restaurant), and so on.

• 33. Several people can have the same evidentially reasonable belief but have very different bodies of evidence for it.

• 34. For the most part, if you feel as though you definitely remember something, your memory is right. For instance, if you seem to clearly remember living in Saudi Arabia, or that Bill Clinton was president of the USA, or that winter is colder than summer, you’re probably right. The exceptions exist alongside an enormous number of unremarkable successes.

• 35. Sometimes intuitions are real evidence (you “use your intuition” to find your way home when lost, or a tennis player uses her intuition to know what her opponent is going to do next). However, in many cases what people call a case of intuition isn’t evidence at all but just lucky guessing at best.

• 36. Sometimes feelings are real evidence (you can feel that it’s going to rain; you can feel that something is wrong with your elbow; a trained pianist can feel what the other jazz musicians are trying to do). However, in many cases what people call feelings aren’t evidence at all but vague guessing or lucky guessing.

• 37. Roughly put, in many cases something counts as strong evidence for a belief when it significantly increases the likelihood that the belief is true. It counts as weak evidence when it increases the likelihood by a lesser amount.

• 38. Just because someone thinks they have strong evidence for their belief doesn’t mean that they actually have strong evidence for it. In that specific sense, evidence is objective.

• 39. Sometimes you have a belief that is supported by evidence that lots of people have, other times you have a belief that is supported by evidence that no one other than you has, and in yet other cases there is a mixture of “public” and “private” evidence.

• 40. In many cases, if you have a belief based on good but not overwhelming overall evidence, and then you acquire new evidence that supports the same belief to a significant extent, where the new evidence is quite different from the old evidence, then you are evidentially reasonable in increasing your confidence in that belief.

• 41. Just because the publicly available and well-known evidence regarding an idea is overwhelmingly strong, a person might be evidentially reasonable in denying it, if they haven’t been exposed to even a hint of that evidence.

• 42. Some belief-forming methods are highly reliable in resulting in true beliefs (e.g. visual perception or simple arithmetic), while others are much less reliable (e.g., wishful thinking).

• 43. One can have different levels of confidence in the truth of a claim, as when one person is extremely confident it’s true while another person agrees it’s true but isn’t as confident as the first person that it’s true.

• 44. Ordinary levels of confidence in a belief are not levels or degrees of truth. I might believe something with more confidence than you believe it, but in virtually all cases that says something about our psychology, not about the truth of our shared belief.

• 45. There are lots of “kinds” of knowledge: knowing how, knowing where, knowing what, knowing who, knowing when, knowing that, knowing an object, and knowing why.

• 46. You can know how to do something even though you can’t do it yourself, as for example when you’re a teacher of an athlete.

• 47. Just because two people know what something is, doesn’t mean that they know all the same facts about it; furthermore, one of them might know what it is much better than the other person.

• 48. Just because you don’t know something that a great many other people know, you need not have done anything wrong in lacking that knowledge, as there aren’t time and resources available to learn everything that others have figured out.

• 49. You can sometimes gain new knowledge by reasoning from already existing knowledge.

• 50. Knowledge (in the sense of “knowing that”) always or almost always requires truth: you can’t know something unless it’s true.

• 51. Knowledge (in the sense of “knowing that”) always or almost always requires good evidence: you can’t know something unless your belief is based on good evidence. But there are lots of kinds of evidence, and they can be quite different from one another.

• 52. Knowledge (in the sense of “knowing that”) is almost always objective: just because you or other people think you know something doesn’t mean that you really do know it.

• 53. It’s often true that in order to know what it’s like to X, one has to have had some relevant first-hand experience instead of mere testimony (e.g., in order to know what it’s like to see color, to be pregnant, to be humiliated, to win a sports championship).

• 54. All at one time, a belief can be socially accepted in a particular relatively unified group of people, socially rejected by another relatively unified group of people, and unknown to a yet third relatively unified group.

• 55. True but evidentially unreasonable belief is possible.

• 56. True but not practically useful belief is possible.

• 57. True but not highly confident belief is possible.

• 58. True belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge is possible.

• 59. True belief that isn’t socially accepted (in a given group) is possible.

• 60. Evidentially reasonable but false belief is possible.

• 61. Evidentially reasonable but not highly confident belief is possible.

• 62. Evidentially reasonable but not practically useful belief is possible.

• 63. Evidentially reasonable belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge is possible.

• 64. Evidentially reasonable belief that isn’t socially accepted is possible.

• 65. Practically useful but false belief is possible.

• 66. Practically useful but evidentially unreasonable belief is possible.

• 67. Practically useful but not highly confident belief is possible.

• 68. Practically useful belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge is possible.

• 69. Practically useful belief that isn’t socially accepted is possible.

• 70. Highly confident but false belief is possible.

• 71. Highly confident but evidentially unreasonable belief is possible.

• 72. Highly confident but not practically useful belief is possible.

• 73. Highly confident belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge is possible.

• 74. Highly confident belief that isn’t socially accepted is possible.

• 75. Socially accepted belief that isn’t evidentially reasonable is possible.

• 76. Socially accepted belief that isn’t practically useful is possible.

• 77. Socially accepted belief that isn’t highly confident is possible.

• 78. Socially accepted belief that isn’t true is possible.

• 79. Socially accepted belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge is possible.

• 80. Knowledge without highly confident belief is possible.

• 81. Knowledge without practically useful belief is possible.

• 82. Knowledge without socially accepted belief is possible.

• 83. True belief that wasn’t evidentially inferred is possible (an evidentially inferred belief is one that was acquired from previous beliefs via an evidentially reasonable inference).

• 84. Practically useful belief that wasn’t evidentially inferred is possible.

• 85. Highly confident held belief that wasn’t evidentially inferred is possible.

• 86. Socially accepted belief that wasn’t evidentially inferred is possible.

• 87. Evidentially inferred belief that isn’t true is possible.

• 88. Evidentially inferred belief that isn’t evidentially reasonable is possible.

• 89. Evidentially inferred belief that isn’t practically useful is possible.

• 90. Evidentially inferred belief that isn’t highly confident is possible.

• 91. Evidentially inferred belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge is possible.

• 92. Evidentially inferred belief that isn’t socially accepted is possible.

• 93. It’s arguable that one can have an evidentially reasonable and true belief without it amounting to knowledge, but these cases would be rare in ordinary life.

• 94. Roughly put, a good reason for believing a claim C often is some fact that makes the belief C more likely to be true. A desire for C to be true often is a strong hope or want that C be true because if it is true then the desire will be satisfied. A cause of believing C consists of whatever things actually caused you to adopt that belief.

• 95. You can have several different reasons to believe something, and the reasons can differ in how strong they are.

• 96. One can have a good reason to believe something without actually believing it.

• 97. One can have a good reason to believe something without wanting it to be true.

• 98. One can want something to be true even though one doesn’t have a good reason to believe it’s true.

• 99. One can be caused to believe something even though one doesn’t have a good reason to believe it.

• 100. One can be caused to believe something even though one doesn’t want it to be true.

• 101. One can want something to be true even though one doesn’t believe it.

• 102. The term “reason for a belief” can, depending on conversational context, mean the cause of the belief or a piece of evidence for a belief, which can be either strongly or weakly supportive. So, “reason” is ambiguous.

• 103. You might have reasons for one of your beliefs but you don’t actually base your belief on those reasons, or you do so to only a tiny extent.

• 104. In order to separate the true experts from the people who only think they are experts, it’s often helpful to look at their credentials:

  • Do they have a Master’s degree or PhD in the relevant field?

  • Do they do actual research that gets published in professional, peer-reviewed journals?

  • If they don’t, do they often cite and thoroughly discuss research published in professional, peer-reviewed journals when making claims they say they have expertise on?

• 105. One tricky problem with expert testimonial evidence is that just because someone’s an expert in one domain doesn’t mean they are expert in other domains, even closely related ones.

• 106. One tricky problem with expert testimonial evidence is that for some culturally sensitive topics, we can be fooled into not asking or actively ignoring the relevant genuine experts.

• 107. One tricky problem with expert testimonial evidence is that there are lots of cases where there is genuine difficulty—independently of deception—in figuring who, if anyone, is a genuine expert.

• 108. One of the most important things about expert testimony is this: you need to figure out what testimony is trustworthy. Roughly put, testimony is trustworthy when it is reliably right.

• 109. It’s often best to follow the collective judgment of many experts rather than just one expert’s opinion on a difficult topic.

• 110. Two people can both be genuine experts on a topic and yet one is much more expert on it than the other person.

• 111. When it comes to a specific topic, one expert might have a great depth of expertise about one relatively narrow part of the topic while another expert might have less depth but more breath to her expertise on the topic.

• 112. There are times when the experts on a given claim think it’s false even though the vast majority of non-experts, numbering in the millions, think it’s true.

• 113. In many cases, a person can be an expert in a field even though they suspend judgment on many important claims from that field.

• 114. In many cases, a person can be an expert in a field even though they make a significant number of mistakes in that field.

• 115. Even when you are following the beliefs or advice of someone you consider an expert, you usually are still the one in charge, being autonomous and holding the reins of your intellectual life, since you are the one choosing which experts to follow, if any.

• 116. In many cases, you not only have evidence E1 for one of your beliefs B, but you get new evidence E2 about how supportive that evidence E1 is for B. E2 is sometimes called higher-order evidence.

• 117. In some cases, higher-order evidence E2 suggests that E1 is true but supports B only weakly.

• 118. In some cases, higher-order evidence E2 suggests E1 is false.

• 119. Group disagreements: when I discover that there are many people who disagree with me regarding my belief B, how do I know that my group (the people who agree with me) have been in a better position to judge B than the group who disagree with me? In many real-life cases, I have no good reason to think my group has been in a better position to judge B. That suggests, but doesn’t prove, we should suspend judgment a fair amount.

• 120. Epistemic superiors: when I discover that someone who is clearly an expert compared to me, when it comes to the topics relevant to my belief, disagrees with me on that particular belief, should I give up my belief, since it seems that it’s more probable that they are right than I am right? For a great many controversial beliefs I have, there are going to be many legitimate experts who disagree with me. That suggests, but doesn’t prove, we should suspend judgment a fair amount.

• 121. Disagreement among experts: when I discover that the experts haven’t reached any stable consensus about B, shouldn’t I suspend judgment about B? That seems reasonable, but experts disagree in a significant (not minor) manner pretty often, so I may end up having to suspend judgment quite often.

• 122. Many of us fall for the temptation of focusing on the experts we agree with, and conveniently ignore those we disagree with. That suggests, but doesn’t prove, we should suspend judgment a fair amount.

• 123. Unrepresentative evidence: in a great many cases, I know perfectly well that my confident belief is based on only a small portion of the available evidence, which I could get if I just did a little research. But I don’t have time to research! There is a real risk that my evidence is one-sided or otherwise unrepresentative. That suggests, but doesn’t prove, we should suspend judgment a fair amount.

• 124. Cultural variability: often our important beliefs seem more a result of the culture we grew up in instead of being the result of having real, good reasons for those beliefs. A good portion of our religious, moral, and political beliefs seem like that. That suggests, but doesn’t prove, that we should suspend judgment a fair amount.

• 125. Reflecting on disagreement can spur one to start thinking for oneself, realizing that one has uncritically adopted the beliefs of others when one probably shouldn’t have.

• 126. In order to be respectful in a disagreement, which often will make it much more pleasant, efficient, and illuminating for everyone, you can do two things, one negative and one positive. (a) Do not get angry or mock, belittle, misconstrue, or insult those who disagree with you. (b) Soften the blow by emphasizing to them one or more positive features of their (false) belief.

• 127. When we learn that someone intelligent disagrees with one of our personally important beliefs, we often tell ourselves things that we don’t have much evidence for but make us feel comfortable, such as “They aren’t really as well informed as I am”, “They are far more biased or prejudiced on the topic than I am”, “They aren’t as smart as they seem”, or “They don’t really disagree with me even though it looks that way”.

• 128. There typically is a causal explanation for the acquisition of a belief, but in some cases the person has no good evidence for their belief, so their belief is evidentially unjustified. So, just because you explain why someone has a belief doesn’t mean that you have shown or think that their belief was based on good evidence.

• 129. If you attempt to evidentially justify your belief B, then you are typically trying to point out the overall good evidence you have for B.

• 130. If you attempt to morally justify your action A, then you are typically trying to point out the good moral basis you have doing A.

• 131. Explanations of behavior differ from moral justifications of behavior. You can explain why he did something without even faintly suggesting that what he did was morally ok.

• 132. When we say, correctly, that some idea is “certain”, sometimes all we mean is that lots of people are highly confident in it. Other times, to say an idea is certain is to say something like “The overall evidence we have regarding the idea is extremely strong in favor of it”. So, “being certain” has at least a couple meanings.

• 133. When we say, correctly, that someone is being “honest”, sometimes all we mean is that they are saying things that they sincerely believe to be true. Other times, to say someone is being honest is to say that they are saying things that they sincerely believe and that are really true. So, “being honest” has at least a couple meanings.

• 134. Truth and falsity are objective in this sense: whether a claim is true, or false, is virtually never affected by anyone’s thoughts about whether it is true or false.

• 135. There are many false beliefs that are highly useful, due to the fact that they are (i) in the vicinity of a truth, and (ii) that truth is both relevant and important to the discussion. For instance, it’s false that he has PTSD, but it’s true that he has some serious unresolved psychological difficulties that are ruining his relationships; it’s false that you can achieve your goals if you just have the right mindset, but it’s true that you can often initiate huge progress towards many of your important goals in life by merely altering your mindset appropriately.

• 136. When someone expresses a highly useful false belief, it’s often not a good idea to point out that it’s false, because (i) it would waste time and effort to do so, (ii) it might elicit anger or other harmful feelings to do so, (iii) the falsehood is often good enough for most practical purposes, or (iv) the person might care a lot more about the truth that’s close by than the falsehood itself.

• 137. We use the terms “true” and “fact” in a variety of very different ways in ordinary life. Sometimes we use “fact” and “truth” not for any old claim that happens to be true but one that is both true and proven or justified or at least has excellent overall evidence backing it up. Other times we use “fact” and “truth” for claims that are widely accepted in some community, even if in fact the claims in question are actually false. On yet other occasions, “fact” and/or “truth” get used to pick out claims that are widely accepted and also considered important.

• 138. We use the term “valid” in a variety of different ways. Often enough, saying that someone has a “valid point” is to say that you agree that they have some decent amount of supporting evidence for their belief, even though you don’t go so far as to admit that their belief is true. A “valid criticism” is often an argument that you admit to have at least some force against you: its premises are at least reasonable, and if they were really true, then would provide some good even if less than conclusive reason to think that your critic is right and you’re wrong.

• 139. Many of our beliefs are about people’s opinions, feelings, or thoughts but are still objectively true or false. If you think claim C, which is about Jo’s mind, is true, then whether C really is true is virtually never affected by anyone’s opinions about whether C is true or false. Whether C is true depends on Jo’s mind.

• 140. According to some ideas about morality, moral claims are objective since whether they are true doesn’t depend on whether people think they are true–even though whether they are true may depend on people’s minds and behavior. Under some other ideas, moral claims aren’t objective since whether they are true does depend on whether people sincerely, more or less naturally, think they are true.

• 141. Some of our beliefs (e.g., some political ones) satisfy three related conditions. We can call those beliefs publicly subjective.

  • The beliefs have no obvious, knock down proof that is publicly available.

  • We tend to be tolerant of the beliefs in the sense of not challenging them in a great many and variety of conversational contexts. We tend to say “You’re entitled to your opinion” regarding the claim in question.

  • Whether people accept these beliefs often depends mostly on what cultural groups they come from, where the groups might be religious, philosophical, political, ethnic, sexual, or whatever.

• 142. A claim that is objectively true can be publicly subjective. Objectivity and this kind of subjectivity need not rule each other out.

• 143. Some claims are true for a great many people and false for a great many other people depending on people’s preferences about things like fear, taste, comfort, pleasure, and so on (e.g., “Chocolate tastes better than vanilla”, “Sky diving is scary”). Call this preferential subjectivity.

• 144. A preferentially subjective claim, such as “Chocolate tastes better than vanilla”, rests upon a great number of objectively true claims about people’s reactions and preferences. Hence, preferential subjectivity rests upon objective truth.

• 145. Some claims are publicly but not preferentially subjective (e.g., “Jesus rose from the dead”).

• 146. Some claims are preferentially but not publicly subjective (e.g., “Chocolate tastes better than vanilla”).

• 147. Some claims have neither kind of subjectivity (e.g., “Water contains hydrogen”).

• 148. Some claims might have both kinds of subjectivity, although this is controversial (e.g., “Having children is the primary means to living a fulfilling life”).

• 149. A belief is relative when it is true with respect to one thing but false with respect to something else. The things that a belief might be relative to are diverse: geographical locations (e.g., “I am ten meters from you”), spatial orientations (e.g., “I am on your left”), communities (e.g., “Billie Eilish is famous”), sets of rules (e.g., “Three strikes and you’re out”), laws (e.g., “You have to drive on the left side of the road”), etc.

• 150. All preferentially subjective claims are relative (every preferentially subjective claim is relative to preferences), but not all relative claims are preferentially subjective (a relative claim can be relative to things other than preferences).

• 151. Roughly put, a person P has wisdom on subject S (e.g., French poetry, baseball, hair styling) = P has extremely impressive knowledge of S compared to others.

• 152. Another notion of wisdom = knowing how to live life extraordinarily well. There are at least three aspects to this: moral wisdom, psychological wisdom, and intellectual wisdom.

• 153. Moral wisdom: roughly put, a person has this kind of wisdom if she knows how to treat others in an exceptionally fair, just, moral manner, even in confusing circumstances—and she actually lives her life that way too, as long as she is not prevented from doing so.

• 154. Psychological wisdom: roughly put, a person has this kind of wisdom if she can surprisingly often look into someone’s mind and see many of the usually hidden levers that govern their behavior, beliefs, desires, preferences, and choices in life. We are almost like teenagers to her, with motives, fears, hopes, and the rest that are often transparent to her view. This wise person often knows your mind better than you do, at least in some important respects. She can use this psychological knowledge in order to live life in such a way as to achieve a higher degree of well-being and fulfilment, for both herself and those individuals lucky enough to take her advice.

• 155. Intellectual wisdom: roughly put, a person has this kind of wisdom if she knows how to conduct her intellectual life extraordinarily well. She is expert at regulating her thinking, judging, and believing activity, knowing how to reason extraordinarily well, to think creatively, to adjust her confidence in a claim in accord with the strength of the evidence she knows about, to suspend judgment when the evidence is inconclusive, to spot and take into account genuine expertise, to track the quality of her own evidential position, to spot the signs of irrationality in herself and others, and so on.

• 156. It’s possible for someone to have a pretty high degree of intellectual and psychological wisdom but relatively little moral wisdom.

• 157. It’s possible for someone to have a pretty high degree of moral and psychological wisdom but relatively little intellectual wisdom.

• 158. It’s possible for someone to have a pretty high degree of moral and intellectual wisdom but relatively little psychological wisdom.

• 159. It’s possible for someone to have a pretty high degree of moral wisdom but relatively little psychological or intellectual wisdom.

• 160. It’s possible for someone to have a pretty high degree of intellectual wisdom but relatively little psychological or moral wisdom.

• 161. It’s possible for someone to have a pretty high degree of psychological wisdom but relatively little moral or intellectual wisdom.

• 162. It’s possible for someone to have a pretty high IQ but relatively little intellectual wisdom.

• 163. It’s possible for someone to have a fair amount of sophisticated knowledge but relatively little intellectual wisdom.

• 164. It’s possible for someone to have a pretty high degree of intellectual wisdom but relatively little sophisticated knowledge.

• 165. One good reason to get comfortable with being intellectually humble is that there are oodles of topics that you are ignorant of even though you “should” know them, according to some people or societal standards.

• 166. One good reason to get comfortable with being intellectually humble is that there were some episodes in your life when you turned out to be spectacularly wrong (e.g., you were totally confident in a belief B, and then you found out that B was just plain false).

• 167. One good reason to get comfortable with being intellectually humble is that the phenomenon of pervasive intelligent disagreement shows that many of us know significantly less than we think we know, even when we manage to have true beliefs.

• 168. One good reason to get comfortable with being intellectually humble is that counterintuitive discoveries are not rare.

• 169. Open-mindedness is often a good thing because it allows us to acquire new, useful knowledge; but it has to be used carefully, as it can easily lead to our agreeing to false beliefs too.

• 170. Although there is no generally accepted definition of what it means to be an intelligent person, there are at least four characteristics often associated with such people: comparatively high degrees or amounts of raw intellectual power or ability (RIP), intellectual curiosity (IC), advanced education (AE), and diversity of intellectual interests (DI), where the latter are things you’re intellectually curious about.

• 171. You can have RIP without IC, AE, or DI.

• 172. You can have IC without RIP, AE, or DI.

• 173. You can have AE without DI, IC, or RIP.

• 174. You can have DI without RIP or AE, but not without IC.

• 175. Useful rule: Don’t overestimate the strength of your evidence for your belief.

• 176. Useful rule: Don’t underestimate the evidential significance of intelligent disagreement regarding something you care about.

• 177. Useful rule: Don’t underestimate the difficulty of determining how strong a piece of evidence is, for a given claim.

• 178. Useful rule: Don’t forget the fact that one’s evidence is sometimes, in key cases, unrepresentative.

• 179. Useful rule: Don’t forget the fact that there often is a great deal of evidence against your belief that you don’t know about.

• 180. Useful rule: Don’t forget that you are rarely an expert on an issue, even if you are generally smart and have done some diligent investigation into the issue.

• 181. Useful rule: Don’t mistake making quick judgments on one’s immediate evidence for having a good basis for belief.

• 182. Useful rule: Don’t refuse to acknowledge counterevidence, especially when faced with it.

• 183. Useful rule: Don’t forget that in many cases, if your belief were true, then experts would have enthusiastically discovered and announced it by now.

• 184. Useful rule: Don’t forget the danger in acknowledging rules for wisdom but utterly failing to live by them.

• 185. Useful rule: Try to accurately assess evidence regarding a claim even when you are wracked with strong emotions about the claim.

• 186. Useful rule: Try to identify and take into account higher-order evidence.

• 187. Useful rule: Try to be sensitive to relevant ambiguity, context dependence, and vagueness.

• 188. Useful rule: When you have a controversial view, try to know the other side as well as your opponents do.

• 189. Useful rule: If you have a controversial view, and according to you the many people who disagree with you are almost all seriously ignorant or even cruel, then you’ve probably misunderstood them.

• 190. Useful rule: Try to be intellectually courageous, so you are comfortable investigating and adopting controversial or even taboo topics and views, for instance.

• 191. Useful rule: Try to focus on the central questions on an issue. Don’t get excessively sidetracked on minor points.

• 192. Sometimes we confuse “It’s possible that X will happen” or “X could happen” with “There’s a real chance X will happen”, which can cause us to worry excessively over something that has almost no chance of happening.

• 193. We often endorse a wide-ranging generalization based on nothing more than (a) just a few (b) particularly vivid instances about people or issues (c) we care about deeply. In such cases, our evidence for the wide-ranging generalization is often weak.

• 194. In some cases, when faced with deciding whether to do something, it’s practically useful to do it even when, viewed in isolation, the pros are outweighed by the cons, when every realistically available choice is even worse.

• 195. An argument is a piece of reasoning intended to support some idea. (The term “argument” has other meanings too.) It’s a series of claims, one of which is the conclusion and the others are premises. An argument is not a claim. It is not true and it is not false. An argument can be good or bad, but it’s not true or false.

• 196. A conclusion is the part of the argument that the argument is intended to support. A premise is a claim in an argument that is supposed to help support the argument’s conclusion. Premises are intended to work together or separately to support the conclusion. They might fail, but they are meant to support the conclusion.

• 197. A relationally supportive argument is one that has this feature: if the premises were true, then the conclusion would probably or definitely be true as well. This is not to say that the premises or conclusion are true in a relationally supportive argument. It’s just to say that if the premises were true, then the conclusion would probably or definitely be true too. Notice that only arguments can be relationally supportive.

• 198. There are at least five characteristics that make an argument at least partially good: excellently articulated, true premises, persuasive to the intended audience, useful to put forward, and relationally supportive.

• 199. For the most part, these characteristics are independent of one another: an argument can have some of them but not others. For instance, an argument can be quite useful and relationally supportive yet have a false premise and not be persuasive.

• 200. An overall strong or good argument is one that has most of those five characteristics, roughly put. There is no commonly accepted precise definition of “good argument” or “bad argument”.