Talk:Evidentialism

Andries, you added:
 * In other words, evidentialism says that one shouldn't be certain about the truth of a proposition if one can't be certain of it and that one shouldn't doubt about its truth if the proposition has been proven to be true or untrue.

I wonder if this is part of the definition, or if it is some kind of conclusion. Putting this conclusion parallel to the definition makes it appear to be an attempt to say the same thing "in other words", which I'm not sure is accurate. Rather, it might more be correct to say,


 * In other words, knowledge is only as sound as the evidence upon which it is founded.

What do you think? Does this summarize the point you were trying to express, sufficiently? Mkmcconn &mdash; 23:05, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Mkmcconn, that was how I had understood the definition of evidentialism but if you think it is inaccurate then please correct it. I added it because I don't like unnecessarily abstract definitions. Andries 23:30, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * I substituted my suggestion. I hope that fits your intention.  Mkmcconn &mdash; 00:21, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

First intallment of overhall.
I've corrected some major errors in this piece, but it still needs a heavy re-write which I intend to do piecemeal. Since Conee and Feldman are the principle defenders of the theory, I have put in their definition. I have put it in terms of belief rather doxastic attitudes because the latter will be quite foreign to most users. I have also put in a more intuitive description which should meet the expectations of an earlier commentator without sacrificing precision. I have started the bibliography and external links. I removed the mention of the basing relation because this has nothing to do with the notion of a justified belief. The basing relation is an ingredient added together with justification as part of the recipe for knowledge according to the standard view. I will add in relevant information on the basing relation later.

The regress argument section probably does not belong here at all since evidentialism and foundationalism are logically independent. I've added a clarificatory note for now, but I'll probably delete the whole thing later. http://www.trent.dougherty.net/Philosophy.htm

The sentence "Most evidentialists are foundationalists, but the two issues are logically independent" doesn't seem to belong. The section on the regress argument, as I understand it, explains that foundationalism is a favored response to the R.A. among many philosophers, and then says this: "At first glance, at least, the 'basic' beliefs of the foundationalist would appear to be counterexamples to the evidentialist's thesis, in that they are justified beliefs that are not rational because they are supported by deeper evidence." Evidentialism may be *logically* independent from foundationalism, but that doesn't seem relevant to the point being made, which is that the foundationalist's basic beliefs, at first glance, seem to be counter-examples to the evidentialist's thesis. Perhaps there's no contradiction in holding both F & E, but what we need here is an explanation of how the foundationalist's properly basic beliefs can be squared with evidentialism. --IHMPCS

The example about baseball is too American
Like many people, I dunno the rules of baseball. Is it easy to give another example? Then please do. Andries 20:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Hitting a home run is good. I think that's all that's needed.

I have a different defense against this Babe Ruth counter-example that I want to run by discussion participants. I do not believe that a distinction between pragmatic or prudential justification and epistemic justification is neccesary. What I would argue is that the proposition given in the example is mis-stated. The real proposition is that p = Babe Ruth will increase his chances of getting a homerun if he tells himself that he will get a homerun. Or perhaps the proposition was actually stated correctly elsewhere in the example: p = "it would increase his chances of hitting a home run if he maintains a confident attitude." Ruth doesn't really believe that he will neccesarily hit a homerun, nevertheless the tactic works to increase his confidence by some degree. A similar restating of the proposition should work for any pragmatic justification. ScoreInjected (talk) 03:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Clifford/James
Would it behoove this page to include something of william k. clifford and perhaps his oppponent william james as examles of evidential philosophy and criticisms of it? i think it might...unless they would belong on another page, i don't know.

A reference to Cliffords text should definatly be added - its the classic evidentialistic text. --RickardV 09:12, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Self-fulfilling Beliefs
It might be worth mentioning the existence of self-fulfilling beliefs in this article. Here is a nice example of a contemporary philosopher defining them and their relation to evidence:


 * "Self-fulfilling beliefs, just like ordinary beliefs, are capable of truth or falsity, but unlike ordinary beliefs, they needn’t be based on prior evidence, since they cause their own truth. If one conceives of oneself as deliberating whether to believe that one will A, where one understands this to be a self-fulfilling belief, one thus needn’t be guided by evidence that one will A. In fact, it would seem that one is free to answer the question whether to believe that one will A on whatever basis one likes. After all, no

matter how one forms the belief, one knows that it will be true. Therefore one would be free to believe that one will A on the ground that A-ing is desirable. But this freedom would also include the freedom to believe that one will A on the ground that it is desirable to believe that one will A." - Nishi Shah (2008) "How Action Governs Intention", Philosophers' Imprint, vol.8, no. 5: pp. 11-12.

I don't think these are counterexamples to evidentialism since the thesis seems to be about non-self-fulfilling beliefs, but someone like William James did think self-fulfilling beliefs were a problem for evidentialism. - Atfyfe (talk) 22:36, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Structure of the article
This article is supposed to be about evidentualism but it is mostly about opinions about other things that other people believe are critical to the concept. It seems to me that some of these arguments shouldn't be in the main article as they do not contribute to the understanding of the subject. Marcperkel (talk) 21:15, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the general structure of this article is highly unconventional. A subsection like "criticism" is generally placed at the bottom of the article, but here it's right beneath the introduction and comprises almost a third of the entire article! What's up with that? Granbarreman (talk) 18:37, 23 February 2012 (UTC)