RE: Is evidentialism a dead philosophy?
April 18, 2014 at 2:49 am
(This post was last modified: April 18, 2014 at 2:53 am by Freedom of thought.)
(April 5, 2014 at 6:44 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: I think a better example would be faith in morality, goodness, justice, and honor. These things are unseen, and from an Atheistic point of view, exist within our minds and are created within our minds, yet having a meaningful reality to us. I think that takes faith, for one can easily believe, that our evolution made us believe they are meaningful and makes us take them seriously and act upon them, when there is no reason to and that they are illusions.
Atheists have faith in goodness. In the same way, I have faith in a soul. In the same way I have faith in God. Evidence is good, but most meaningful part of human experience, is not based on evidence, but is of the subjective experience that is stems more so from our innate nature.
Language is created within our minds, does that mean that language doesn't exist? Do you have faith in the existence of language? I doubt it.
(April 4, 2014 at 11:41 am)rasetsu Wrote:(April 4, 2014 at 1:14 am)Freedom of thought Wrote: You have evidence of other minds? I'd like to see that. I don't think it's provable by evidence that other people have conscious experience, but we believe it anyway. Also, we can prove that other humans have cognitive abilities, I'm a physicalist so I think that consciousness is a product of cognition, but I'm having a hard time seeing how we could actually prove with evidence that is the case. I've tried arguing with evidence found from neuroscience that our consciousness is the product of physical processes, but they won't budge. He says that just proves 'actions' are depended on brain activity, not that that physical processes actually give rise to consciousness. I think it logically follows from physicalism that if we can prove a person has cognitive functions, this proves they have consciousness. But I'm having a hard time trying to prove physicalism, and this religious person I am arguing with is not even trying to make a case for a soul.
You don't need to prove physicalism to show that we have 'evidence' for other minds. All you need is the hypothesis that your consciousness is a behavior you have as a result of your biology. We can provide evidence for this belief, without needing to prove it. We know that imbibing alcohol changes the way our consciousness behaves. Drugs can also affect your mind. And we have evidence that our biological nature is responsible for our complex behaviors. Animals, human or not, display complex behaviors. Rocks and tables do not. A computer, a type of complex thinking organism, also displays complex behaviors by virtue of its nature. Thus we have evidence that our biology gives rise to complex behaviors. We have evidence that our mind is a complex behavior that is dependent on our biology. We also have evidence that others share the same biology which we possess. Thus, it is reasonable, given the evidence, to hypothesize that others who share the same biology as us, and given that our complex behavior of mind appears dependent on biology, we have 'evidence' that these other beings have minds like us. (Evidence, not proof.)
The problem with this though, is it doesn't take into account the concept of philosophical zombies: Which is a person which seems like they have consciousness, but they really don't have consciousness. I agree though that physicalism plus our observations makes it reasonable to believe in other minds.