Looking now at a practical, daily question: What role does epistemology play in all of our lives, every day?
Jamie: Hey everybody. I'm Jamie Dew.
Joe: And I'm Joe Fontenot.
Jamie: And welcome back, once again, to our podcast, The Towel & Basin.
Joe: Yeah, so in our last podcast, Jamie, we looked at what is epistemology. And then we talked about the difference between the Christian approach or focus within epistemology versus epistemology on the whole. So that got me thinking, "What are a few ways that we use epistemology in every day and don't realize it?" And I guess this is coming from epistemology, seems like such an ethereal, out there concept. But after you explained it, it seemed so integral to daily life almost, that I wondered do we use epistemology on a daily basis and not realize it?
Jamie: Every single one of us, every single day, absolutely, yes. So good question. Let me start here. In the last podcast, I acknowledged and tip my hat in the fact that we throw out a big word like that, and then immediately, people are like, "What the heck is this? And how is this important at all?" And various other questions. And, "How academic and useless and ivory tower." And man, look, I just tell you, like I said, every last one of us uses this every single day in what we do. So let me mention a handful of ways and I'll just rattle them off the top of my head as we go along. Don't know how many we'll end up with, but let's just... Here's a couple. Number one, I think each of us draws what we call inferences, every single day. And I think, if I remember correctly, we did in a podcast back in the day, something on inferences.
Joe: We did. I'll have to look it up. I don't remember which one it is, but I'll find it and link it, because we talk about inferences in a different, probably, context.
Jamie: Yeah, if you would link it, that'd be helpful. So if you're listening, and you want to know a little bit more about this, what I'm about to say, there is another podcast we did. Look for it in the link. People, not just Christians, people, anybody, everybody, children do this. Adults do this. Old people do this. People of every culture do this. People do this in every single situation. We draw inferences all of the time. And that is an epistemological process. It's a philosophical move that you're making and it has to do with your knowing. So this is, at its core, epistemological. They're called inferences. All right, so what are inferences? Inferences are when you start with one set of data and you try to draw a conclusion based off of that data. So let me give you a real life example of a recent issue in our culture that's happened that inferences have been drawn.
We just had a murder conviction of Derek Chauvin for George Floyd. And so the move that was made, and personally I'll weigh in here and say, "Yes, I think this was absolutely right." But the accusation, and the charge was, is that this is murder because there's these motives and various things like that, that are going on there. Now, those motives were not necessarily written on Derek Chauvin's sleeves or other things like that. They weren't written down on piece of paper before he walked into that situation. The prosecution had to demonstrate that, based off of evidence. So what they do, and this is in any court case by the way, you start off with a set of facts. And then we try to infer motive and background and all of those types of things. And in that particular case, they were successful in demonstrating that. But that's an inferential process. That one in particular is an inductive influential process. And then we talked about induction there. But people make assumptions or inferences about all sorts of things.
Joe: So would an example of this, and a super low level example, be like, "I can see it raining outside, therefore I would know that if I go out without an umbrella, I'll be wet before I get to my car." Would something like that even count or is that-
Jamie: Technically yes, but that's a very low level inference you're drawing. That's a very easily made inference for you. Not all inferences are so easy though. That's why in cases like the murder trial, you have to have a trial to flesh those things out. Because after all, anytime you start putting people away for the rest of their life and things like that, we need to make sure we've demonstrated what was and was not the case. And so that's why a trial was necessary. That's a very professional, legal, long, drawn-out process of inference drawing. So some inferences, like the one you've just drawn there, is a real easy cut and ready one. And then some of them are a little harder to make. Hence why we have to have trials.
But people make inferences about all sorts of things. The example I always like to use in my classes, when I'm talking about this, just because they're playful examples are, imagine the 17-year-old girl bursts through the door one night. And she's bawling and sobbing and her parents don't know what's going on. And they inquire what's going on. And then all of a sudden she says, "Timmy doesn't love me anymore." So there's the claim. And, of course, the parents try to talk to her and figure out, "Well, why are you saying that?" And they finally are able to get out of her that, "He didn't call me today." So that's the fact. The fact is Timmy didn't call her. Now, what has she done? She's taken that to mean that Timmy doesn't love me anymore.
Now here, the question is, "Is that a possible, legitimate explanation?" Sure. Of course it is. It really could be that the reason he didn't call her is because he's done. He doesn't want to talk to her anymore. But it's also possible that he dropped his phone in the toilet. It's possible he's in trouble with his parents. It's possible he's just a knucklehead and forgot. My gosh, there's any number of other explanations that could also fit with that. So the question is, "This is an inference, how do we know we've made the right inference?"
And again, in the case of a murder trial, that's why you have to have a trial like that to flesh it out and make sure you're drawing the right inference. And again, I'm putting my cards on the table. I think they made the right call. But all I'm trying to say is that there's some inferences we make that are super easy to make. Some of them are much harder to make. And then there's some that are about big, important things, and some about not so important things. And so we have to do our diligence in every one of those cases, make sure we're doing it. But at the end of the day, to answer your question, we use epistemology via inferences every single day in what we do. So that is one way.
Another way we do it, and this is sort of related to the other one, we use epistemology every day when we evaluate arguments and when we make arguments. So think about now, again, any legal or any prosecution case. We sit here as the American people, with everything we see on the news, and we hear new bits of data, and every one of us begins to evaluate the legitimacy of an argument. We're doing this podcast on a Thursday. Last night, I gather that President Biden did a State of the Union Address. And what did we have? We had a set of arguments brought to the American people. And then all of media, and the Republican side on the other side, and now every American is embroiled in the debate of, "Well, are these the right facts? Is this a good argument?" And such. Anytime you evaluate an argument, of any kind, you're doing epistemology. And by contrast, anytime you make an argument of any kind, you are engaged in an epistemological enterprise at that moment. So that's another way we do it.
Joe: All of America, basically, just jumped into epistemology last night.
Jamie: They were jumped into it long before then. Yeah, we do this all the time. Anytime you're making an argument, anytime you're evaluating an argument, anytime you're drawing an inference, anytime you're critiquing an inference, these are all epistemological endeavors.
Now, for the Christian, there's an even bigger way that we participate in the field of epistemology every day. And that is when we consider our faith in relationship to reason. Anytime a Christian does apologetics, for example, you're, once again, engaging in the epistemological enterprise. Because essentially, what you're doing is, you're defending truth claims. Anytime you're defending truth claims, you're in the field of apologetics or the field of epistemology.
And so when we think about those questions we dealt with in the last one, "Does Granny need to have justification for her beliefs to be rational?" I'm inclined to say, "No, she doesn't." So in other words, it's true that Granny can't articulate the best reasons for God's existence, but I don't think that makes Granny a fool. I don't think she's irrational for believing these things. She's had no reason to try to consider those things. It just seems to her that God exists. And generally speaking, if something seems true to a person, then they should act on it. And that's not irrational, that's completely rational. In fact, it's kind of irrational to do otherwise. So anybody that wants to come to Granny's defense, in that example I gave in the last podcast, they are doing epistemology at that point. And so these are just a couple quick, off the top of my head ways that I think everybody does every day epistemological stuff.
Joe: That's very fascinating. That definitely brings it home to me, thinking about that, because some of the value that I see in that is when I am struggling with something, or begin to question something and so forth. Being able to put a label on it, even if it's a broad label like, "This is an issue of epistemology." I now feel like I can begin to think like, "Well, how would an epistemologist answer this or address this?" And so forth. And so I find that very helpful.
Jamie: Yeah. Well, we do do it every day and there are probably lots and lots of other ways that we do it as well. For example, everybody wants to be a clear thinker, you're in the world. People want to be rational, you're in that world. So anytime we're engaged in those types of things, you're engaged in the field.
Joe: Fascinating. Well, this is great. Thanks, Jamie.
Jamie: Yeah, man. See you next time.
Hey everybody. This is Jamie and Joe again.
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Jamie: And if you have any questions we'd love to hear about them. Just go to jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way. And we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.