Gravitational Attraction
What would happen if two people out in space a few meters apart, abandoned by their spacecraft, decided to wait until gravity pulled them together? My initial thought was that …
Evidence vs Argument
In #articles
I was listening to the Giunta-Dillahunty debate, "Does God Exist?", and the subsequent appearance of these two on the Dogma Debate show, and was struck by the structure of the argument. Blake Giunta seems to be confident that philosophical arguments can be used as evidence for the existence of God when scientific procedures fail.
Although much of the discussion involves what counts as evidence, the notion of probability and knowledge, and the role of the supernatural in inference, there is a more basic question that is never brought up. I would love to hear even one case of the existence of an entity that was ever best described only in philosophical terms, or an entity whose existence we could at some point be confident in through only a philosophical argument.
It seems that if you are asked for your best evidence for the existence of something, and you present only a philosophical argument, then you are conceding that you have no data. If someone asked for the best evidence for Neptune, you'd show the Voyager pictures and the pictures from telescopes. If it were 100 years ago, you'd show telescopic traces in the sky. If it were 200 years ago, one might be able to give a philosophical argument about the simplicity of 8 planets instead of 6, or the possibility of large gas giants other than Jupiter and Saturn, but one would never be justified in a strong belief in such an entity with such arguments.
Blake Giunta also commented that "before you can give evidence for what God did in the world you first have to demonstrate possibility [of his existence]." He does this with the philosophical arguments, but again this is misguided. If someone asks for your evidence for the existence of something, and you give a philosophical argument for its possibility you are conceding defeat. Why not present the evidence of the existence? That itself will answer the possibility question - if I present pictures of Neptune from the Voyager mission, the question of the possibility of Neptune's existence becomes moot.
