Essay on The Burden of Proof in Philosophy and Science

The verification principle arose from a movement in the 1920’s known as Logical Positivism and, in particular from a group of philosophers known as the Vienna circle. They applied principles of science and mathematics to religious language and argued that, like human knowledge, religious language also had to be empirically verified through experiences if it were to be considered meaningful. They believed that this was the basis of all forms of empirical testing. From this, Vienna Circle established that truth and meaning can be identified as two distinct concepts when referring to religious language. Consequently, statements such as ‘God exists’ may have meaning to a believer, however, it would be a completely different matter to state

William James (1897), on the other hand, attempts to define the permissible cases in which it is intellectually respectable to believe without sufficient evidence. James (1897) begins by providing three criterion for judging beliefs: either beliefs are 1) living or dead; 2) forced or avoidable; or 3) momentous or trivial.

“Part of science is to be taken as significant and expressible within E, and the rest as non-significant and falling outside E. The E portion is subject to attributions of truth and falsehood, belief and evidence, whereas the non-E portion is not. Yet the fictionalist cannot spurn the latter wholly, since he is prepared to admit its functional ‘legitimacy’ and, hence, its interest for the scientist. At most, he can deny it to be either true or false.” (Scheffler 185).

The analysis of knowledge as, “ S knows that p if and only if (i) p, (ii) S believes that p and (iii) S has adequate evidence that p” is subject to a platonic objection for it to be true. Because when “has adequate evidence” does not entail “know of adequate evidence” problems with the analysis arise that defeat its claim of producing knowledge. The problem entails the inability to actively utilize evidence for verification. Verification is necessary, because if not provided no knowledge can be produced.

In this paper, first I am going to introduce the criterion of verifiability. With the help of the criterion of verifiability, Ayer is able to test whether any sentence has factual significance or not. He then concludes that metaphysical propositions lack factual significance because they fail to satisfy even the weaker sense of verifiability in principle. Ayer proceeds to argue that metaphysical propositions are nonsensical since they neither have factual significance nor belong to the category of a priori propositions. This argument is mainly successful as to eliminate metaphysics from sensible knowledge, except there are two parts susceptible to attack. One may argue that the process of applying the criterion of verifiability to

In math, proofs are the reason that gives credit to the reliability of the qualitative and quantitative data. In the area of math, personal knowledge and shared knowledge do not have interaction because what is right can be proved and is always right. Therefore, when one has different opinion to an answer, ways of knowing in reason provides evidence to oppose. Furthermore, in religion, the ways of knowing, faith, plays a major role in leading the followers to believe in the existence of God. Since God cannot be seen or touched, faith is required to make the followers to accept God is always with them as true. Therefore, personal knowledge outweigh the shared knowledge as religion is personal and individual. Hence, human science is the product of both reason and faith as it requires reason for analysis and faith to believe in the reliability of the quantitative and qualitative

The proofs of God’s existence offered follow a logical sequence with the aim to convince the reader to believe. However, these proofs, at some stage, all offer a presupposition which flaws the author’s argument. These presuppositions are harmful because if the assumption can be disproven then the remainder of the argument collapses. Thus, the proofs of God’s existence are not compelling because they are all based on flawed presuppositions.

In the text, Ayer acknowledges that while being an empiricist he will have to answer the question of how mathematical and logical truths fit into his criteria. Before diving into how he does this I briefly give background regarding the problem. As we went over above, truths can only be meaningful when they can be tested through experience. Now, what has not been mentioned are a priori and analytic truths. Can these truths that are true regardless of experience be classified as meaningless?

Evidentialism has permeated itself not only in philosophical inquiry but also in the public domain. In fact, evidentialism is one of the most common tools used to criticize religion. Bertrand Russell, upon being asked about what he would say if after death he were to be brought to God, said: “Not enough evidence God! Not enough evidence!” Evidentialists state that being warranted by evidentialist means mostly implies being warranted by the senses. In the modern Western culture influenced by evidentialism, a reasonable theory must be

Non-cognitive statements are argued to be meaningless by A.J Ayer. Ayer observed that since the existence of God could not be proven rationally, it was not even probable, since the word ‘god’ is a metaphysical term referring to a transcendent being, and therefore cannot have any factual significance. Ayer also stated that claims about God’s existence, which are non-cognitive, could neither be contradicted nor proven, so were not ‘significant propositions’. In other words, they were neither true nor false, but could not be valid. However, one could argue that non-cognitive statements are useful as they allow the believer to use statements that can be understood and are meaningful to themselves and the wider community.

Popper proposed seven conclusions on his criterion of falsifiability. The first conclusion asks how easily a theory can acquire confirmations. Second, acquired confirmations should only be considered if the original prediction is measured as risky. Third, all “good” scientific theories, exclude something from happening. Fourth, a theory that cannot be refuted by any event cannot be contemplated as scientific. Fifth, stated by Popper, “testability is falsifiability” the more testable a theory is the greater risk involved in proposing and maintaining the theory. Sixth, evidence that can confirm a theory should only be considered if it is a “genuine test of the theory.” Lastly, interpreting a theory as a non-general, “ad hoc” lowers the scientific status of a theory (9).

People have been always interested to know the circumstances under which it is necessary to believe. Believing on facts or not depend by the person. In this paper I look to demonstrate if Is it wrong to hold a belief on insufficient evidence or is it morally right to believe based on the sufficient evidence. In this paper I aim to discuss the other philosopher in contrast with Clifford. My issue is to show what mean to believe and how important is that in our lives. How necessary are the evidence that we have to know for believing on something?

While quality and quantity are absolute properties of proposition, logical opposition is considered as a relative property of proposition because opposition happens only when we relate two propositions with the same subject and predicate.

The question of who bears the burden of proof frequently comes up in debates between theists and atheists. In some cases, the theists claim that the atheists bear the burden of proof as it is a self evident fact that God exists. Whereas some atheists would claim that the theists bear the burden of proof since they are making supernatural claims. In the following essay I will be discussing both opinions on this matter, and perhaps show how the burden of proof lies on both of them and neither of them.

Epistemology is purposed with discovering and studying what knowledge is and how we can classify what we know, how we know it, and provide some type of framework for how we arrived at this conclusion. In the journey to identify what knowledge is the certainty principle was one of the first concepts that I learned that explained how we, as humans, consider ourselves to know something. The certainty concept suggests that knowledge requires evidence that is sufficient to rule out the possibility of error. This concept is exemplified in cases like The Gettier problem in the instance that we suppose (S) someone to know (P) a particular proposition. As Gettier established the Justified True Belief as a conceptual formula for knowledge, certainty