Street Epistemology - Practice

[RoadRunner79]

I think it is the low and high epistemic burden that is confusing you, and I don't know where you are getting that from in my view.    

Take your money example.... I don't believe there is a lower and higher sliding scale.  I think that there is a reasonable requirement to believe that you have X number of dollars.  If everything else is equal (no reason to doubt), I don't think that it matters what X is.  Perhaps it is the variance, that I was talking about, that is confusing though.  With this, I'm just saying, that I think there is some room for disagreement on what exactly the standard of measure should be (we can forget this for now, if it helps).  So take the other example, the claim that I have X living in my garage.  If X is a cat, then you might be more willing to make assumptions and accept my claim.  However you really have little more epistemic reason to do so.  The question I believe is what is required to know, that a claim of X is living in my garage.  And when dealing with epistemology, I don't' think you are just talking about simply believing, but justified belief or knowing.  And there is some confusion there.

Right, thanks for the clarification. So in the example with the variance of x number of dollars, I understand that there will always be disagreements with the standard of measure between us, for each of us to get a justified belief in the variance. All I wanted to know though, was what your standard of measure is to get a justified belief in a claim.

We can then use your standard between us to talk about other beliefs otherwise we will be arguing on two fronts, both what the standard should be (I am fine to use yours) and also whether a belief is justified (which is what I'm interested in). This is why I'm trying to understand your standard of measure even though you say that it's hard to draw a line.

Are you able to briefly explain your standard of measure even though it might be hard to pinpoint the exact nature of it?

I think that it needs to make the claim evident, beyond a reasonable doubt.  I realize, that is still not very specific, but as I think on it, and I touched on this briefly before, I don't think that it is all that easy to make a standard rule.   It could be an observation, or perhaps simple observation isn't enough.  It could be a number of circumstantial pieces of evidence, that are  weak individually, but collectively point strongly to a unified conclusion.  Perhaps principles would be a better word, but even then a lot can change in the details.   I am flexible and willing to compromise, perhaps you could start off what you are thinking of as a standard.