Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?

[bennyboy]

But certainly there might be some truths that we can only know through reason and not experience,

Is not reason the experience of mental coherence? Is there any component of reason which you consider to be more than that?

such as the knowledge that there are other minds which exist and operate independently of my own, and I think you would be right to demand evidence that all philosophical or metaphysical truths demand evidence.

This is an example of the kind of knowledge I was talking about, which can be said to be true, but only in context. In the context of living my life as a social animal, I can say that people say things I didn't already know, and exhibit emotions and so on, and that there are minds other than my own.

In an absolute context, I don't know that at all. Nor is it really an inference-- I don't think you can go from any amount of personal experience to arrive at an objective truth like that. It has to be a pragmatic assumption, based on a hunch.

Normally that's fine. There's nothing wrong with me living my life based on several pragmatic assumptions. It gives me a sense of purpose and lets me get out of bed in the morning. The problem comes if I use what I "know" (i.e. assume) with truth, and use it as the foundation for subsequent truths. All those truths are local-- they are true only in the context allowed by my assumptions.

It was pretty recently "known" (by a careful process of inference and evidential confirmation, mind you) that God was real and that the Christ was the saviour of humanity. Given this, all kinds of new truths were arrived at: the infallibility of the Pope, for example, or the divine right of kings to rule, etc.