Is evidentialism justified?

[theVOID]

In this thread, "evidentialism" is defined to be the view that:

"Person S is justified in believing proposition p at time t if and only if S’s evidence for p at t supports believing p."[1]

The question for this thread is "Is evidentialism justified?" For if it is not, then it is simply an arbitrary criterion which we are at liberty to reject. Applying evidentialism to itself, we are only justified in believing that evidentialism is true if our evidence supports evidentialism. But do we have any evidence supporting evidentialism? I'm not aware of any (in fact, prima facie it doesn't even seem possible that there could be any), and so by evidentialism's own lights I am free to reject it.

A second question (if you agree that evidentialism is not justified) is this: is it possible to adapt the evidentialist thesis in such away that it doesn't have this self-defeating character?

A final tertiary question for those who say "no" to the second question is "Are there any criterion for epistemic justification that are not self-defeating?"

Stempy.

[1] Evidentialism, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Epistemology, for some reason it can pull me out of a bad mood like nothing else.

Your asking whether or not evidentialism is justified is the first problem, it makes your evaluation of evidentialism contingent upon another theory of justification which hasn't been presented. I suppose you mean something more like "Is evidentialism true" - I'll work under that assumption.

First off, I Think evidentialism is flawed for several reasons, namely what constitutes evidence can lead to the potential for parallel refutation on one hand (like a weak definition of evidence where you can use evidentialism to justify two contradictory propositions) and if the definition is tightened too much you run into situations where I am not justified in believing that a person I know is across the street if I was to see them because individual sensory perception is ruled out - I think the main problem with evidentialism is that it needs a distinction between acquisition and examination.

Evidentialism works far better when combined with Reliablism into a two-stage epistemology, it sorts out the issues with what constitutes evidence and sets a difference between the acquisition and examination of the belief. http://philosophy.wisc.edu/comesana/evid...bilism.pdf

As for the evidence for evidentialism you would need to resort to syllogism. I've seen arguments based around an idea like "It is inconsistent to fully believe that P and also believe that you do not have adequate evidence that P." I don't see any real problems here though there may be some, the only real flaw is in how evidence is defined.

For your second and third question, Yes I believe so, see the provided link.

Oh, and you are using Skepticism in a way that I wouldn't agree with, Skepticism is not something that is true or false, it is a methodology that is either pragmatic or not. Most of us apply skepticism routinely, from the claims of knives that never need sharpening on TV to the stalls at the local fair selling healing crystals. You could summarize skepticism as "An approach to claims of fact that sees belief as contingent upon the establishment of evidence in favor". To say that someone is a skeptic is to say they promote the use of and routinely apply skepticism.

Would you like to answer your own 3rd question?

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Stemp....for reminding me why I fucking HATE philosophy!!!!!!!!!!

Because it challenges your models, oh dear we can't have that now...