(November 24, 2017 at 6:23 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: 1.) In regards to bigfoot, your descriptions are fairly vague. If that is a reflection of the evidence then I suppose that it would not be sufficient. You make a point of no physical evidence; what do you mean by this? Is this important to your questioning?
2.) Just for clarification, I don't know that I would ever say that feelings are high in quality of evidence (by nature I think they would be difficult to pin down towards specifics). I may have misspoke here and I apologize. Although I don't think that it is always irrational, to act on a feeling either.
3.) I don't believe that ones subjective incredulity, or prior knowledge, or personal bias increases the epistemic burden on someone. For instance, in your example, I think that the same knowledge that tells me, that you have $5 in your pocket, is sufficient to tell me, that you have $20k (forgoing the issue of dimensions with actual cash that I bough up earlier). Any incredulity on my part, doesn't effect the information and facts available; nor effect what is actually in your possession. In this way, I don't think that the nature of the claim effects the strength of the epistemic burden.
On the other hand, I do think that the nature of the claim, can effect what is sufficient for it. Not by moving the goal posts, but because of what the claim is attempting to represent. For example claiming that Aunt Mary drank water eight times a day, and her cancer went into remission. Showing that the above are facts, would be quite different, than making the claim, that drinking water eight times a day, gets rid of cancer.
1) When I said no physical evidence, I meant no physical samples of a bigfoot (eg hair samples, stool samples, etc). This is important as the quality of evidence to prove that Bigfoot exists is lower whithout physical samples to support the claim. At this point, let's go down to point three below....
2) Ok, good clarification. I also wouldn't say feelings are high quality evidence (if at all).
3) So with the nature of the claims that have been mentioned (Bigfoot existing & Aunt Mary curing her cancer by drinking water), you say that there is insufficient evidence for each of the cases to accept the claims. Can you clarify, how you determine how much (both quality and quantity) evidence (also what types of evidence like heresay, phtotos, etc?) you need for the ordinary / extraordinary nature of a claim?
I mean, do you consciously use a rule to determine how much evidence you need?
