Talk:Evidentialism

message: 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 — 23:05, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  I substituted my suggestion.  I hope that fits your intention.  Mkmcconn — 00:21, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

message: 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)
thread_title: The example about baseball is too American

message: 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)
thread_title:  Clifford/James 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Self-fulfilling Beliefs 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Structure of the article