Facts vs evidence

[Dan From Smithville]

That's true if you assume everything to be explainable by physical objective facts. Otherwise there are things inferred from objective facts that are philosophical. In a science vs. religion debate their shouldn't be such assumptions.

Within the scope of scientific discussions that is a valid consideration. I don't know that everything is explainable with objective facts.

But within the scope of these discussions, I don't think it is out of order to demand support of claims using evidence and reasoning that others can examine and weigh for themselves.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

It's the violation of natural law, like the sun stopping in the sky, turning water to wine, &al that defines Miracle. This is how a miracle is generally understood, not as something merely perplexing or astonishing, but as something that would be impossible, given all everyday experience or with reference to established physics.

Yeah, I know and then we are in a sense playing no black swans.
I treat it like this. I know of no miracle and I don't need to believe in them, but I wouldn't declare them impossible.

 

[osgart]

Well, there have to be some or we get this: I am right in my understandings, because I am right. And that means you are wrong.
You wouldn't accept that, so why should I, if somebody else does that.

Well if we put aside our assumptions then we have to go about making a case for the assumptions we hold. We can't simply declare our assumptions are true. There must be logically valid reasons for holding those assumptions. Then someone can go about using objective facts to support those assumptions. Yet in the end it comes down to philosophical positions between science and religion.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Well if we put aside our assumptions then we have to go about making a case for the assumptions we hold. We can't simply declare our assumptions are true. There must be logically valid reasons for holding those assumptions. Then someone can go about using objective facts to support those assumptions. Yet in the end it comes down to philosophical positions between science and religion.

Or philosophy that falls outside some versions of science and religion. As a religious person I am more in a philosophical tradition than a religious one and I treat science as a limited pragmatic method.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Just to be transparent, I am more interested in facts, evidence, logic, reason and knowledge from a practical and applied sense, but I am not divorcing myself from the more philosophical aspects of the discussion. Just a caveat that allows for my own ignorance of those things and leans on my own current practical efforts.

I think about things, but using them fruitfully is closer to home I suppose.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Just to be transparent, I am more interested in facts, evidence, logic, reason and knowledge from a practical and applied sense, but I am not divorcing myself from the more philosophical aspects of the discussion. Just a caveat that allows for my own ignorance of those things and leans on my own current practical efforts.

I think about things, but using them fruitfully is closer to home I suppose.

I get you. The problem is that philosophy is in a sense 2 schools of thought. The objective, rational one, where the "Holy Grail" is the correct, positive, objective, logical methodology that can answer all as true. It is a norm or ideal, that some people believe in. I don't.
I am of the social one: "Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not." Protagoras.
The trick is to figure out how many different measurement methods there are and if they have limits, because they are human behaviors.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I think there are some testimonies a reasonable person would consider to exclude the source as being reliable even if they were otherwise known to be reliable. For example if I just claimed to have seen a shape shifting cat, would you believe it even if I was known for my reliablility? Or would you doubt my reliability based on the content of my testimony?

And why couldn't science be used to determine that miracles are (if they exist at all) of such statistical rarity that they are in the highly unlikely to be true basket? After all, science is about observation, and I have never personally observed anything which could certainly be described as suspension of the laws of nature, nor have all the scientists I've ever known observed it.

In my opinion.

I think there are valid considerations regarding eyewitness testimony that should be kept in mind when using and weighing it as evidence.

Individual differences in observing the world around us. Differences in how easily external effects influence witnesses. Personal bias. State of mind. The history of the witness. The character of the witness. The fact that most people are called to give testimony of events they did not start out to act as a witness to in the first place. Any personal stake the witness may have can influence testimony. Not all of this has to stem from some willful desire to effect the quality of the testimony.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Not all claims are arguments. And we humans are ignorant of much. In fact, of everything if we want to get absolutist about it. So all of our arguments are "from ignorance" in that regard. The fallacy is in presuming that there shouldn't be any.

A claim is an assertion. A premise upon which an argument is based. Not the argument itself.

I don't know that we don't have sound grounds for many arguments and that they are not fully ignorant within the scope of what is being argued.

I cannot establish that the theory of evolution is the ultimate, absolute explanation for observations. But I can argue it knowledgeably within the scope of that greater ignorance. And expect others that reject it to argue knowledgeably as well. Though here, I don't get that sort of response very often. Not at all really.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

By definition, a miracle does not generate probabilities because it is an unexplained phenomenon. How desperately you are trying to explain it away (by determining that it's naturally explainable) is your own issue.

I see miracles and unexplained phenomena as two different categories. Something can be ordinary, yet unexplained.

 

[osgart]

Or philosophy that falls outside some versions of science and religion. As a religious person I am more in a philosophical tradition than a religious one and I treat science as a limited pragmatic method.

I treat science as the same as well, but that shouldn't stop them from trying to make more of it if they have that conviction that science can dissolve all mysteries worth dissolving.

I appreciate the attempts that I disagree with.

To me many religions have gone dangerously too far in declaring absolute truth. However I can't throw it all out the window, because it's human attempts at understanding the almost ineffable realities that face everyone. Religion grapples with things that most other things do not. Even if poorly done it's still worth salvaging. There's treasure in the scrap heap of religion.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I get you. The problem is that philosophy is in a sense 2 schools of thought. The objective, rational one, where the "Holy Grail" is the correct, positive, objective, logical methodology that can answer all as true. It is a norm or ideal, that some people believe in. I don't.
I am of the social one: "Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not." Protagoras.
The trick is to figure out how many different measurement methods there are and if they have limits, because they are human behaviors.

I think I'll read through this thread completely before responding further at this time. Some answers and ideas may already await me.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I treat science as the same as well, but that shouldn't stop them from trying to make more of it if they have that conviction that science can dissolve all mysteries worth dissolving.

I appreciate the attempts that I disagree with.

To me many religions have gone dangerously too far in declaring absolute truth. However I can't throw it all out the window, because it's human attempts at understanding the almost ineffable realities that face everyone. Religion grapples with things that most other things do not. Even if poorly done it's still worth salvaging. There's treasure in the scrap heap of religion.

Yeah, but because I am secular I leaned to do it with philosophy more than religion.

 

[danieldemol]

By definition, a miracle does not generate probabilities because it is an unexplained phenomenon. How desperately you are trying to explain it away (by determining that it's naturally explainable) is your own issue.

I'm not determining that it *is* naturally explainable, I'm determining that it is *more likely* to be naturally explainable in my view.

 

[Ponder This]

It seems you are using a similar definiyion switch to @PureX
I never claimed unexplained events don't happen, rather I claimed it is unlikely from a pure logic perspective that unnatural events happen or events which defy the laws of nature.

Definition of... what? Perhaps you should clarify the thing being defined and give your own definition of that thing.

Also, while you now say your claim was from a "pure logic perspective", it was actually from the perspective of what you (or other "scientists" you've known) have or have not "personally observed"...

And why couldn't science be used to determine that miracles are (if they exist at all) of such statistical rarity that they are in the highly unlikely to be true basket? After all, science is about observation, and I have never personally observed anything which could certainly be described as suspension of the laws of nature, nor have all the scientists I've ever known observed it.

 

[PureX]

It's defined as naturally impossible.

How could we possibly even know that something was "naturally impossible"? We have no idea what the limitations of nature are. All we can know of is our own limited experience of nature.

So miraculous doesn't apply to objective phenomena, but to personal, individual experience?

Yes, the term "miracle" refers to how we are perceiving an experience of something unexplainable and fortuitous, to us.

 

[PureX]

I see miracles and unexplained phenomena as two different categories. Something can be ordinary, yet unexplained.

How convenient for you.

 

[PureX]

I'm not determining that it *is* naturally explainable, I'm determining that it is *more likely* to be naturally explainable in my view.

Tomayto, tomahto.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

How convenient for you.

So you don't know of any ordinary events that have no explanation. How convenient for you.

It must be nice to know why everything happened.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Applying those standards would rule out most historical evidence for everything that happened in the pre-modern world, and many things we know about the modern world too.

If we set ourselves the standards of rejecting everything but facts as evidence, we'd be much worse off than using a standard of the careful and critical evaluation of evidence.

Sometimes, it's just not possible to provide empirical evidence for claims.

But when that is the case, we don't just simply believe whatever the "testimony" says.
Instead, we give it a degree of reasonableness and believeability.

We try and correlate independent, preferably contemporary, "testimonies" with eachother and cross reference.
For example, if two opposing factions of a battle have independent records of said battle, and they both agree with eachother... then it's quite reasonable to conclude that a battle took place and that that's likely how the battle happened. If they both have totally different accounts of said battle and there's no empirical evidence of it and say even the timeframes don't match, then how are you going to decide which one is right? Was there even a battle to begin with?

And if you then have even only a as-good-as a single source mentioning it, what then?
Then you look at the kind of claims it makes. If the claims are compatible with what we already know, then that is "advantage believability". If not, then the claim is rejected (and how dismissive we are is usually in proportion to the extra-ordinarity of the claims).

For example, that's how we have less problems believing Socrates was real, as opposed to Atlantis even though we (basically) only have Plato talking about either.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Not all claims are arguments.

Claims are "conclusions", I would say.
A certain series of events or a set of data is going to make you believe a certain thing.

Those events / data = "if this and this, then that".
And "that" here, is your claim.

And we humans are ignorant of much. In fact, of everything if we want to get absolutist about it. So all of our arguments are "from ignorance" in that regard.

Redifining what the argument of ignorance is just so you can say all arguments are arguments from ignorance, doesn't magically make the argument at hand a reasonable argument on equal footing with arguments that don't employ the argument of ignorance as currently(/correctly) understood.