To what extent is evidence important in philosophy?

Thankfully, I am not required to provide evidence for YOUR claims. That's your job. My evidence has already been provided, and even cited. Your turn

 

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You said all true statements have to be supported by evidence. But you fail to support that statement with evidence. Therefore your statement is false.

 

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I believe I was replying to Magical Realist. And the only intellectual dishonesty present in this thread is from MR (not surprisingly) and yourself (and one would think you should know better, but I guess this is also not surprising).

I wish I was home, as opposed to on my phone, as it would be far quicker to reply (and dissect) the fallacies being thrown around with an actual keyboard,as opposed to a small touch screen

 

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I provided evidence of it already - a receipt, security camera footage, the NSA being big brother. Just because you do not have them doesn't mean that to giblets evidence exists. Additionally, not all evidence is physical - I believe in one of my earlier posts I covered inductive and deductive reasoning - that is ot, however, the same as a flight of fancy.

Now, given that - have you the slightest actual argument to make, or do you wish to continue relying upon logical fallacy?

 

You provided nothing of the sort. And you still have yet to support your claim that all truths must be supported by evidence with evidence. Still waiting..

 

Oh, I didn't realize ignoring people also removed their quotes from other user's posts.

You've yet to support any of your accusations against me. And from my brief look, it seems you've yet to support your argument against MR either.

Show ONE definition for philosophy that requires evidence.

 

You know... this comment of yours makes a lot of sense - I guess you would prefer truths to be supported by pixie dust and happy thoughts?

Now that I have access to my computer, gladly:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evidence/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Harvard actually has an entire class that focuses on this:
http://hls.harvard.edu/academics/curriculum/catalog/default.aspx?o=68847

http://www.iep.utm.edu/evidence/

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Augustine/augustine_faith.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_evidence

There is a small sampling, just to cut your teeth on

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No..logical argumentation is sufficient, something you seem to have a complete lack of appreciation for.

So tell us oh scientific one: Are the statements of the Bible true based on evidence? Or is that more a matter of personal faith?

And you do realize don't you that the philosophical study and analysis of the concept of evidence is not itself based on evidence?

 

What, pray tell, do you base the "logic" of an argument on, if not evidence? Perhaps a signal from aliens that tells you the "truth"? No, seriously... what logic do you use if not evidence based?

Are the statements of the bible true based on evidence - that is one HELL of a leading question, and you know it. Some are very true - case in point, we KNOW there was a great flood, between accounts across most major religions, and has geological evidence to support it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/science/china-great-flood-xia-emperor-yu.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/china-yellow-river-great-flood-xia-dynasty-yu/

Is it "world ending"? Probably not as WE know it - but to a primitive people, for whom traversing a country is an endeavor of weeks or months, a flood covering a large portion of (or entirety of) the nation would seem as though a world ending event.

And the philosophical study and analysis of the concept of evidence is based on what, then, if not logical reasoning supported by facts (which are, surprise! evidence!)

 

Kittamaru

And? I already said that philosophy is concerned with what and how evidence can be justified. Go look for yourself. The thing you seem to willfully miss is that philosophy is not itself subject to evidence. There are countless wholly a priori schools of thought in philosophy. A priori truths are defined as truths that do not rely on experience or evidence. Look it up. Are you really trying to claim we cannot discuss a priori truths on this forum, even in the philosophy forum?

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We can't discuss very large swaths of legitimate philosophy, including how we justify evidence?

You clearly do not understand philosophy. Please consult with one of the mods who do before threatening this discussion again.

 

Uh,..logic? Duh..

So all those statements in the Bible about the talking snake in the magic tree, about Moses parting the Red Sea, and giant hailstones falling out of the sky, and the sun standing still, and Jonah swallowed by the whale, and Mary the virgin conceiving a baby, and Jesus walking on water and raising the dead and rising up from the dead himself and floating up into the stratosphere--those are all based on evidence, right?

What alleged evidence would you use to study the concept of evidence, seeing that would itself be in question as evidence?

 

A priori is derived by reason. Typically, there are facts (evidence) known already in order to come to this conclusion. This is not without merit - however, it is not wholly unsubstantiated, otherwise you are simply making shit up as you wish.

http://consequently.org/papers/apriori.pdf

Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori

As another example:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/apriori/

As to my claim of evidence:
http://www.philosophy-index.com/terms/a-priori.php

As such, the statement that all reason is founded on experience is true. While we may no longer require said experience to accept the end result (such as mathematics - we accept that 5 plus 5 is 10, because it is, though in higher maths "proofs" can be written if one wishes). I would challenge for an example of any knowledge where some sort of evidence (either a factual starting point, such as the student example) is not used as a basis from which additional reasoning can be, well, reasoned.

 

Circular reasoning - you are using the subject to define the subject.

A smelly red herring, but lets play along:

"talking snake in the magic tree" - to my knowledge, there is no archaeological evidence of a physical Garden of Eden. Some, especially in Native American circles, equate Eden not to a physical location, but rather a state of mind or spiritual freedom:
https://www.manataka.org/page1073.html

"Moses parting the Red Sea" - There is, again, little physical evidence that has been found to support the telling as it is (to further confuse the issue, there are four different biblical narratives). However, there are theories it could be a mish-mash of a number of traditions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Red_Sea#Location_of_the_crossing

However, it is not entirely without merit (although some extremely suspect coincidental timing would be needed):
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99580&page=1

Impossible, no. Improbably, most certainly.

Giant Hailstones from the Sky - weather...? I've experienced hailstorms before - I can easily imagine a primitive culture being terrified of these random balls of ice falling from the sky with enough force to kill a man...

Sun standing still - Of course not - orbits don't just spontaneously change like that (though retrograde moments can cause what appears to be strangeness, but not full day events). This is most likely an embellishment of a war tale (recall, at the time, most stories were passed by mouth, rather than being written) -my guess on it is that, in the heat of the moment, time seemed to slow (it is a well known occurrence that high stress situations can lead to a distortion of the perception of time passing) and that over generations of retelling, this story morphed into the legend we know today.

And on and on ad nauseum - lets face it, MR - you are not going to accept any answer given that doesn't fit your narrative (as you routinely do). I think at this point, my original statement stands - yes, there is physical evidence to support some of the passages in the bible (such as the Great Flood). Note, not once, did I say "all".

Years of acquired knowledge, and a species worth of history would be a good place to start...

 

Basing an argument solely on logic is not circular.

A = B
B = C
therefore, A = C

So according to your claim that all true statements are supported with evidence, these statements in the Bible that are unsupported by evidence are therefore untrue? Yet you believe them anyway. Why is that?

 

If "all reason is founded on experience", why did you feel the need to qualify it as "typically"? "Typically" means "not always". Are you seriously claiming that monism (especially non-physical) and dualism can be evidence-based? Now if you've just backpedaled your argument from "all philosophy requires evidence" to "all philosophy requires experience", then any subjective experience satisfies your demand for at least anecdotal evidence.

Instead of supporting your argument that all philosophical arguments must have evidence, you've just moved the goalpost to experience, and I agree, it is trivial that you cannot do philosophy without some degree of experience. Experience is a far cry from evidence, and you should really get around to admitting that...to restore a bare modicum of credibility.

 

Of course not. The belief that the 'realm of science' (those things that can directly or indirectly interact with our senses) is coextensive with 'reality' in its entirety is a metaphysical (and hence a philosophical belief). I don't know of any way that a belief in metaphysical physicalism could possibly be conclusively justified.

 

I completely agree. Physicalism is itself a philosophical position. Stipulating physicalism would seem to deny all philosophy.

 

Philosophy isn't about evidence so much as it's about examples. Philosophy takes its examples from reasoning in every context, physical science, mathematics, psychology, religion, ethics and all of human life. Then it inquires into what practitioners in these areas are assuming and presupposing, and into the methods and principles that are being used and exemplified in their reasoning. Most generally, there's logic. In some cases there's also mathematics. There are often assumptions about what kind of things exist and how knowledge of those kind of things can best be acquired. (Metaphysics and epistemology.) In some areas of life there are aesthetic, ethical and religious intuitions as well that need to be factored in.Oftentimes there's some critique as well, with opinions expressed about how plausible the various metaphysical and methodological assumptions that go into a subject seem to be.

So I'd say that philosophy, at least in the English-speaking world, has evolved into being the logical, epistemological and metaphysical analysis of reasoning both generally and in specific fields.

 

Could consider the epistemological activity divided into "understanding" (reflective thought) versus "intuition" (immediate delivery) contexts.

There would be the intellectual "evidence" or support for an _X_ outputted by reason / inference, arguments, procedural "proofs" derived from the axioms of a system, etc. A tradition of rationalism (or just the general "the conceptual background is the producer of knowledge" camp).

There would be the sensory and particular objects "evidence" or support for an _X_ rubbing shoulders with nominalism, empiricism, pragmatism, etc schools of thought (or just the general umbrella of "experience is the source of knowledge" camp).

Both converge in naturalist philosophy or methodological naturalism practices that play with both pre-conceptual frameworks / abstract theory and observation.

Note that all the above involves ignoring continental philosophy trends of the 20th century and the advent of postmodernism.

 

To be clear, I did not actually ask this question. This is a misquotation.
All I did (which instigated the creation of this thread) is point out that the forum rules say

As the forum developed, our interests broadened to include Philosophy and Ethics, Religion, World Events and Politics and other topics. However, we retain in all areas of debate an ethos of respect for the scientific method, which demands critical analysis, clear thinking and evidence-based argument.