ไม่สามารถเล่นวิดีโอนี้
ขออภัยในความไม่สะดวก
Atheist Debates - Claims aren't evidence?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 เม.ย. 2023
- I've been called out, repeatedly, for my position that claims aren't evidence. So it's time to clear up what I mean, and why.
In short, claims can contain evidence but they aren't evidence for what they're claiming. "I saw x happen" isn't evidence for x happening...because I could be lying or incorrect. It's the claim's consistency with the facts of reality that matter and it's the facts of reality, not the mere claim, that counts as evidence FOR the claim.
The Simpsons addressed this years ago.
Judge: mr hutz, we've been here for hours. Do you have any evidence?
Lionel Hutz: we have lots of hearsay and conjecture. Those are KINDS of evidence...
Didn't Rudy Tooty use that in court too?
Evidence is relative. In my mind a conjectural argument beats out a self contradictory position very time.
@@arthurwieczorek4894 thats just proof you have a weak mind mate.
hearsay and conjecture vs people witnessing it? Sure. Good thing we have to now call out lawyers, not knowing what evidence actually is.
"I wonder how our world started up? Let's make up a great story about it." Every religion since man started asking questions.
Either that or "hey what happens to us when we die? That sounds scary to think about. Heres a convenient answer."
So you claim but without evidence. So your comment can be ignored.
"seek and you will find....Hell (or willful eternal pain and suffering) is for the willful hypocrites and willfully blind or closed-minded .......and do everything in love"---- The Holy Bible
@@idkjustaname Same problem as the other guy.
@@earth1710 You are making claims without evidence.
@@Justinbuhagiar You said: "You are making claims without evidence."
And that is a claim without evidence you are making, Therefore, your comment can be ignored.
"seek and you will find....Hell (or willful eternal pain and suffering) is for the willful hypocrites and willfully blind or closed-minded .......and do everything in love"---- The Holy Bible
I always have to remind myself that simple concepts like this need to be explained to people
Buh, buh, buh, I have a _really_ strong opinion. My aunt's hairdresser's cousin's friend said they saw a ghost!
@@inyobill So you claim!
"seek and you will find....Hell (or willful eternal pain and suffering) is for the willful hypocrites and willfully blind or closed-minded .......and do everything in love"---- The Holy Bible
@@earth1710 baseless threats from a dying superstition. Keep it up. You and other theists abrasive hypocrisy is sending more people our way every single day 👍🏾
@@earth1710 Wow, you can paste bible verses, so what?
@@tonyclements1147 Your comment is just irrelevant to the topic(Not to mention unjustifiable or meaningless).
I wish all people could be taught to understand this.
Well, people in general don't want critical thinking skills to be taught because they think it's the same as telling someone what to think. So I wish that people would understand anything at all correctly. That would already be a great start, if people in general didn't take a thing that is correct and then insist on messing it up so it's no longer correct or useful.
@@stylis666 I think people mostly think critically if it doesn't clash with their ego, beliefs, etc.
@@ultimateloser3411 Just to clarify for some, critical thinking doesn’t equal criticism. It may, but doesn’t have to.
Honestly what Matt's saying doesn't make sense here. He is basically repeating throughout this video the idea that claims are not the evidence, its just the evidence they point to that matters, or how well they comport to existing evidence about the world that matters.
But as Trent pointed out, you can have claims that are entirely consistent with reality, like a murder claim or a claim about robbery. There may be no way to evaluate their truth entirely based on real-world evidence. Yet if we have enough eyewitness testimonies, then those really do count as evidence *on their own*, not on the basis that they point to evidence that can later be confirmed. That's why these sorts of statements are admitted in court.
Like it is possible that people can lie or imagine things. But its also less likely for this to be the case if there is no reason for people to lie or if they are generally of sound mind, and they are reporting on conventional matters of the world. Especially if you are dealing with multiple independent eyewitnesses, who may have all witnessed someone speeding along the freeway in their car and took note of the license plate number and the color and make of the car.
It might be that there is no real-world evidence left over from that eyewitness testimony that can be used to verify the claim. But to say those claims are worthless otherwise just seems absurd from a legal perspective, and even from a scientific perspective as well. After all even in science, all the papers we read are just claims about what the experiments resulted in. At some point it becomes irrational and unsustainable to take this position as seriously as Matt thinks we should, because then all scientists would have to personally reproduce these experiments every time they read about them in order to verify what is being claimed - since claims don't count as evidence, and written, peer-reviewed claims are still just claims and therefore shouldn't count in Matt's world view.
This is of course a far cry from proving the resurrection of jesus based on claims, especially if they were all after the fact. Matt might still be right there. But his overall take here just seems clearly wrong, and ironically seems like a misunderstanding on your part as well :P
I think a good illustration that claims aren't evidence is *_The Boy Who Cried Wolf._*
In the a fable, you've got the same claim from the same source three times in a row, but with shifting truth values: twice *false,* then once *true.* If you reason that the claim itself is evidence there was a wolf, you'd be led to the incorrect conclusion twice and the correct conclusion once. Not a reliable method to reach the actual truth.
External evidence and investigation is required. Without it, the claim is just words.
evidence =/= truth
@@scambammer6102 truth is "that which corresponds to reality"
Evidence is "indicative fact"
Evidence lead to truth, or at least, away from false.
It's a great example, but there's some nuance here. In the story, the boy is watching the hillside. When he says "there's a wolf chasing the sheep," the context implies that there is testimonial evidence ("I saw it happen") in addition to the claim, which is distinct. To me, this speaks to the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. The villagers' acceptance of the boy's testimony was not a reliable method to reach the truth.
On the other hand, if the boy had said something like "the moon is full of melted gouda," there is no context which implies any eyewitness testimony. That utterance would simply be a claim. In either case, the claim itself is not evidence.
Let me back up and add that, as Matt argues, "I saw it happen" may not constitute evidence for the claim, in which case my objection can be safely ignored :)
The kid was a half-wit because it was a fox.
I wish Matt was around when I was younger, I've learnt so much from him , I'm 72 it took me until I was past 60 to escape the religious indoctrination and brain washing from when I was a kid , you are a remarkable intelligent man , thanks for spending your time to help people like me.
Atheism is a religion.
@@HoratioKJV As a wise man once said: NOPE.
@@HoratioKJV
So you claim, but the facts aren't on your side.
@@HoratioKJV We are all born atheists - god/religion as a concept is introduced through education, indoctrination and human desire for meaning.
@@PDG1956 Atheism is to consciously disbelieve in God. You don't know what babies know or what they experienced before life. Institutions are actively indoctrinating atheism to the point of neglecting the Christian information necessary to make up one's own mind and become a critical thinker.
I remember watching Matt on his first Atheist Experience show, so many years ago. He is still one of the very best destroyers of religious claims in the world today….
Destroying religious claims is easy. I think I was 6 when I realized the bible is just a collection of myths.
@@scambammer6102 I didn't figure that out until I was 7.5 I was a little slow at times. But what I couldn't figure out from that time on, was.
How do adults not figure it out?
@@rentiap
That is one of the wonders of the world. It will take a miracle to resolve.
@@VaughanMcCueit’s not really a wonder of the world. You can call it confirmation bias, indoctrination, willful ignorance, and probably a few other terms.
I was a practicing Christian for about 10 years of my life, and despite all the evidence that my beliefs were nonsense and unreasonable, I clung to those beliefs with the expectation that one day god would truly open my eyes and I would see clearly how those beliefs are real, and god is working his power through me. That day never came, and eventually I found the courage to leave christianity.
@@darkeyeze
It is more like you didn't leave superstition but grew up. 1 Corinthians 13:11
It might be that your name confused god. He may have thought you were a panda or racoon and couldn't find your eyes to open them.
Thank god for atheism.
Matt: Claims aren’t evidence
Independent corroborating attestation: hold my beer
"Yeah but that's kind of evidence you know" - Jordan Peterson
🐸
"It depends on what you mean by evidence". Jordan Peterson
@@Ergeniz Wait a second. What do you mean by "you"?
@@Username-nu8el That would depend on what you mean by 'mean'.
@@creasefold1986 🦞🦞🦞
Claims are all that religions have got.
That and threats.
@@ThisOldHelmet And assertions.
@@jayjasespud What's the difference between claims and assertions?
And that' is just a Godless/Agnostic/Satanic religious empty unjustifiable (or without evidence) claim you are making. That's all you have.
It's called self-defeating and circular reasoning (or hypocritical nonsense) what you are doing (just like willfully blind presuppositional Godless/agnostic/Satanic religious Matt Dillahunty just said and did in this video).
"seek and you will find.....and do everything in love"---- The Holy Bible
@@ThisOldHelmet You are making the same problem drumcircler. No evidence or justification for that religious claim of yours.
People are unnecessarily confused about this. Claims are evidence for a hypothesis if and only if the probability that the claim would be made if the hypothesis is true, is greater than the probability that the claim would be made yet the hypothesis is false.
Consider the hypothesis that I hurt my toe:
So if I am in a circumstance in which it would be very unlikely for me to make the claim that I hurt my toe , if I did not in fact hurt my toe, (say I'm very concerned to appear stoic and able to endure pain, to try to impress some girl or whatever) then me making that claim under a circumstance where we would expect me to normally refrain from making the claim (he wouldn't say that unless he was in a great deal of pain, say), would mean it is in fact evidence that I hurt my toe.
The real problem is assessing whether we are in such a situation with respect to the claims being made about religions. We do not have full information about all the circumstances that contribute to whether a person might make a claim or not, and as such we cannot evaluate the relationship between the truth-value of the hypothesis and the probability of the claim being made if the hypothesis is false, vs the probability of the claim being made if the hypothesis is true. If we can't make such an evaluation, then we are not in a position to rationally accept the claim as true.
Yep,all evidence is a claim.
Im too dumb im sorry im trying to understand
Edit: so is it like say someone was making a testimony in church or smth and since we don't really have much info outside of their testimony of what could have alternatively happened then we can't believe them rationally?
I was wondering about this topic after the debate you had where this came up, great video!
My favorite story about claims is Tracie Harris's story about the cat whose owner claims he has but he just isn't around much and his cat dug the swimming pool size hole in the backyard and knocked down a tree. It's fantastic when she told it on "The Atheist Experience".
I'd believe your claim that there is a story were it not for the fact that what you wrote didn't make any sense at all.
@@ChrisLee-yr7tz I am giving a very abbreviated account of the story Tracie Harris gave on the the Atheist Experience. You can look it up on TH-cam.
@@jd190d It was a tongue in cheek response but if you actually read back what you wrote I think you missed some key words out! It doesn't make sense....
I think the confusion comes from the fact that a multiplicity of the same claim is counted as evidence: "A crowd claim to have seen him rise". This is taken as evidence that he rose. But it is the NUMBER of claims that is the evidence, along with whether they were where they could have seen it, whether they are consistent, whether they were influenced in some way, etc.
In a criminal case the fact that a number of witnesses claim to have seen X is evidence but can be disproved by cross-examining each witness to cause doubt in one or more of the pieces of evidence: Witness A wasn't there, Witness B is blind, Witness C was influenced by A and B, etc.
And it's more like 'rumor has it that a crowd claimed to have seen him'.
Your Godless/Agnostic/Satanic comment can be ignored for lack of evidence or justification to it.
To be precise with terminology, these are witness STATEMENTS, not claims.
CLAIMS are logical propositions presented by the prosecution and defense.
More to the point you're making, there's additional value in having additional data points, provided they're truly independent.
Like, if you're doing random product samples, and you have ten testing staff all measure the same sample, that result is not nearly as strong as ten staff testing ten different independent samples.
You want to know that there isn't some unidentified common factor that makes your samples not entirely independent from each other.
When it comes to human witnesses who report having seen some phenomenon, there will be factors in common, of course, dependent factors, and we need to explicitly identify them all. Some of these will be in support of the claim, like it happened on a Tuesday night, so yeah, they were all there on a Tuesday night. Those are necessary to the case being developed.
And then, well, they were all standing in the same baseball field. They were all looking west into the sunset. They'd all consumed some homemade punch about an hour beforehand that they stole from an LSD lab. They all report seeing a glowing orb descend to the ground. Which of these details suggest independent observation? Wouldn't it be great if people from a completely independent group at another location, looking northwards, having not consumed any punch, saw substantially the same phenomenon at the same time in the same location?
The independence of witnesses strengthens the case considerably, even though a single phenomenon must necessarily produce some dependent particulars such as time and place.
Gonna try to call in this Sunday hopefully you are there:) love what you do
I agree that a lot of people really don't understand what evidence entails with regard to claims about reality. So, I offer the following in hopes that it helps develop a more succinct means of addressing this point of issue.
Evidence with regard to claims about reality entails the capacity to show in some fashion that a particular claim about reality is sustained as being the case. Thus, If any claim and/or component of a claim cannot be shown to be an aspect of reality, then the claim is unsubstantiated (unevidenced) as being an aspect of reality.
It seems that most people ascribe states of affairs to a narrative as opposed to having evidence/substantiation for the truth of the narrative. This seems to be the underlying factor as to why so many people accept astrology, tarot cards, crystal healing, theology, and more.
This "claims can be evidence" pedantic nonsense is a cry for help from someone who desperately needs to believe a proposition without a good reason.
Or in case of Cameron Bertuzzi, someone who desperately needs to shill for money in the name of religion.
A claim is never evidence for a given event or thing. We may accept it happened because it's mundane and the claim comes from a reliable source, but it is still not evidence in and of itself. It never is. If we truly want to know if the event happened we need actual data that can be verified.
Really good video. I like how you laid this all out.
Do they grant that to mongolians or hindus or canadians when those folks have wild supernatural experiences? Nah.. pretty weird how they see its bs everywhere else
So when a tans man for example claims he is a woman and there is no proof that then can be dismissed?
@@daviddeida No evidence that a trans man claims himself a woman. Nice baseless claim you got there, which is the whole point of the topic LOLOLOL
@@Julian0101 You dont seem to understand.When a man claims he identifies as a woman and he has a penis then its dismissed ,as there is no evidence of a womans genitals .Correct ?
@@Julian0101 typical brain dead god botherer
Thanks Matt, good stuff
I once saw a man eat his own head.
Must be true then!
Great stuff. I would point out that a multitude of witnesses to some event MAY (or may not) be separate pieces of evidence. If three people who are total strangers to each other, observe some phenomenon, that is stronger evidence (IMHO) than 10 friends who got together and all claim to have observed the same event together. 'Group think', 'peer pressure', 'common goals' and other factors can make those ten people less reliable than three strangers.
I think that would only make the claim more likely, perhaps even probable, but would still not amount to "evidence" as such.
@@TisButAScratch666 Okay hold up, what is evidence aside from data that makes a proposition more likely true? It isn't confirmation, but surely making a proposition more believable is evidence?
@@rachelfey Evidence is evidence. Claims are claims that evidence may (or may not) corroborate
@@rachelfey Really, the issue is how useful is the claim? Does it help with our model of the cosmos? For example, prayers to a particular god are effective at producing a desired result over and above random chance. Ok, now we have a claim we can test.
I was waiting for Matt to bring up the oft used "5000 witnesses" for this reason.
Thank you for another great video, Matt.
Topics like this should be taught in school, part of the "Critical Thinking" subject.
We’d all be so much better off if we taught our children how to think, instead of what to think.
(I wonder what the odds are of getting the religious to agree on the introduction of such a subject, especially in the "cause the Bible tells me so" US of A...)
I love how this is about critical thinking and logic, now this is a study I can get behind!
It's amazing how many "debates" on these topics just boil down to this: claims are NOT evidence. And, when one side comes to the debate armed with only claims and the other side comes armed with evidence, a verbal bloodbath ensues.
What makes it even worse when it's a collection of claims(biblical texts), is when they are all on the same team and collaborate with one another...
The problem with the word "claim" is that it seems to combine both the proposition (which is not evidence) and the fact that a person is making the claim (which can add some degree of evidence). This is a matter of usage. If you can substitute in your sentence the word "proposition" for "claim" then it will not be evidence. But in a sentence like "Matt claims to have a dog" you can't do that, so the word is mixed and may be evidence.
Even in the example of "Matt claims to have a dog", there is still no evidence being presented.
@@Ergeniz It may or may not. If we know nothing about Matt, then it probably isn't evidence. However I was quoting Matt Dillahunty making the claim, which then counts as evidence. The problem is, saying "Matt claims to have a dog" mixes the proposition "Matt has a dog" with evidence "There's a real person I know, Matt, who told me he has a dog". there is context in the second, and you may say that it is the context which is the evidence, and I'd agree. I'm just saying that when people say things like "Matt claims to have a dog" there could be context they are including in that statement. I think it's clearer just to say "propositions are not evidence", and I think Matt actually stated something to that effect in his McLatchie debate summary.
@@BrianBlais
The observation of a claim being made by someone is evidence that someone is making a claim. That's about it as far as evidence is concerned.
Independent of this, the word "claim" is sometimes misused in place of "statement." Sometimes this distinction is unimportant, but the use of the wrong term can be a source of confusion.
A claim, properly, is an idea which is to be developed by means of an argument. It's usually the head statement of an argument, and also what is taken to be the logical conclusion of the argument.
A statement, on the other hand, is any complete sentence, but especially one which could be regarded as being in principle either true or false or unknown.
"Bees make honey" is a STATEMENT that a child might make. It happens to be imprecise, and could be regarded as either true or false depending on context. But to a child, it serves as a statement of fact, offered without any expectation of argument. This it's not a claim.
"There are over 20,000 species of bees in the world, but only one species (Apis mellifera) makes honey." This is more like a proper CLAIM, indeed two claims, and we expect to be able to ask "how do you know this?" for each of them. The first claim is correct, as far as I know, but we'd have to reference some respected authority to make the argument credible. The second claim, it turns out, is commonly presented as true, but in fact is not true. So a more complex chain of argumentation can be expected to develop from anyone making that claim.
Good analysis, by the way.
@@starfishsystems can't you ask "how do you know this" about the statement "bees make honey"? not sure I buy your distinction. also, "evidence that someone is making a claim" can actually be more than that. the idea is that something counts as evidence if the posterior probability of the claim is increased given that evidence. the fact that a specific person is making the claim brings in knowledge about that person (or people in general). for example, in a casual conversation, saying you have a dog is evidence that you actually have one because people typically don't lie about such things, and you may know more about that particular person to make lying even less likely.
I have an elderly friend who has believed all her life that when she dies she will go to heaven and be reunited with her loved ones, and be at peace in God’s kingdom. That must be a very comforting feeling. I can only imagine the feeling of terror, and emptiness she would feel if i managed to convince her that none of that was true. I would be disgusted with myself , and forever ashamed that i turned her comfort into terror. After all, i only BELIEVE there is nothing after, i cannot PROVE there isn’t. What gives me the right to do that to her, when i can’t even prove she is wrong.
The Bible is evidence? Okay, I own an island floating over Madagascar. I am willing to part with it for 6 million dollars
Yet another absolutely fantastic video from you Matt
So you claim but without any justification or evidence! Therefore, your comment can be ignored (just like Matt's video can be ignored for the same reason).
"seek and you will find....Hell (or willful eternal pain and suffering) is for the willful hypocrites and willfully blind or closed-minded .......and do everything in love"---- The Holy Bible
@@earth1710 I pray to Spiderman.
@@davehall8584 Same problem as the other guy.
@@earth1710 What is your goal? Do you think the annoying way you're preaching is more likely to turn people towards your religion, or more likely to turn them away? Do you even care?
@@bitcoinweasel9274 Don't mind him. He's just so sure of going to heaven that he can post troll comments that can further push people to hell lmfao
"Claims aren't evidence? That is correct thanks for watching we'll see you next time". "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!"😅😂 lmao Good one Matt
I really liked w. wallace response:
M: "claims arent evidence"
W: "that is also claim"
M: "Yes, that is the point"
@@Julian0101 There is no evidence that claims are not evidence.There is evidence of claims that are used as evidence in a court of law.
@@daviddeida Nope, a claim is not a testimony, which is the one used in court of law. Amber heard's fiasco left that very clear.
Claims aren’t evidence rebutted by Trent horn
th-cam.com/video/_ZV2nMmMJFk/w-d-xo.html
"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."-Hitchens' Razor.
True but doing so is fallacious. Hitchens wasn't a philosopher stop pretending he was.
Facts upon facts as always Matt ❤
Great video ❤ and happy belated 🎉
Using remote viewing, I witnessed the Resurrection!
Using remote viewing, I witnessed you witnessing the resurrection!
@@Nocturnalux I wanna write a book about 4th hand witnessing.
Using remote viewing, I watched Zooey Deschanel in the shower!
It's amusing how TH-cam forces people to watch a christian ad before watching an atheist video.
"That's right-I wrote all of Shakespeare's plays and my wife and I wrote his sonnets."-Monty Python, _Stake Your Claim_
Nice one Matt. I love these. Just well presented, detailed information and insight.
He is obviously a trained logician.
No evidence that Matt did what you are claiming. Therefore, your comment is false or pointless.
"seek and you will find....Hell (or willful eternal pain and suffering) is for the willful hypocrites and willfully blind or closed-minded .......and do everything in love"---- The Holy Bible
@@earth1710 Jesus lied.
@@dertechl6628 That's a claim without evidence that can be ignored.
@@earth1710 Jesus allegedly promised to come down with angles within the lifetime of his listeners. Did this happen?
Matt, you are always good value.
I love you man and agree with almost everything in this video. I just have one question.
If the claim is “unicorns exist” wouldn’t finding a well preserved fossil of a unicorn be enough evidence for that claim?
(My point: extraordinary claims seem to only require strong but otherwise normal evidence.)
Nobody doubts objective science.
This guy is beating a dead horse.
The fact that people don’t understand this concept intrinsically just as a product of being alive and exposed regularly to reality and society is a frightening prospect. Good thing people like Matt are here to ensure everyone can understand this fundamental part of reality. This was well said, even a layman like myself could make sense of it. I speak for all other atheists when I say we should thank god for Matt.
For me Matt is the pinnacle of debunking theology/religious claims, cuts through crap with logic, commonsense and above all honesty in ways we can easily understand
You are deceived. Matt is a liar and grade A hypocrite who never holds his own claims to his claimed standards - while lying incessantly to fool you.
There is a common misinterpretation that goes on too, where if someone uses a word, that others assume they know what that person meant when they used that word.
So in your example where you say "I saw Bob reading a book" and later tried to expand on that by saying "I witnesses Bob pretending to read a book". What you are attempting to report on in practice is a set of behaviours you saw Bob do, which, for you, are consistent with someone who is reading a book. So something like, physically holding the book, with it open and the inner pages facing Bob's face in a manner that he could look at the pages steadily and focus his eyes on the pages. Then after some moderate period of time, he turns a page to look at another page. If the more elaborate description was provided, it goes a long way to indicating what your experience of Bob was rather than what you interpreted Bob's behaviour to mean.
Someone claiming to have seen Jesus, could have gone much further to describe the experience they were having by giving precise details about what they saw. It's obvious, for instance, that there are no descriptions of Jesus the man. So when people claim they are seeing him, and not actually describing what they see, it's hard to tell if they are actually looking at the same person. This becomes relevant after the proposed resurrection. It's also relevant when there are claims people didn't recognise Jesus. How and why that is so, is left unreported, and indeterminate.
It seems to me that whenever I try to talk to people about this topic, its issues with the english language that get in the way. The word claim is one of those unfortunate words that has multiple definitions (with very different concepts) but they are close enough that things can get confused easily. If we used the definitions in place of the words, I think it would pretty obvious why this idea is correct.
A claim in context of establishing an argument is basically just the base proposition, or the goal of the argument. If we instead were to say "The goal of an argument isn't evidence for the argument being true/false" it would make way more sense, and the truth of the statement easier to see, but that is kind of a mouthful. But it is clear.
12:18 Easy, Matt: Enzo Matrix becomes Guardian. That's what happens when there's no Bob. Stay frosty.
Alphanumeric!
I witnessed Bob driving a stolen cookie to work 😆
@Conon the Binarian I think it was Ginger Snap
I witnessed I Killed Earl killing Earl😛
@@nagilumsnangilima That's Epic
I witnessed you witnessing Bob driving a stolen cookie to work.
Please tell Bob I am willing to trade my Sentra for his cookie.
@Matt Dillahunty
All ravens are black. Translates to the following proposition:
If raven ➡ then black.
If not black ➡ then not raven (contrapositive).
But it doesn't have to be a complete paradox. It can be refined because the contrapositive tells us that this particular thing that's not black is not a counterexample to the first proposition and reduces the overall probability that all of the things we don't know or can't observe are counterexamples to the first proposition: if raven, then black.
Also, you need not have exhaustive knowledge, just sufficient knowledge. If exhaustive knowledge were required then pretty much every if- then syllogism would be rendered moot.
Consider All humans are mortal. The syllogism would be:
(1) if human, then mortal.
(2) if not mortal, then not human (contrapositive).
But we don't know if every human is mortal, just everyone we've bagged and tagged so far. Indeed, there are people who have disappeared and are presumed dead, but we have no bodies. Also, there are people who have lived or are living in this world who we have no record of. Consider Sentinel Island. No person from recorded civilization (whom we know of) has stepped foot there. Could there be immortal people on that island? We don't know. Do we have exhaustive knowledge of every person on this planet who has lived and died? No. Should we therefore do away with the syllogism: if human then mortal?
The claim isn't someone saying they witnessed an empty tomb...the claim is an anonymous storywriter says someone witnessed an empty tomb. Such a claim is not even worth considering.
Matt is the Einstein of atheism
He would not agree, he would say skepticism
lol not
Ugh... it took him 30 years to figure out fairytales.
@@rimbusjift7575 hahaha
Matt is a hypocrite, who USED to be rational... Until the last 5 years, when he started accepting beliefs, using an ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY IDENTICAL standard of evidence, as every Christian, Muslim, Scientologist, etc.
A Christian believes that "I have a personal relationship with Jesus". This is a claim that has ZERO empirical evidence behind it. But believers accept it SOLELY on the basis of "but it FEEELS true, to me!!"
Matt believes that "transwomen ARE women (in some mystical, pseudo-spiritual sense that nobody can even DEFINE coherently, let alone demonstrate)". This is a claim that has ZERO empirical evidence behind it. But believers like Matt accept it SOLELY on the basis of "but it FEEELS true, to me".
Christians believe in "the soul"- An invisible, 100% undetectable thing inside every person, which defines "your TRUE self", "you REAL identity". There's literally ZERO empirical evidence that "the soul" even exists at all... Yet believers insist that, despite the 100% absence of evidence, your "soul" (somehow?!?) provides a FAR GREATER TRUTH than mere, trivial, verifiable real-world empirical evidence.
Matt believes in "gender"- An invisible, 100% undetectable thing inside every person, which defines "your TRUE self", "you REAL identity". There's literally ZERO empirical evidence that "gender" even exists at all... Yet believers insist that, despite the 100% absence of evidence, your "gender" (somehow?!?) provides a FAR GREATER TRUTH than mere, trivial, verifiable real-world empirical evidence.
Matt's 100% faith-based belief that the evidence-free assertion of "gender" is somehow (?!?) "the REAL truth", outweighing DEMONSTRABLE, EVIDENCE-BASED sex, is exactly as irrational as any other faith-based, evidence-free religious belief.
But while being equally IRRATIONAL to traditional religions, Matt's beliefs are far, far more HARMFUL- Often measurably, objectively, physiologically more harmful;
Even the most nutcase Creationist doesn't try to use THEIR evidence-free beliefs as justification to irreversably chemically mutilate unconsenting children, the way Matt's ideology does.
-Matt PRETENDS he supports gender non-conforming kids... yet he actively supports these unconsenting children being irreversably chemically sterilized (whether partially, or fully) with dangerous puberty-blockers like 'Lupron', in pursuit of making these children (superfically appear to) CONFORM to traditional gender stereotypes.
-Matt PRETENDS to support women... but he sides with fully-intact biologically male convicted raapists, who feel entitled to demand sharing a cell with vulnerable (actual, evidence-based) women.
-Matt PRETENDS to support gays and lesbians... yet he endorsed an ideology which claims that gays and lesbians are DEFINITIONALLY "hateful' and "bigoted", for being same-SEX attracted, and not "same-GENDER" attracted.
-Matt supports an ideology which has ALREADY erased the evidence-based identity of women as "adult female humans"... And now seeks to replace that with the incoherent circular nonsense of "a woman is anyone who says they're a woman" (ever seen Creationists try to define "kind"? Same logic)... A belief system so incoherent that they can't even define the key terms of THEIR OWN beliefs- "woman", "man", "gender" itself.
People should be 100% free to dress, act, speak, fvck however they want, REGARDLESS of their sex... and WITHOUT the bizarre expectation of altering their body (ESPECIALLY in unconsenting children) using harmful, 100% medically-unneccary drugs, and/or surgeries...
But you DON'T get to deny simple, evidence-based reality; You don't get to make the evidence-free assertion of (sex-independent) "gender", and claim it somehow over-rules simple, evidence-based sex.
You don't get to claim to believe that "gender is just a social construct"... But then ALSO claim this "mere social construct" is simultaneously such an objective, physiological reality that it requires (based on ZERO evidence the child is anything but 100% physically healthy) deliberately INHIBITING a child's natural, healthy development.
You don't get to PRETEND to believe "just a social construct"(ie, that "gender" is 100% learned/'nurture')... while you ALSO simultaneously claim to believe "born this way" (ie. That "gender" is 100% innate/'nature')...
And you CERTAINLY don't get to do all this- Chemically mutilate healthy children. Deny evidence-based sex (or "over-rule it, with a 100% evidence-free assertion"). Erase the evidence-based identities of women, men, gays and lesbians, and replace them all with "the truth is whatever I SAY is the truth!!". Destroy women's sex-based rights to safety, privacy, sports- The right to discuss their own anatomy without being accused of "transohobic hatred". You don't get to re-name women as "people with ovaries", "chest-feeders", "uterus-havers", and then accusers OTHERS of being "de-humanizing", after reducing half of humanity to a collection of spare parts..
And all the above, based on exactly ZERO empirical evidence that (sex-independent) gender" is any more real than "the soul", or "ghosts", or "chi energy" or "chakras".
Fun fact for the raven topic. There is a hungarian idiom: "Ritka mint a fehér holló."
It means, something is rare as a white raven.
I've watched a couple of recent Capturing Christianity videos where Cameron just has to drop your name and that you won't come on his channel again after he was just refusing to grasp this concept. Of course he didn't take issue with one of his guests saying they took propositions as evidence.
You are lying to claim Cameron refuses to grasp Dillahunty's lies. You swallow Dillahunty's lies without evidence. Dillahunty himself never holds his own claims to his own standards. I demonstrate Dillahunty's lies daily.
@@JimCastleberry Dillahunty isn't lying that claims aren't evidence, not am I lying that Cameron still doesn't grasp it, it was in his latest video of 3 best reasons to believe Jesus was raised, which were all bad reasons.
@@wilkimist Yes, Dillahunty certainly is lying and manipulating again. Tell a judge that all claims made in court cannot be accepted because claims are not evidence.
All evidence in claimed. Even Dillahunty's claim that "claims are not evidence" IS A CLAIM WITHOUT EVIDENCE. Thus, his own claim fails his own standard.
You people are being duped by a huckster.
@@JimCastleberry Just ask him out sweet cheeks
A claim made without evidence is just as easily debunked without evidence.
Fireside chats with Matt.
I love these videos.
Corollary: The fact that someone made a claim is not a claim.
claims -> propositions
facts -> evidence
Well since we just passed Easter let's discuss one of my favorite claims to debate. Is three days really a sacrifice? I would argue not. It's more like a bender. A more plausible explanation would be; a carpenter got paid and went to the tavern, got wrecked and blew his whole paycheck on booze and working girls. After three days it was time to go home and face the music so a story needed to be concocted. See a real sacrifice is permanent like those that gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy. Three days has more in common with a nap than an actual sacrifice. But I'm sure turning all that water into wine is pretty tiring so maybe he just needed to rest.
I think the raven hypothesis makes more sense to me the other way round - ie I have seen a black raven; all ravens I have seen are black; therefore I believe all ravens are black. The hypothesis can then be falsified if I discover one white raven. This also holds for the reverse claim that all non-ravens are not black; if one white raven is discovered then the belief is false.
"All ravens are black" is not a very realistic claim. Language is full of examples of statements that are simply not realistic. I see no point in exploring unrealistic statements. More appropriately, I would say, "All known ravens are black" or 'Nobody has produced a raven that isn't black." And if another claim depends on claiming that "All ravens are black", it is also an unrealistic claim. This is what I dislike about philosophical discussions. They waste time on discussing unrealistic statements. I'd rather discuss physics.
I just watched a video that had nearly all these issues with the guy's assessment of whether there was an historical Jesus. The actual point isn't even relevant to me personally but I was very annoyed with the guy's poor arguments.
Antidotal evidence is not evidence. It’s data that resembles evidence but is not evidence
The normal default rule is that the party who makes a claim has the burden of proof to support that claim if the other party questions it. Thus, in many cases it might be a very simple matter to analyze an example with respect to burden of proof if the example is one where a claim has been made, that is some proposition has been put forward as an assertion, and those of us who are attempting to analyze or evaluate the argumentation in the example question the claim. people have a burden of proof with regard to any claim that they make, so they must support it either when they present it or when it is questioned by others.
You say Bob.
We here is Australia day Dave.
If someone claims they witnessed a person murdering someone, but there is no dead body, no gun, no bullet, no blood, no nothing behind it, the claim is not good enough to be seen as evidence.
Still impressed by Matt's view that theists will have a huge problem, if confronted with intelligent life from another planet.
Crazy how many people need this to be explained at all.
Yeah like the trans community
I don't take anything at face value any more because I have a tonne of evidence that most people talk shit most of the time and barely even bother to think about what they're saying.
If someone claims that claims are evidence, then I'll claim their claim is wrong. Therefore, my claim proves them wrong. 😎
I did the math on this once. I was curious how many red apples would be needed to be equivalent amount of evidence for 1 black raven supporting the claim "all ravens are black."
I had to make a few assumptions, but this was just for fun. I got about 29,000 non-black non-ravens would be roughly the same level of support for the claim "all ravens are black" as 1 black raven. (Note: this level of support didn't scale linearly)
Or just google albino raven.
Does the make this the Black Raven Fallacy?
I threw a bucket of white paint on a raven and it became rav'n mad.
@@TheBirdGardenNB The paradox has little to do with ravens and more to do with evidence.
If one accepts the claim that the observation of multiple x with property y supports all x have property y, then the observation of things without property y and are not x also supports the claim that all x have property y.
@@mesplin3 There's a thing called the "Black Swan Fallacy". Where it was thought that all swans were white, producing a black swan makes the statement "all swans are white" immediately false.
I was kinda making a joke?? Mixing metaphors so to speak?
Thanks for that wonderful explanation though, now I know how women feel.
8:33 "the claim is the proposition"
No. A claim is when someone asserts that a proposition is true. For example:
- when your friend John tells you he bought a new car, that's a claim
- when you consider the proposition "John bought a car", there's no claim there, because you're not saying it's true.
According to Matt (0:59), evidence is facts/data, consistent with a proposition, and inconsistent with competing propositions. With that definition, it's easy to show how a claim can be evidence. Because claims are facts (even in Matt's own word, at 12:39, "the fact that someone says something"). And such facts can be more or less consistent with various propositions. Take John as an example: the FACT that John asserted to have bought a car is consistent with him having bought a car, and inconsistent with him not buying a car, because people generally don't go around claiming they bought a car when they didn't, and therefore, the claim is evidence for the proposition that John bought a car. We can also construct examples where the claim is evidence against the proposition, like in a game where you have to lie. Or where the claim isn't evidence at all, like if John claims the number of stars in the galaxy is a multiple of 7. Since he has no way of knowing, him making this claim is equally consistent with the proposition, as with its negation.
Matt objects that claims being evidence is circular reasoning, because then "the claims inclu des evidence for itself" (8:45). But when you understand that a claim, which is a physical event, is different from a proposition, which is an abstract concept, it becomes clear there's no problem of circularity, as a claim isn't evidence for itself but for a proposition.
6:12 Matt also objects: when John claims to have bought a new car, we do accept that he bought a new car, but the evidence isn't the claim, the evidence is the mountain of background knowledge about cars. But that background knowledge about cars was already there BEFORE John made the claim. So why do we go from not believeing that John bought a car, to accepting that he did? Because John made a claim which constitutes additional evidence for the proposition that John bought a car.
A few notes:
- At 12:33 Matt says "it's not merely the proposition that counts as evidence". This concedes that a proposition (or rather he should have said a claim) can be evidence.
- You could decide to redefine "evidence" in a way that excludes claims.
- When you equate 2 terms (like saying "the claim is the proposition"), it's a hint that you might be missing something.
"- when your friend John tells you he bought a new car, that's a claim" - when did he say it was the truth?? you aren't following your own logic here????
@@SNORKYMEDIA When you friend tells you he bought a new car, yes, he's saying it's true that he bought a car. He's not saying he doesn't know, he's not asking you to contemplate the proposition "John bought a car" independently of wether it's true or not. He's saying it's true.
Claims are not evidence because claims boil down to feelings about what is true or false. Both sides of an issue have feelings and one person's feelings are not more objective than another's.
The raven thing can't seriously be a paradox no one can figure out.
The language of the claim and the contrapositive lead people to construct different sets in their minds with different starting information about the contents of those sets. A set of ravens only (or a set with a known number of ravens) in the case of 'all ravens are black', vs a set of non black things (or the set of all things) with an unknown number of ravens in the case of 'all non black things are not ravens'. Evaluating information against these different sets leads to different evidentiary outcomes for the claim and its contrapositive. But if we evaluate both the claim and the contrapositive against a given set with the same starting information, which is what we should be doing, then the evidence for the claim and the contrapositive is equivalent.
As a simple example, let's say we have a set of 10 things and we know 5 of them are ravens and the odds that any one raven is black is 75% (maybe you don't know the odds that any given raven is black and you adjust it as you find more and more black ravens, but that's not the point), then the odds that 'all ravens are black' is purely a function of the unchecked ravens, 0.75^n where n is the number of unchecked ravens (I'm not well versed in statistics, so excuse my math if wrong). Finding a t-shirt, regardless of color, has no effect, only a black raven is evidence for the claim. But the same is true for the contrapositive, the odds that all non black things in the set are not ravens is still purely a function of those 5 ravens. The odds start at 0.75^5 and remain so no matter how many t-shirts we find. Only a black raven is evidence for the contrapositive. (If that's not clear, imagine a set with 1 raven and 1 billion t-shirts in it. What are the odds that all the non black things are not ravens? It hinges purely on the color of that 1 raven, 75%. Now let's say by blind luck we check all 1 billion t-shirts and only have 1 item left (which must be the raven), then what are the odds that all non black things in the set are not ravens? Still 75%, it has nothing to do with the t-shirts)
If, on the other hand, we start with a set of 10 things with an unknown number of ravens, then finding a t-shirt is evidence for 'all ravens are black' as it reduces the chances that the set contains a raven, and therefore the chance the set contains a non black raven. A t-shirt is evidence for the claim. The same is true for the contrapositive, every t-shirt we find reduces the chances that a non black thing in the set is a raven and is therefore evidence. If the odds that any given item is a raven is 25%, I believe the math is 0.75^(n*0.25) where n is the number of unchecked things in the set. Every item you check reduces n and increases the odds for the claim and the contrapositive equally.
The language is simply tricking people into comparing different scenarios.
Plus there are several conflicting claims in the Gospel that didn't get chucked out.
“Use the present opportunity to the full, for these are evil days."
Anything is dildo is you’re brave enough - Jesus Christ.
I would put my money on this man against any religion.
Andrew Wilson • run
0:00 A'ight. It's been great seeing you again, Matt :D Bye! :D
@ Matt Dillahunty
Re: Witness Testimony Being Insufficient and Circular:
Apparently it still works for courts.
This is from the Federal Rules of Evidence and helps show how witness testimony is treated in federal courts. State courts have variant forms of this rule. You can ask Andrew Seidel if you don't believe me or you can look it up yourself.
From the Federal Rules of Evidence-2023 Edition:
Rule 602- Need for Personal Knowledge-
A witness may testify to a matter only if evidence is introduced sufficient to support a finding that the witness has personal knowledge of the matter. Evidence to prove personal knowledge may consist of the witness’s own testimony. This rule does not apply to a witness’s expert testimony under Rule 703.
@Anon Ymous I'm not saying that. What I am indicating is that society and courts still value witness testimony despite Matt's statements that it's unreliable and the concurrent claims along with that testimony may be circular.
For our pedantic viewers, there one time existed the Pied Raven (black and white). 😊
Claims aren't evidence---and making a claim, a positive claim and answering rejections of the claim with 'Well why not?' is not a rational way to argue. It is the job of the person making the positive claim to make the case for the claim in demonstration and proof not the other person because the claimant presumably knows the case better.
This is a great topic to cover . Thanks again Matt !
I have a question,
Can't evidence also lead away from truth.
I know once its realised that the evidence lead away from the truth that its then categorically false evidence. However at one point it was considered valid therefore, evidence .
This ( i think ?) occurs in court cases.
And religions, especially christianity, offer so much of what they consider evidence and call it evidence.
Of course I'm not swayed anymore hy Christian " evidence" . im just looking for ways to a better understanding and clarity when talking with Christians about this important topic.
The Oxford dictionary defines evidence as "the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid". I do not see how evidence can lead away from the truth. There are problems of course. You can accept something as fact and be wrong. Or you can accept an actual fact as indicative of X and be wrong. In either case the problem isn't so much that evidence is leading you way from truth, but rather you are calling things evidence that are just not.
@@marcovoetberg6618
Thanks for your response.
The so called evidence of Christianity has steered generation after generation away from truth.
And still does.
To this day very powerful influential people offer what they have as evidence.
Similarly there are lawyers claiming that their evidence proves (an innocent) man guilty or (a guilty) man innocent , regardless of TRUTH.
Some of this confuses me to the point I'm not even sure how to formulate clear questions.
We get a clear answer when we firm up our definitions.
Let's take evidence to be "facts about reality which anyone can reliably confirm by observation."
(In addition, we can optionally qualify the evidence on a scale ranging from good to bad, but we take the term "evidence" without qualification to be good evidence only.)
Under the above definition, the only way that evidence can lead to a flawed conclusion is if the inference which relies on the evidence is flawed.
And independent of this, we can always examine logical inferences on their structural validity even if we have no evidence at all.
I don't see any issues here.
@@starfishsystems
Thanks. Dan.
Its getting clearer but theres something I just dont get . Though I cant get it into a sensible question at the moment.
Im waiting for it to come to me. something about the evidence in a court case but it just wont formulate clearly. Probably watching a court drama would help but I havent the time lately.
When it happens I'll be back with
a better question.
Hopefully youll also be back
with another answer . 😁
Matt has a beard and wears glasses, therefore all men called Matt have beards and wear glasses. Probably. 😂
Aside from proof of something, justifying an opinion has to have external support. Example: Why would you WANT to live forever? Answer without "quoting scripture". A theist would feel cornered without evidence outside their scripture. There is no reason to WANT to live forever- much less spending eternity "praising god". (What a nightmare that would be.)
A few years ago, I came up with the following thought exercise. "My cousin French kissed the Queen of England while bungee jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge." You can't prove it _didn't_ happen. Every _individual_ data point referenced in the claim can be confirmed. (I have a cousin, France exists, bungee jumping is a thing, etc.) For someone who is _raised_ to believe this story and then retroactively rationalize that belief, the claim makes perfect sense and is replete with evidentiary support. _However,_ for anyone who considers _all applicable evidence_ (including the _lack_ of video, photo, or media corroboration) the claim is obviously ridiculous, and the mere _existence_ of the claim is not _evidence_ of its validity.
Related Note: Regarding the idea of taking things at face value, Tucker Carlson and his team of Fox News lawyers actually won a defamation lawsuit in 2020 by successfully convincing a federal judge that any _rational_ viewer...based on Carlson's reputation...knows better than to take anything he says at face value. Yes, that was _their own_ argument.
I used to have a friend that would post pictures of himself and his family next to a new vehicle saying something like "look at our new car", then the next day the picture was deleted and no new truck.
"Look at our new car" was the claim, the picture was the evidence, but neither were true.
Given all that I now have my own claim, my friend was a liar, my evidence is the same as his evidence, but with 2 different conclusions.
I'm not understanding the issue with the statement "All non-black things are not ravens". First, this statement is equivalent (a syllogism) to the original statement "All ravens are black" (edit: actually maybe not a syllogism, the equivalence might be an axiom that we accept?). I feel I could leave it at that, but, Second, it's very easy to show that testing the color of any non-raven object has no affect on either statement and therefore cannot be evidence.
- Found a non-raven thing that is black (both statements can still be true or false)
- Found a non-raven thing that is not black (both statements can still be true or false)
Seems like this example just demonstrates our intuition is bad at deriving effective tests for statements, which is why I'm glad we have formalized logic to help us along :)
EDIT: I should also mention that consider the color of raven things does have an effect on the statements. "Found a raven that is not black" (disproves boths statements). "Found a raven that is black" (both statements can still be true or false). Even though the second result still leaves the possibility that the statements could be false, it's complementary result (finding a non-black raven) does have an affect, so I would say that this test has more of an affect that considering non-raven objects because we showed both of the results of that test have no affect on the statement.
EDIT2: we could actually quantify the value of evidence in these cases. EvidenceValue("color of a raven"). We can calculate the probaility of the statement being true as "Number of ravens tested" / "Total numer of ravens". This means the probability of the statement "All ravens are black" grows with each raven tested. We can also calculate EvidenceValue("color of a non-raven thing"). Every test we do has no affect on the probability, so again, I don't see why there's an argument to be made that this test is ever evidence of the statement.
EDIT3: Sorry but you got my brain going. Consider a universe that consists only of ravens, countless numbers of them, and 1 non-raven thing, let's say a red wagon. In this case we can't prove the statement "all non-black things are not ravens" until we can confirm first whether they are any non-black ravens to test, however, if we've already had to test all the ravens' color, then we've already proven or disproven the original statement and there's no reason to test whether the red wagon is a raven. We can again confirm that the color of non-raven objects has no affect on the truthiness of either statement.
EDIT4: Ok I realize the issue now :) Take my previous example of a universe but instead let's say it's a universe full of countless numbers of "black things" and a single "non-black" thing. Then to prove the statement "all non-black things are not ravens", all we need to do is test whether that single non-black thing is a raven. Alternatively, we could try to find/test all the ravens in this universe to see if they are any non-black ravens, but that's a much harder thing to test in this bespoke universe. Now I see the paradox. In our universe you can do the same 2 alternative tests to prove/disprove these statements, which does seem problematic...
It’s really funny that instead of just reading and learning, pseudo-intellectual and religious people have to try to redefine common words to avoid the burden of proof.
Same thing for arguments.
Most of what we accept about reality are claims.
important distinction between a claim (act of) and what the claim refers to as a purported event.
If some data makes a claim more likely, I'd say that's evidence "for" that claim.
If someone claims they have a car, it's more likely that they have a car, so it would be evidence for the claim. It may generally be very weak evidence, and therefore cannot carry a significant claim by itself, and can easily be cancelled out by competing evidence, but it's evidence nonetheless.
It would be simply false to say that what we know about reality (aside from the claim) leads us to conclude that they have a car, because it is necessary for them to say they have a car before we'd believe it (assuming we don't have any other evidence of them having a car). I just don't see how some data that leads us to conclude that some claim is true, isn't by definition evidence for that claim.
Maybe we have different ideas of what it means to be evidence "for" or "against" something. There are many competing claims and a lot of available evidence in many cases. Any given bit of data could make any number of claims more likely and any number of claims less likely. Once we've considered all the evidence, we conclude whatever is most likely (if we have sufficient evidence to conclude anything, that is).
In that sense, either one could argue that almost anything is evidence "for" something, or one could argue that nothing is evidence "for" something. That's semantics.
But by this reasoning, if a claim isn't evidence, then nothing is evidence, but this isn't what you're saying. So I still don't get the logic behind saying a claim isn't evidence. Maybe that it supports only that one claim? But I'm doubtful that you can ever get into a situation where some data supports one claim and only one claim. There's always the possibility of being a brain in a jar, if nothing else, or, more realistically, having hallucinated, and within that, you can come up with some sub-claim which the data supports. It seems you'll have a hard time concretely and explicitly defining what it means for something to be evidence "for" a claim, in a way that excludes claims themselves.
Technically, there isn't really much between "almost everything is evidence" and "nothing is evidence". But you could of course define some arbitrary point in the middle, for how strongly evidence is, before it's considered evidence "for" something. But, if nothing else, one would need to acknowledge that this is simply an arbitrary cutoff.
The claim isn't evidence for itself, but the utterance of the claim may be evidence for the truth value of the claim, which are clearly distinct things, and it therefore wouldn't be circular.
What's written in the Bible is evidence, but some claims made thousands of years ago, often by anonymous authors, doesn't even come close to being sufficient evidence to warrant belief in the resurrection above competing claims that some people lied or were tricked or exaggerated or whatever else.
Broad question here.
As an atheist, how are ethics determined? Can the world and hence society agree on a common understanding of good and evil? Or is it restricted to exclusively a subjective understanding?
Great talk Matt - thanks.
It's hard to believe that anyone has difficulty wrapping their head around any of this. But considering the type of person that would argue *against* any of this....maybe not.
Am I the only one that has noticed how Matt is often referencing Karl Popper's method of Critical Rationalism without ever mentioning it? Perhaps Matt simply doesn't promote Popper's views, or perhaps he wants people to believe that he thought of all these ideas on his own and the first in history to think of it critically since David Hume?
Stupid claims can be evidence for stupidity.
Talking of All ravens being black.... there is a small population of white ravens in Vancouver....
my go-to for claims vs evidence is the used car lot. you need a great car. the salesman tells you this is a great car! do you buy it? if claims are evidence, yes, this fulfills your needs. no further investigation is needed.
Claims are always evidence for the claim, just not necessarily good enough evidence to believe the claim. If I said I was stung by a bee yesterday, that claim would be good enough evidence to believe I was stung by a bee yesterday, so long as there was no good reason to think I was lying or mistaken or to think it's truth was 50/50. If I said I turned into a rabbit yesterday, that claim would not be good enough evidence to believe I did, because a person turning into a rabbit is something that violates what's established as possible and plausible.
The claim isn't the evidence.
Does that claim present evidence against your assertion?
ravens paradox is like all paradoxes, silly word games, where logic and propositions are mixed up. they typically produce recursive definitions. this is not how logic works when stated mathematically, where silly word conundrums dont show.
non black non raven things are a category. this is no different to a chair being a seat with legs...and a smooth stone doesnt help define a chair.
extraordinary claims and evidence is a useful guide for common folk. in science all claims are equal and evidence is measured in statistical significance and error margins.
making a claim that humans will take to the air a thousand years ago, would have been seen as extraordinary. now human flight is ordinary and commonplace. that's why claims shouldnt be pre-judged with mistaken probabilities.
in terms of gods, we actually do know that all gods thus far described by humans are human fiction. so we shouldnt fantasize about one day finding them.
Well, there are exceptions. The claim "I am a woman" is nowadays considered by many as all the evidence I need to prove that I am in fact 100% a woman.
I'd like to see you handle the inverse argument - Isn't every piece of evidence a claim? At some point we accept the claim as a piece of evidence - that point varies depending on the claim and how it is made.
Evidence means "the body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid". So evidence, definitionally, is always in support of a claim/belief/proposition (implicit or explicit).
Eg I'm currently looking at a rainbow. The sight of the familiar colours and shape in the sky is evidence to me supporting my conclusion that I'm seeing a rainbow.
@@canwelook Your evidence is your claim that you see the rainbow.
No, I do not agree with that. You are conflating things. To say that X is evidence for Y is a claim. To accept the claim "X is evidence of Y" is something else. And for X to actually BE evidence for Y is something else again.
@@marcovoetberg6618 You say you don't agree but you made my point. It is a claim to say X is evidence of Y. Whether it is or is not, we cannot get there until all parties accept or reject the claim.