padraic Wrote:@Void;
I've done gone and gotten all confused again. I do not pretend to be philosopher. Are you and/or what's-his- name saying that my basic life position is just wrong?
Depends. What I was saying is that Evidentialism it's self is not enough, there are things for which we are justified in believing without evidence up to a point, that point being examination.
For instance:
I see a face across the street and believe it is my old flat mate.
Am I justified in my belief based on this alone? Some forms of evidentialism would say no to individual sensory perception because to grant a person justification for this visual perception would be to grant the same justification to a person who believes he has seen an alien, any distinctions you can draw between the two types of experience can become rather arbitrary.
I would argue that individual sensory perception is "not unjustified" until such point where the belief is examined, upon which point it is either justified or unjustified.The examination of the belief can involve evidence (I look on a CCTV camera and see my flatmate), verification (A person with me also believes that it is my old flatmate), conformation via other senses (I speak to my old flatmate) etc.
We essentially need two tiers to weed out all the things we believed we have perceived that we actually have not - These beliefs can be further examined.
Quote:IE:A skeptic and agnostic atheist. (as a result) I assert I do not believe gods,the soul,an afterlife, the paranormal, alien visitations or fairies at the bottom of my garden. The reason for my position is lack of evidence for any of the things mentioned.
That's perfectly legitimate because this was not a belief you acquired through usually reliable means like the senses, however, if this was a belief that you saw a person across the street and a few hours later I asked you for your evidence what would your response be?
It's rather clear that you aren't unjustified in trusting your senses, but you don't qualify for full justification either - There is a big difference between justification during acquisition of the beliefs and justification during examination of those beliefs. The status achieved in examination trumps those achieved in acquisition.
If we decided to examine your belief we could take measures to determine whether or not your subjective experience happened external to yourself or not - If we could confirm the presence of your friend you would now be justified in your belief.
If we were to find no sign of your friend by watching the CCTV cameras of the location you thought you saw him and he wasn't there you would then be unjustified in belief.
If we had no mechanism for testing your beliefs then you have no justification.
Quote:My position is that logic does not guarantee truth. That makes it unreliable.I demand evidence in support of even logically valid arguments. That metaphysical propositions may be unprovable and unfalsifiable bothers me not at all; perfectly happy to remain agnostic about things unproven.
An argument that is sound and valid is necessarily true, you can argue whether or not it is sound by demanding evidence for the premises but it is still easy enough to establish a necessary truth. Would you demand evidence for the following?
1. All elephants are mammals
2. Jumbo is an elephant
3. Therefore Jumbo is a mammal
Short of cutting up an elephant to prove that it is a warm blooded vertebrate who gives birth to live young and produces milk or providing a photo of Jumbo there isn't any evidence you could demand.
Quote:I don't post this to be argumentative, but because I seem to be out my intellectual depth,and would appreciate some clarification ,in words of fewer syllables.. It's usually a hint when my first response to a complex argument is to dismiss it as sophistry.(argument from incredulity)
I assure you it's not out of your depth, it's just new territory.
I'm not attempting any Sophistry and so far as I can tell neither is Stempy, he does seem to be teetering on some argument like "because evidentialism is false I don't require evidence to be justified in belief that god exists" - I think he understands that there is zero evidence for god and he doesn't want to be seen as unjustified in his assumptions if evidentialism is true - It will be interesting to see if he has an epistemology that doesn't suffer some fatal flaw and that permits justification for belief in God.
For the record I do think that evidence is necessary for justification at the point of examination (and I include a sound and valid argument as evidence).
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