(July 21, 2012 at 9:27 am)Jeffonthenet Wrote:(July 20, 2012 at 1:17 am)MysticKnight Wrote: That's fine, but disbelieving it based on absence of evidence is fine as well.
Not necessarily. Everytime there is an absence of evidence it is not always the case that we should disbelieve something.
Because there is not evidence for X, it doesn't necessarily follow that one should disbelieve X. Only if there is another premise in the argument like, "there is no evidence for X, and if X were true, we would expect more evidence than there is for X." However, this is not just an absence of evidence then. There is a claim here.
"Disbelief" isn't a word in my vocabulary. It seems too slippery to mean what I would mean it to mean. It seems, as though you use it, to mean "an active belief in the opposite". But that doesn't describe anything going on with me.
So when you say "Every time there is an absence of evidence it is not always the case that we should disbelieve something", I agree. I don't automatically think "the opposite of that must be true!" Does your mind work that way? Mine doesn't.
When the evidence offered is insufficient to result in the generation of a shared belief, I just treat it as unactionable. Nothing I can use. I don't find I have to strongly disbelieve it in order to keep it at bay so that it can't contaminate all by other beliefs. I don't think it has that kind of power. I just ignore it.
How exactly are you using the word "disbelieve"?
