Is evidentialism a dead philosophy?

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

Two things I want to say after reading this thread.

1. I myself do not believe in the existence of other minds without evidence. There is evidence that I interpret to be consistent with the hypothesis "other minds exist besides my own." Does this mean then that I am absolutely 100% certain other minds exist? No. There's always a little doubt for me about the existence of other minds but all the evidence I can gather seems to be very strongly consistent with the other minds hypothesis.

2. There seems to be an equivocation between "assume" and "believe." To me at least, they're different. To assume something is true is to act as though it is true. To believe something is true is to experience the panning out of predictions that are inherent in that something. I assume (i.e. I act like) other minds absolutely exists for pragmatic reasons but I do not believe other minds exist with the same degree of certainty.

[Mister Agenda]

By that logic, your definition of evidence must be obvious to everyone in order to be justified, but it isn't. You presumably don't consider ancient texts to be evidence. Some people do.

Ancient texts can be evidence, but they need to be supported with more than 'it says so in this old book' to be more than hearsay. The reliability of historical textual evidence is based on corroboration from other sources.

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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.

Scientific evidence is not the same thing as 'proof'. Proof is for maths and whiskey. We infer other minds based on the available evidence: we know we have minds, we perceive other people behaving as though they have minds too, this is evidence that they have minds...but not proof, because we can't even prove we're not brains in jars.

Of course this sort of thinking leads to solopsism, but that's the entire point of the argument. How can you accept evidentialism, when you have no evidence you exist apart from referring to your own conscious experience? Is it not circular to do that? It seems to me, if this is the case solopsism is a product of being an evidentialist.

Could you present your evidence that evidentialism leads to solipsism rather than the denial of it leading to solipsism?

Surely the most basic axiom of evidentialism is that, regardless of whether we are brains in jars, there's no justification for believing things people just make up. Maybe we're brains in jars, but there's no good reason to believe that is actually the case if there is no evidence for it.

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I don't think you understand how much more complex this issue is. Are you familiar with something called a 'philosophical zombie'? A philosophical zombie has no conscious experience, yet behaves like one of my friends.

What is the evidence that any of your friends is a philosophical zombie? That something is conceivable doesn't make it likely.

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That's a very interesting idea of a "right." Should the CyberBen 3000, if it can simulate all my behaviors, be extended all the rights that I enjoy? How about the right to "pursue happiness?" even though I suspect the CyberBen doesn't experience qualia, but only seems to?

As Freedom of Thought has demonstrated, one can suspect that anyone doesn't experience qualia, but only seems to. Best to err on the side of doubt.

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Dreams lack persistence, otherwise we would assume the dream world was just another world. Since persistence is a trait of objects in this world, people in dreams don't display the same properties as people in this world. But it's a good objection. Why don't we treat the dream world as real?

People used to. Some cultures still do. At first impression, dreams are compelling evidence that we leave our bodies behind and go somewhere else when we sleep.