English

Believing without Reason, or: Why Liberals Shouldn't Watch Fox News

In what follows, we will explore the Spinozan model and, in particular, its consequences for the epistemology of belief. The specifics of the Spinozan model have been described in great detail and argued for in other places (most prominently in Gilbert 1991 and Mandelbaum 2014a), so we will keep our defense of the model to a minimum. Instead, after explaining the model and giving some motivation for it, we will use it to describe how people can end up with a large stock of beliefs acquired and maintained without evidence, in a wholly arational fashion.

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