Is evidentialism a dead philosophy?

[MindForgedManacle]

Before you say something stupid you should think about it. If you're going to bring up Hume's problem of induction, you should realize it's applicable to ALL usages of induction, not simply to science. The fact that you typed that message out came with several necessary assumptions about induction and the uniformity of nature for instance.

Interesting statement. Actually I didn't bring up Hume's problem of induction at all, you did. But fair enough, I'm game.

What 'assumption about induction and the uniformity of nature' do you think my message 'came with'?

MM

Accept you did:

Scientists and people who adhere to scientific theory believe that the results of their observations will be repeated in the future, there is no evidence of this yet the belief persists.

That's basically Hume's problem of induction, that we have no valid basis for the belief that the future will resemble the past. We rely on induction for even that, making it circular.

As for your assumption about the uniformity of nature (UoN), I was pointing out that in even making that message, you too assumed the UoN, because you assumed that your desire to create that message would result in you actually making your body do so. The point of this being that it isn't just science or scientists who must fallaciously assume induction, but that everyone must do so in any usage of practical reasoning.

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You have evidence of other minds[/u? I'd like to see that. I [u]don't think it's provable by evidence that other people have conscious experience, but we believe it anyway. Also, we can prove that other humans have cognitive abilities, I'm a physicalist so I think that consciousness is a product of cognition, but I'm having a hard time seeing how we could actually prove with evidence that is the case. I've tried arguing with evidence found from neuroscience that our consciousness is the product of physical processes, but they won't budge. He says that just proves 'actions' are depended on brain activity, not that that physical processes actually give rise to consciousness. I think it logically follows from physicalism that if we can prove a person has cognitive functions, this proves they have consciousness. But I'm having a hard time trying to prove physicalism, and this religious person I am arguing with is not even trying to make a case for a soul.

You are actually equivocating here. We DO have evidence that there are other minds. The objects in question behave in much the same way I do in all manner of ways, reason similarly, etc. This IS evidence that they are the same kind of thing as I am. Your equivocation comes in thinking that by "evidence" we must mean that we "prove" something is the case, which is nonsense. To be evidence of something simply means that the existence of X implies Y is more likely true than it would have been otherwise.

Of course this sort of thinking leads to solopsism, but that's the entire point of the argument. How can you accept evidentialism, when you have no evidence you exist apart from referring to your own conscious experience? Is it not circular to do that? It seems to me, if this is the case solopsism is a product of being an evidentialist.

Evidentialists can easily accept their own existence via a proof by incorrigibility. That is to say, by evidence from propositions know to be indisputably true without further reflection. One such incorrigible proposition an evidentialist could appeal to is the belief that "There are thoughts". One cannot escape that this is true by mere virtue of it being considered.