Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?

[bennyboy]

Microscopes wont change the tabletop, it's not a power that they possess.  Just because the qualities you refer to as smooth and flat turn out to be something other than what you thought they were...doesn't make those qualities go poof in a puff of bad logic.

That's quite the strawman you're putting up, there. I've repeatedly said that you're not changing the things themselves, but that truth statements about them are dependent on context. The fact is that my desk is flat as I look at it and interact with it, and is very far from flat under a microscope. You can waffle around all you want, but if you don't see what I've just said as apparent, there's not much more to talk about.

Hey, here's a q for you that might actually take us somewhere.  Are you trying to draw a line from epistemic contextualism, to something?  That would give us a shortcut passed whatever communicative difficulties we're having.

I think my point is clear enough-- if truth is dependent on context, then evidence must be gathered in the context in which you want to establish truths. If my wife wants to know if there's really an apple on my desk, then she can walk into my room and see.

If she wants to know if reality consists of a material monism and nothing else, then hitting things with a rock, no matter how convincing, will not provide the kind of evidence she needs-- as metaphysics and physics are different contexts.