Thursday, September 14, 2023

Rationalism Is Not Evidentialism

There is no amount of evidence, which is probabilistic and perception-based by nature, or else it would be logical proof, that can demonstrate that anything is true other than the fact that there is evidence that makes it seem as if a given thing is actually the case.  It is logically true in itself that something is true, for if nothing was true, this itself would have to be true, and so it is impossible for this and other logical axioms to have been any other way.  Nothing about adultery being evil, alien life not existing, God loving humanity, the world existing 10 minutes or seconds ago, or electromagnetism functioning the same a moment from now is logically necessary on a metaphysical level in itself.

More than this, none of these things follow from any inherent logical truth (an axiom or something that follows necessarily from another thing), and thus none of these things are intrinsically or obviously true.  There is and cannot be a way for a non-omniscient being to verify all of them, for epistemological limitations abound that prevent anything more than perceptions in many regards.  Intuitions or perceptions, not logical necessity, inspire typical people to make all sorts of assumptions based upon their subjective experiences that might or might not be true (and sometimes they are contradict reason and cannot be true whatsoever!).  A non-rationalist might hear a distant gunshot and assume that a gun was actually fired instead of the sound being an auditory hallucination, for example, when either of these things is logically possible but unprovable.

Many people have elements of selective, assumption-founded casual evidentialism in their epistemological worldview.  As long as something seems a certain way or appeals to them, they are subjectively persuaded without something being proven, such as with someone who does not like theft believing it is immoral because it makes them feel guilty if they do it or outraged if others do it.  They could also want it to be true and believe in something on these irrelevant grounds.  They want their spouse to love them, or it outwardly appears as if their spouse loves them, so they believe that this is true even though there are many ways this could be false, from personal misperception to marital deception.  Outward perceptions of facial expressions, words, or physical actions cannot actually prove to an external, non-telepathic or non-omniscient observer what someone else is actually thinking or feeling.

Rationalism is not evidentialism.  Just because there is evidence for something does not make it true, only true that there is evidence or seeming probabilistic support.  No one totally rational believes that because the moon has come out on previous nights that they recall, the moon must come out by logical necessity the next night.  No one totally rational believes that even if all primary historical sources on a specific matter agree on something that it really happened: consensus and hearsay do not make such a thing true, nor does belief.  If they event happened, it happened whether recorded or not (or recorded accurately or not).  The historical evidence for it is ultimately irrelevant in this sense.

Now, almost no one I have met actually professes to think that a written document saying something always inherently makes it true.  Fitheistic Christians do not exactly think the Quran merely saying something means it is true or knowable even as they supposedly believe the opposite about the Bible.  Whether it is a religious text they do not adhere to, a political opponent's claims about history, or some other thing, they will not actually be consistent with their beliefs based on fallible evidences.  A liberal would probably not say that a conservative news print is honest about everything, for instance.  They might believe the inverse about their own.  However, no news source is verifiable because general history and what the senses perceive are unverifiable!  One can even know that there is an uncaused caused that set a causal chain in motion or directly created the physical cosmos and time, since self-creation of the universe or time, an eternal timeline or universe of events (an infinite regression), and coming into existence uncaused are logically impossible, yet the historicity of World War I or the fall of Babylon do not have such proof behind them.

At most, potentially dishonest sources or unverifiable claims can be looked to.  Since historical and even current events cannot be proven by testimony--testimony can be nothing more than hearsay evidence that might be sincere but mistaken or fabricated almost completely--everyone who believes otherwise is an irrationalistic fool to the extent that they believe this, even if they are partially rational in other cases, such as by recognizing the intrinsic veracity of logical axioms.  A fully rational person would distinguish between evidence and proof.  Did Jesus exist?  Probably, as evidenced by documents like those of Josephus and Tacitus!  But like with Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Marie Antoinette getting beheaded, or the discovery of the electron in 1897, no amount of hearsay or written or sensory evidence proves anything but that there is this evidence.  Again, non-rationalists might already believe this (even if only for its convenience) about some source they do not like or find personally persuasive.  Someone who believes a conspiracy theory about the moon landing is false will probably assume that any source claiming the contrary is false.  Still, a written source is a source.

Either writing something means it is true or it does not, and it obviously does not in any case.  All sources or none of them are verifiably true by logical necessity, and it is certainly not all of them because it does not follow from writing or saying something that it really happened or is true, no matter the cultural event or scientific phenomena!  There is no such thing as something being true because some documented source says so (other than that one perceives a documented source that says so!), just as there is nothing logically necessary about an event happening in the external world as opposed to one's mental perceptions even if one sees it directly.  If one sees that there is a correlation between heat and the melting of ice, does this mean that it must be true and is thus absolutely certain that this is a casual relationship?  While it seems likely that this is a direct causal relationship, it is not verifiable.  One can only see that the correlation is observed and that one's subjective memories and immediate sensory perceptions make it appear as if this is causality, though, despite all occurrences having a cause, correlation never can prove causation, not even for things many people assume.

Take the phenomena of particle physics experiments.  Did someone who reads about and arbitrarily believes whatever an article  says about this actually conduct the experiments?  Would they be able to know even if they had that their sensory experiences match the real external world and are not distorted by hallucinations, interference from some unseen force, and so on?  The answer is no in both cases.  Nor can someone know from conscience that morality exists or from their longings for objective existential meaning, if they have such desires (what one person experiences is not necessarily what someone else does), that anything is truly valuable or morally meaningful as opposed to true or false, knowable or unknowable.

No, rationalism is not evidentialism.  Perception is not proof of anything except that there is perception.  Justified true belief is not assumption or persuasion-based or rooted in anything but sheer logical necessity, with many things not being logically necessary in themselves, but logically necessary if some other unverifiable, non-necessary thing is already.  Evidentialism is irrational unless it is an evidentialism where one only believes that evidence is present rather than what the limited, subjective, potentially illusory evidence suggests is true, a non sequitur.  Fools confuse evidence for proof.  Fools also make assumptions that filter what they believe about evidence from the start.  A rationalist knows at least the most foundational, transcendent truth of reason (axioms) and their own conscious existence, not believing that anything that does not follow in some way from these is true.

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