Is evidentialism justified?

[Welsh cake]

The question for this thread is "Is evidentialism justified?"

Pragmatically justified or epistemically justified?

Epistemic.

So the actual dispute then is whether evidentialism holds up as a theory of justification, as in, does it justify propositions and beliefs or not. Let's apply it to see if it is self-defeating.

I present to you, for sake of the argument, the belief that there is a giant frog in the sun. There's absolutely no evidence to support it. It's simply a faith-based position. Evidentialism renders my belief unjustified. If you want to reject evidentialism that's your entitlement. How would you go about justifying my belief epistemically so that it may be established by a panrationalism appeal to the rational criteria?

My "belief" cannot possibly justify itself when there is scientific knowledge and empirical observation to the contrary. There are already natural explanations in place that describe stars, and none of those involve giant amphibians.

Neither can my "belief" be justified by other similar beliefs such as the giant platypus in the sun. Both cannot be supported by logic or evidence in any case. It would seem to me that your complaint actually lies with "justification" itself, as in how we go about justifying our beliefs in the first place.

Evidentialism is a claim about when beliefs are justified. As evidentialism is itself a belief, it is perfectly reasonable to apply it to itself.

No. That's a deductive fallacy you've presented. As I explained to you earlier it is a *theory of justification* which is part of epistemology, which in turn is a branch of philosophy. It is concerned with beliefs, it is not of itself a belief.

Evidence of any sort. The evidentialist thesis leaves open what counts and does not count as evidence.

Yes but hearsay can be submitted as evidence and that does not establish whether evidentialism is flawed or not. We both agree the content of the evidence is irrelevant so long as it provides a valid justification for the belief.

We're back to square one again. How do you justify your beliefs Stempy?

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

@Void;

I've done gone and gotten all confused again. I do not pretend to be philosopher. Are you and/or what's-his- name saying that my basic life position is just wrong?

IE:A skeptic and agnostic atheist. (as a result) I assert I do not believe gods,the soul,an afterlife, the paranormal, alien visitations or fairies at the bottom of my garden. The reason for my position is lack of evidence for any of the things mentioned.

My position is that logic does not guarantee truth. That makes it unreliable.I demand evidence in support of even logically valid arguments. That metaphysical propositions may be unprovable and unfalsifiable bothers me not at all; perfectly happy to remain agnostic about things unproven.

I don't post this to be argumentative, but because I seem to be out my intellectual depth,and would appreciate some clarification ,in words of fewer syllables.. It's usually a hint when my first response to a complex argument is to dismiss it as sophistry.(argument from incredulity)

[theVOID]

@Void;

I've done gone and gotten all confused again. I do not pretend to be philosopher. Are you and/or what's-his- name saying that my basic life position is just wrong?

Depends. What I was saying is that Evidentialism it's self is not enough, there are things for which we are justified in believing without evidence up to a point, that point being examination.

For instance:

I see a face across the street and believe it is my old flat mate.

Am I justified in my belief based on this alone? Some forms of evidentialism would say no to individual sensory perception because to grant a person justification for this visual perception would be to grant the same justification to a person who believes he has seen an alien, any distinctions you can draw between the two types of experience can become rather arbitrary.

I would argue that individual sensory perception is "not unjustified" until such point where the belief is examined, upon which point it is either justified or unjustified.The examination of the belief can involve evidence (I look on a CCTV camera and see my flatmate), verification (A person with me also believes that it is my old flatmate), conformation via other senses (I speak to my old flatmate) etc.

We essentially need two tiers to weed out all the things we believed we have perceived that we actually have not - These beliefs can be further examined.

IE:A skeptic and agnostic atheist. (as a result) I assert I do not believe gods,the soul,an afterlife, the paranormal, alien visitations or fairies at the bottom of my garden. The reason for my position is lack of evidence for any of the things mentioned.

That's perfectly legitimate because this was not a belief you acquired through usually reliable means like the senses, however, if this was a belief that you saw a person across the street and a few hours later I asked you for your evidence what would your response be?

It's rather clear that you aren't unjustified in trusting your senses, but you don't qualify for full justification either - There is a big difference between justification during acquisition of the beliefs and justification during examination of those beliefs. The status achieved in examination trumps those achieved in acquisition.

If we decided to examine your belief we could take measures to determine whether or not your subjective experience happened external to yourself or not - If we could confirm the presence of your friend you would now be justified in your belief.

If we were to find no sign of your friend by watching the CCTV cameras of the location you thought you saw him and he wasn't there you would then be unjustified in belief.

If we had no mechanism for testing your beliefs then you have no justification.

My position is that logic does not guarantee truth. That makes it unreliable.I demand evidence in support of even logically valid arguments. That metaphysical propositions may be unprovable and unfalsifiable bothers me not at all; perfectly happy to remain agnostic about things unproven.

An argument that is sound and valid is necessarily true, you can argue whether or not it is sound by demanding evidence for the premises but it is still easy enough to establish a necessary truth. Would you demand evidence for the following?

1. All elephants are mammals
2. Jumbo is an elephant
3. Therefore Jumbo is a mammal

Short of cutting up an elephant to prove that it is a warm blooded vertebrate who gives birth to live young and produces milk or providing a photo of Jumbo there isn't any evidence you could demand.

I don't post this to be argumentative, but because I seem to be out my intellectual depth,and would appreciate some clarification ,in words of fewer syllables.. It's usually a hint when my first response to a complex argument is to dismiss it as sophistry.(argument from incredulity)

I assure you it's not out of your depth, it's just new territory.

I'm not attempting any Sophistry and so far as I can tell neither is Stempy, he does seem to be teetering on some argument like "because evidentialism is false I don't require evidence to be justified in belief that god exists" - I think he understands that there is zero evidence for god and he doesn't want to be seen as unjustified in his assumptions if evidentialism is true - It will be interesting to see if he has an epistemology that doesn't suffer some fatal flaw and that permits justification for belief in God.

For the record I do think that evidence is necessary for justification at the point of examination (and I include a sound and valid argument as evidence).

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

An argument that is sound and valid is necessarily true, you can argue whether or not it is sound by demanding evidence for the premises but it is still easy enough to establish a necessary truth.

THERE'S the rub. I only did a year's philosophy at university,but I WAS taught by actual philosophers. I was taught that using the rules of inference, the inference may or may not be true.That in formal logic,the premise is always assumed to be true for the sake of argument.

That the logical form may be valid and the inference valid,but untrue. This is a common problem with syllogistic logic.

It is my understanding that the notion of truth through reason alone goes back to the neo Platonists,(starting with Plotinus) and was used for example by Ptolemy and his geocentric solar system and indeed heavily influenced Christian thinkers such as Augustine.

I demand logic AND evidence to accept something as true for all practical purposes,until new evidence is found.I have a problem getting my head around the idea of an absolute truth.

Have I misunderstood or are we perhaps simply talking on different levels?

[Edwardo Piet]

There is a big difference between justification during acquisition of the beliefs and justification during examination of those beliefs. The status achieved in examination trumps those achieved in acquisition.

Is one of them pragmatic justification and one of them epistemic?

Examining a belief would be looking at it in more detail, so that would be epistemic justification? Since to merely acquire a belief is a lot easier, so that would be pragmatic justification?

[theVOID]

@DvF yeah sort of, but there is a problem with that way of putting it though, the acquisition-level "proto-justification " is lost when examination fails while a pragmatic justification is still pragmatic if the examination fails because the examination of the belief does naught to influence the potential usefulness of the belief.

I think Acquisition = Proto-justification, Examination = Justification.

Proto-justification is a mix of pragmatic and epistemic...

---

An argument that is sound and valid is necessarily true, you can argue whether or not it is sound by demanding evidence for the premises but it is still easy enough to establish a necessary truth.

THERE'S the rub. I only did a year's philosophy at university,but I WAS taught by actual philosophers. I was taught that using the rules of inference, the inference may or may not be true.That in formal logic,the premise is always assumed to be true for the sake of argument.

And there is where you've got it wrong... The premises do not necessarily need to be assumed to be true, that would be a conditional argument, IF the premises are true THEN the conclusion is necessary. These arguments are designed to show a train of thought and not necessitate or 'prove' a conclusion to be true.

A sound and valid argument is and argument that attempts to prove a conclusion, this is a type of argument in which the premises ARE true, so it is not conditional upon a mutually assumed premise. It can be difficult to determine soundness (far more so than validity) and we are often wrong, but that does not mean that a sound and valid argument does not exist - It's more a statement about the limits of our abilities rather than the validity of the concepts.

That the logical form may be valid and the inference valid,but untrue. This is a common problem with syllogistic logic.

You seem to be confusing your terms.

The validity of an argument referrers to the premises following logically to the conclusion (the inference).

A 'Valid' inference is a true conclusion. (you should avoid talking about validity in more than one sense).

It is not possible for an inference to be valid and untrue simultaneously (the law of non-contradiction). You can however have a true inference with an invalid or unsound argument.

You can have an argument that is neither sound nor valid that has a true conclusion.

You may find an argument that isn't sound or isn't valid, but as long as it is both it is necessarily true.

It is my understanding that the notion of truth through reason alone goes back to the neo Platonists,(starting with Plotinus) and was used for example by Ptolemy and his geocentric solar system and indeed heavily influenced Christian thinkers such as Augustine.

Their arguments weren't sound.

I demand logic AND evidence to accept something as true for all practical purposes,until new evidence is found.I have a problem getting my head around the idea of an absolute truth.

Firstly, a sound and valid argument is evidence. So is a sound and valid Bayesian probability.

Secondly, without me providing you evidence do you refuse to accept the following? The only possible question could be "Is G6523B actually only black?" or "Is keyboard x actually model B6534B?" - The soundness of the argument depends on these both being true while it is a valid argument because of it's form.

1. Keyboard x a G6523B
2. Model G6523B only comes in black
3. Therefore, Keyboard x is black

Also, Evidence only leads to conclusions when considered logically. A fact by it's self is just a fact and is not a conclusion within any conceptual model we might have.

1. The half life of C-14 is 5,730 years.
2. A piece of coal x is 1:1trillion parts C-14 at t1
3. x is 1:500billion parts N-14 at t2
4. Therefore, t1 happened 5,730 years prior to t2

Have I misunderstood or are we perhaps simply talking on different levels?

I think you have your terms confused, either that or you are going along some line like "some arguments that claim to be sound and valid can be false therefore all arguments that are in fact sound and valid can be false".

[Edwardo Piet]

If you have your own sort of special mix of pragmatic and epistemic justification then maybe you can justify beliefs, I'm not sure how that works though.

But if you try to use epistemic justification alone, I don't see how you can justify your beliefs.

I only justify my beliefs pragmatically. I can give explanations for why I believe that refer to my own experience and what is useful for me, but when it comes to knowledge I can't justify my beliefs. I know that I believe but I don't know why because the "why?" question always leads to the infinite regress of the begging the question fallacy, and the only escape from that is to commit the circular reasoning fallacy.

We COULD justify things epistemically: But only if we redefine the meaning of "epistemic justification", and then we're not talking about the same thing. That's the way I see it.

I think that the most succinct and valid thing I said so far on this thread was this:

It's a relevant question to ask because it makes me become aware that it commits the begging the question fallacy as it is defined. Because it commits the begging the question fallacy it can't lead to any conclusion. The fact that it can't lead to any conclusion demonstrates its unjustifiability.

So I'd just like to quote it here and comment that what I'm saying is the question is PRAGMATICALLY relevant (the question "why do you believe X?"). And it's only relevant "epistemtically" in the sense that it demonstrates the impossibility of epistemic justification. Obviously I don't justify skepticism itself epistemically because that would contradict itself. I justifiy it pragmatically. That is why I consider the question relevant: I find it useful.

I find it useful because I have to ask the question to realize how pointless it is (and I also realize the fact that any answer leads to fallacy unless we redefine the meaning of the question!).

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

@Void,

I think I understand your position. (?)

My position:The bald statement that logic does not guarantee truth.

Your position seems to be that logic can and does guarantee truth.


We seem disagree,and I'm happy to do so.

[theVOID]

Sound and valid logic does guarantee truth.

It depends whether you consider bad logic to be logic

[Anomalocaris]

Can you determine whether the logic is good or not a priori? If not, then soundness and validity are mere notional concepts.