RE: "Everything has a cause and an explanation" discussion.
February 18, 2015 at 6:54 pm
(This post was last modified: February 18, 2015 at 7:55 pm by Pyrrho.)
(February 18, 2015 at 6:47 pm)Alex K Wrote: It confuses me slightly that you first say there is no reason to believe sth and then claim to withold judgment. To me that is judgment.
To have no reason to believe something does not entail having a reason to believe its opposite. For example, I have no reason to believe you are presently wearing a cotton shirt. And likewise, I have no reason to believe that you are not presently wearing a cotton shirt. So I withhold judgement on whether you are presently wearing a cotton shirt or not.
Now, there is a judgement involved in this, but it is about my lack of evidence for either position. It is because I lack evidence one way or the other that I refrain from taking a position one way or the other.
For it to be reasonable for me to take a position one way or the other, I would need evidence for it. But lacking evidence for something does not, by itself, properly lead to rejecting something as false.
(February 18, 2015 at 6:47 pm)Alex K Wrote: But anyways, before we go on - do we have a working definition of what constitutes an explanation?
I don't think so.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
