Subjective Confidence and Veridicality
Many epistemologists, like Descartes, rely upon subjective certainty or confidence in their conceptions of knowledge. This in-class exercise asks one to look empirically at the relationship between one's subjective sense of confidence in a belief and the objective likelihood of it being true. The hope is that students can gain some empirical perspective of the practice of defining knowledge in light of subjective certainty or confidence. Students are asked to answer a set of true or false questions like the following:
| Questions | T/F | Real | Con |
| Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors. | |||
| People only use about ten percent of their brains. Scientists are actively searching to discover how to unlock the rest of the brain's potential. |
They mark their answers in the "T/F" column. After answering the questions students are asked to indicate with a "c" in the "con" column, the half of the question set for which they are more subjectively confident in their true/false answers.
| Questions | T/F | Real | Con |
| Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors. | T | ||
| People only use about ten percent of their brains. Scientists are actively searching to discover how to unlock the rest of the brain's potential. | T | C |
After they have indicated the half of the question set about which they are more confident, students then score their answers by indicating the real truth value in the "real" column.
| Questions | T/F | Real | Con |
| Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors. | T | T | |
| People only use about ten percent of their brains. Scientists are actively searching to discover how to unlock the rest of the brain's potential. | T | F | C |
After scoring their answers the class looks at the percentage correct of the "higher confidence" and the "lower confidence" questions. What do you think the relationship will turn out to be? Click here for the score sheet to date. If you would like to see more information about the relationship between subjective certainty or confidence and objective truth, click here for a set of lecture slides.