Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?

[Mudhammam]

Is not reason the experience of mental coherence?  Is there any component of reason which you consider to be more than that?

I'm inclined to think that reason represents something more fundamental, more universal.  If reason is the "experience of mental coherence," would you say that the discovery of, say, irrational numbers, was a discovery only about mental coherence?  What could account for the universal applicability of this "mental coherence" to phenomena far beyond the grasps of primates wandering around the Sahara?  I wonder if reason might reflect a pattern or regularity -- basically, information -- intrinsic to the nature of material existence itself, if not ultimately, at least at a very deep level.

This is an example of the kind of knowledge I was talking about, which can be said to be true, but only in context... In an absolute context, I don't know that at all.  Nor is it really an inference-- I don't think you can go from any amount of personal experience to arrive at an objective truth like that.  It has to be a pragmatic assumption, based on a hunch... The problem comes if I use what I "know" (i.e. assume) with truth, and use it as the foundation for subsequent truths.  All those truths are local-- they are true only in the context allowed by my assumptions.

Complete global skepticism is self-defeating.  We can KNOW that.

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No, I would not.  Any claim about the nature of a thing is meaningless without evidence of the existence of that thing.

Is your claim outside of the domain of these "things"?  Because your claim, that I should only accept its truth after conceding the validity of the evidence provided about the meaningfulness of its nature -- apparently (though paradoxically?) involving the property that it is a properly basic belief and does not require such evidence -- seemed to be conveniently lacking said evidence.