(May 3, 2010 at 11:57 am)Watson Wrote: I believe without evidence, but through experience, that the sun will rise the next morning when I wake up.
I believe without evidence, but through experience, that when I come home I will not find it burned down to the ground when I get there.
etc
Have you ever heard of inductive reasoning? Its an interesting concept- you should try it some time.
Basically, the idea is that you can generalize from specific cases. For example, if I hit my thumb with a hammer, and it hurts, then I can use induction to conclude that it would also hurt to hit my index finger with a hammer. Similarly, if the sun rises every morning, then by induction we can say that it will rise the next morning.
All of the empirical sciences use induction. If an experiment is run repeatedly, with replicable results, then by induction it is assumed that the results represent some sort of general regularity. Thats how science works.
Clearly, induction needs to be used carefully, and does not produce absolute knowledge. But I'm afraid that if what you're after is absolute knowledge of the world, then you're out of luck. There isn't any.
Knowledge gained through induction certainly counts as evidence. So when you say that there isn't any evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow, you're simply wrong.