Vorkosigan

Both! But in the case of my parents and wife, I am not ramming my private evidence down the public throat in the form of public policy based on my private evidence.

In the case of my belief that science is the most effective and reliable way currently available to obtain knowledge about the world, that is based strictly on public evidence. What would constitute private evidence in that case?

Michael

Vorkosigan

First, my comment was limited strictly to religious usages of the word "faith." That's what faith is: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

Couldn't put it any better than that. Is that rational? If it isn't, so what? The issue is not that it is irrational -- lots of good things are irrational -- but that it makes non-trivial claims about the nature of reality and imposes demands on human beings without supporting reason, evidence or logic. What makes religious faith so noxious is not that it is irrational, but that it is unjustified.

Michael

phaedrus

Ender

At it again, eh, Phaedrus? You're like an ex-junkie who encountered his first chance at a fix after a month in detox.

He he, thats for sure. Was certainily missing the place during the long hols. How have u been?


JP

phaedrus

Michael

Both! But in the case of my parents and wife, I am not ramming my private evidence down the public throat in the form of public policy based on my private evidence.

In the case of my belief that science is the most effective and reliable way currently available to obtain knowledge about the world, that is based strictly on public evidence. What would constitute private evidence in that case?

Oh, since you had stated earlier Sure, I have faith in science, just like I have faith in my parents or my wife., I had asked you those questions.

So now you mean to say you have faith in your family and science based on the distinctions in evidence proposed in the original post?

So your private belief system (which is based solely on public evidence and not on you private evidence) has got nothing to do with your faith in science? (which i am sure you will point out that is a widely shared belief system)


JP

Vorkosigan

Phaedrus, I have faith in my wife and science. The starting point for faith in my wife is either and both kinds of evidence, the starting point for my "faith" in science is public evidence. Both end up at justified "faith." Satisfied?

Michael

phaedrus

Danke for the clarification

However, the point was to discuss whether the distinction of public and private evidence can be drawn at all.

Edited to add...there is a thread titled "belief" in the philo forum, where i had given a link for the friesian's take on justification et al....let me know whats your take on that. (if ur interested ie)

[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: phaedrus ]</p>

MOJO-JOJO

I agree. It's like the pastor at our family church likes to say, "You know....that you know...that you know." Now if that ain't conclusive "private evidence", I don't know what is!

Transworldly Depraved

Neither my example from North by Northwest nor my example from remembering my breakfast made any appeal to faith. In both examples one person has access to information that others do not. I see no reason why theists cannot claim that theism is similar.

My examples along with many others seems to suggest that "being able to demonstrate the truth of some claim" is not the same thing as "being warranted in believing some claim". Specifically, one can be warranted in believing some proposition even if one cannot demonstrate it as true.

Theli

"Private Evidence" is of very low value, especially when trying to defend your position on a question such as the existence of god.
The person that makes a claim and base it on Private Evidence can be lying to prove his/her point. Or that person can be deluded, and has reached his/her conclusion using false logic or lack of logic.


Of course everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion, but to say it's the 'truth' only based on his or her belief is to make a false claim.

Jerry Smith

Transwordly Depraved,

You said:
If A walks into a room and sees B pulling a knife out of the back of C, then A cannot rationally conclude that B inserted the knife into C, without further evidence. A may well feel that this is the most likely case, but A may not rationally conclude that it is definitely the case. Rationality requires us to refrain from drawing a conclusion on insufficient evidence. If all the evidence we have points in the direction of a certain hypothesis, then we have a good hypothesis. The hypothesis that B killed C would be a good one.
However, the good hypothesis must be tested and subjected to potential falsification before it can be used to draw any rational conclusions.

You said:
Science (and Justice) do sometimes miscarry. It is a fact. Another fact is that Personal Experience (i.e. Personal evidence) is often misconstrued. A person who has personal evidence supporting some given hypothesis (i.e. the existence of god) is well justified in diligently searching for objective evidence that will confirm or falsify their hypothesis. One of the following scenarios MUST result:

I) the hypothesis is strongly confirmed by objective evidence, and not falsified by it.

II) the hypothesis is strongly falsified by objective evidence, and not confirmed by it.

III) it is impossible to gather enough evidence to strongly confirm or falsify the hypothesis.

The conclusions we may draw are, in the case of

I) Our hypothesis is supported and we can conclude that it is very likely true (at least as a special case, if not as a general case) of reality.

II) Our hypothesis is very likely untrue (or only true in some special, the particulars of which do not hold under the circumstances). *If personal evidence is so strong as to make one incredulous of this result, one can look for other circumstances where our hypothesis is true as a special case.

III) We cannot make a rational conclusion about whether our hypothesis is true. We should consider whether we were diligent enough in our efforts to find evidence that would confirm or falsify our hypothesis.

Only in the case where the truth of the answer is trivial (in the ordinary, not the mathematical sense) should we rest any conclusions on insufficient evidence. To me, it is trivial whether the vitamins I take significantly improve my health, so I take the insufficient evidence that I have and weakly believe that it I can improve my health by taking them. In other words, a strictly rational answer about the efficacy of the vitamins is not necessary to me: a good guess is plenty.

You said:

I disagree that you would be warranted in believing that you had a bagel for breakfast last Friday solely on the basis of your memory of the event. If it is important enough that you know with certainty, memory alone will not serve. Psychologists have repeatedly demonstrated that besides recording events that happened, our memories also:
1) record events that didn't happen
2) distort events that did happen
3) forget events that did happen.
You might, however, be justified in believing with certainty that you had a bagel on Friday based on your memory of the event in conjunction with objective evidence(s) such as:

1) a witness who can verify that you ate a bagel Friday
2) A signed and dated paper in your handwriting from Friday affirming that your breakfast was a bagel.
3) You are known to often eat bagels
4) Bagels are readily available at your local Grocery
5) It is still Friday morning, Breakfast is just over, and there are bagel-looking crumbs on your plate, the cream cheese is open on the table, and the toaster is still warm.

Depending on how much confidence you need to have in your conclusion, one or more of these evidences should suffice for purposes of reason.

Subjective 'evidence' has its role, but if the question is important enought that we need rational certainty, then the question must finally be addressed by objective evidence, or left unanswered.

[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]

[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>