Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?

[emjay]

Thanks for your rep Mud, but I don't see what you're yikesing about I don't see that as a particularly bold metaphysical leap but just what, in my opinion, logically follows from the known neural network dynamics of (some of) the neural networks of the brain, especially the cerebral cortex. In my opinion neural context dynamics... activation, competition, inhibition etc... predict what is readily observed in consciousness provided you equate neural representations with phenomenal representions of things in the brain's model of reality. In other words, in my opinion, awareness/focus 'flows' around consciousness just the same as activation flows around the neural network, so I see focus/awareness as a passive thing that simply reflects the most highly active areas of an equivalent representational neural network. There are still, and always will be, the hard questions involved in linking neural representations with equivalent phenomenal representations, but with that axiom accepted the rest is just too much of a coincidence to ignore in my opinion, so in the absence of anything better, I'm perfectly happy with that theory and it plays a large part in how I view consciousness and psychology in general.

[Little lunch]

No, claims do not always demand evidence.

[Thumpalumpacus]

If your claim is regarding objective reality and you want to convince me of a point about it, then sure, you'll need evidence.

If your claim is about an abstraction, it is not susceptible to evidence.

If your claim is about your feelings, I'll compare it to your behavior (which is, after all, evidence of your feelings, oftentimes), and make a determination then.

[Tonus]

It seems to me that when a statement like "claims demand evidence" is used, it is meant to imply that a particular claim needs evidentiary support if it is to be accepted. Vorlon already pointed out that in our day-to-day lives we accept a lot of claims without evidence, but that certain claims would be regarded as unlikely or dismissed outright without sufficient reason to believe. It doesn't mean that those mundane claims are true, but claims that appear sensible are going to face fewer challenges.

[bennyboy]

If I talked in such precise terms all the time, I'd pretty quickly only be talking to myself. I assume, when talking informally, that most people will use common sense to add these implications.

I think there's a real problem here: shorthand, when used enough, gets conflated with absolute truth, and becomes foundational.

For example, when I talk about the material world, I'm using the kind of shorthand you are talking about.  "I ate a juicy red apple" is actually the description of an experience.  This is actually shorthand for a lot of experiences: redness, apple-shape, apple-taste etc., but at some point that "experience of X" bets subbed out with "X.  Obviously and objectively X."

This doesn't matter when I'm trying to design a bridge that won't fall down.  However, in discussions about the nature of mind and brain (to take one example), it instantly leads to the conflation of assumptions and conclusions.  "I experienced brain-feeling (i.e. if poking it), subject-reports, sound-of-professor, sight-of-textbooks," which are all experiences, get "shorthanded" to "The professor said such-and-such, I did so-and-so to the brain, the subject's experienced changed in this-or-that way."

[robvalue]

Also, this is a question about how tools/methods are used effectively. The processing of claims usefully includes considering evidence, like shooting something with a gun usefully includes aiming rather than firing randomly.

As such, the evidence is going to be based on the results of using this method, compared to not using it. And remember that for mundane claims, the source of the claim is often evidence in itself. If someone I trust tells me a fairly trivial piece of information, my experience with that person will lead me to probably believe them if I have no reason not to.

[brewer]

The claim(s) and the associated evidence both exist on a sliding scale.

[Mudhammam]

If your claim is regarding objective reality and you want to convince me of a point about it, then sure, you'll need evidence.

If your claim is about an abstraction, it is not susceptible to evidence.

Under which category would you place claims that are both abstract and purport to be agent-neutral insofar as they are either true or false in their application to objective reality? I have in mind claims about metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and even rationality itself.

[Thumpalumpacus]

If your claim is regarding objective reality and you want to convince me of a point about it, then sure, you'll need evidence.

If your claim is about an abstraction, it is not susceptible to evidence.

Under which category would you place claims that are both abstract and purport to be agent-neutral insofar as they are either true or false in their application to objective reality? I have in mind claims about metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and even rationality itself.

Being abstract, it seems to me those are subject to reason rather than evidence. Whether or not they're agent-neutral doesn't seem relevant to the question in your OP. Perhaps I'm missing something?

[Mudhammam]

Being abstract, it seems to me those are subject to reason rather than evidence. Whether or not they're agent-neutral doesn't seem relevant to the question in your OP. Perhaps I'm missing something?

Right, I agree. So then claims would seem to fall into two groups, those that are evidential in nature and those that are strictly rational. "Claims demand evidence" would apply exclusively to the first group, while "claims demand reasons" (that is, right or good reasons) would seem to apply to *all* claims. My only point about agent-neutrality is that this presumes reason to be both purely abstract (at least in the second group) and related to objective reality, which I thought your demarcation implied an either/or distinction. Maybe I misinterpreted though.