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RichardKennaway comments on Dark Side Epistemology - Less Wrong
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I am being forthright, not obtuse. I say again that there is no statement of the form "I feel that X", which would not be rendered more accurate by replacing it with "I believe that X". That people use the word "feel" in this way does not make it a statement about feelings: it remains a statement about beliefs. Neither of those statements actually contains any expression of a feeling about X. Here is one that does: "I am angry that X". Compare "I feel that X" -- what is the feeling? It is not there. In a larger context, the listener may be able to tell, but if they can, they can do so equally well from "I believe that X".
It might well be. But the emotions would not be communicated any better by using the word "feel". They are not communicated at all by either word. (I can think of other reasons why someone might object to a sequel: for example, some people have an ethical objection to fanfiction.)
And no, I've never actually responded to an "I feel that" with a blunt "No you don't". It would rarely help. But I do know people that would call me on it if I ever used the expression, as I would them. A lot of the time -- I am talking about actual, specific experience here, not vague generalisation -- people react emotionally to beliefs they are holding that they have never actually stated out loud as beliefs, and asked "Are these actually true?" Until you have noticed what you believe, you cannot update your beliefs. I-feel-thats avoid that confrontation.
To use "feel", as a couple of people suggested, to mean "tentative belief" changes only the map: there are still no actual feelings being expressed, just a word that has been blurred. This does not grease the wheels of discourse, it gums them up. Better to reserve "feel" for feelings and "believe" for beliefs, for it is a short step from calling them both by the same name to passing them off as the same thing, and then you are on the Dark Side, whether you know it or not. State something as a belief and you open yourself to the glorious possibility of being proved wrong. Call it a feeling and you give yourself a licence to ignore reality.
Probably silly to reply almost four years later, but what the heck. I think that in a lot of cases "I feel that X" is a statement of belief in belief. That is, what the person really means is "I believe that X should be true," or "I have an emotional need to believe that X is true regardless of whether it is or not." Since you're very unlikely to get someone who think "I feel that X" is a valid statement in support of X to admit what they really mean, it is indeed an excellent example of Dark epistemology.