Street Epistemology - Practice

[RoadRunner79]

3.)  Yes, I would agree.   However it doesn't follow that because an author doesn't mention himself in the body of the text, that it is anonymous.   I am currently reading a biography, and the author doesn't speak about himself much at all.  

4.)  This doesn't make sense to me.   It seems to me, that you are saying that evidence which points me towards a particular direction, but doesn't count, until it is proven to be true, because that may bias me... .is this correct?  I thought that evidence was suppose to bias you!


This I wanted to separate out.  What do you mean, about what the context is and testimonies being less sufficient.  


It sounds like you are starting out with bias, and the previous concept of not allowing evidence, until it's proven.   Forgive me, but this seems like a good way to ignore what you do not want to hear rather than critical thinking.  For aliens, I think that you can make some arguments against them, which give it a little to overcome.  However while I'm skeptical about aliens I don't' how you would justify a need to provide more reason to believe in them other than sufficient evidence or that they should need to overcome me stacking the deck against them.  You talk about being objective and unbiased.... I think that you may want to do some self examination, as you appear to be inserting bias and subjectivity quite a bit.

3) The biography should have an inner cover or pages at the end of it explaining who the person in the biography is. Is there something similar for the Gospels?

Yes, this is what I was saying before.  We have many manuscripts, and in each case where we have the top or cover where the attribution of the author would be, we find that it points to the traditional author.  Now we do not have the originals for the Gospels, but that it not uncommon for documents of that time period.  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionpro...ymous.html

4) Yeah, that was confusing and a hasty answer on my part. Let me restate it. I won't write their reasons off completely but I would need to know their reasons for their drastic life change. Is it due to Jesus's magic? Charisma? A cult following? If it's just because Jesus was like a life coach and positively impacted someone, then it doesn't give me any confidence that the Gospels are true. Look at what L. Ron Hubbard did with Scientology where he's had a positive impact of many people, it doesn't give me any confidence that Scientology is true.

The context is whether the claim is something that has occurred in reality and we have evidence for it. The less frequent the occurrence the more evidence that I'd need.

I would agree, if you are saying we need to critically examine them. It seems that too often in these discussions people want to go to one extreme or the other, either blind trust or blatant denial.    Unless you are advocating one of these extreme positions, then I agree, that it is not quite as simple and requires some critical thinking of the facts particular to the case.  

This part about the frequency of occurrence requiring more evidence I think needs justification on your part.   I don't see how this follows.  Why would evidence that is sufficient for one thing, not be sufficient in another similar thing.  For the sake of discussion lets isolate frequency of occurrence as the only difference.   From my experience, when examining something that does not occur frequently, then it may be difficult to acquire the necessary evidence.  So if you are using extraordinary in the same sense, then what evidence you do have from an extraordinary event is extraordinary often evidence, seeing that there was less opportunity to produce/gather that evidence. 

Yes, I'm biased. But biased towards what has occurred in reality and has been proven to be true.

Can you explain to me though why you're skeptical about aliens? How do you assign the confidence levels of a particular claim? I still do not have an understanding of your logic?

If the question is if it is true, then how can you be biased before hand?   That seems like a logical issue to me.

I am skeptical about aliens, because I am not yet convinced by the evidence that has been presented to me.

As to how I assign a particular confidence level.  I think that I did explain before, that I believe putting numbers to this type of thing is somewhat artificial, and perhaps a little different than what you are thinking.  What I am looking for is a weight of evidence, which is sufficient to demonstrate the claim.   I don't know that I have thought about this overall confidence level, in the way that you have.  My focus is more on the principles, the logic behind those principles, and being consistent with those principles.  How would you answer this question of how you assign confidence levels?