Evidentialism: Concepts and Contentions
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Abstract
Objectives: This research aimed to exploring and analyzing evidentialism, which proposes criteria for reasons to support justification of belief, from classic evidentialism of William Clifford to contemporary evidentialism of Earn Conee and Richard Feldman. In addition, an assessment of evidentialism from various contentions was done in order to support if evidentialism is still acceptable or not.
Methods: This qualitative research was based on documentary research. The researcher researched and collected data from the related documents with the scope of evidentialism. The findings were presented in the form of the descriptive results made with Philosophical Argumentation.
Results: The concepts of evidentialism need reasons for justification of belief, starting with the concepts made by William Clifford that “it was always wrong for anyone who believes without sufficient reasons” and this was just the start of evidentialism, which brought about the questions of how insufficient or good evidence is. Then Richard Feldman and Earn Conee proposed the concept that “if our attitude in belief is compatible with evidence we have, then it can be implied that we have reasons to support ethics of belief”. In addition, both of them explained that such beliefs must be well-founded. However, arguments about evidentialism still exist, but they were not strong enough to confute evidentialism. As a result, Earn Conee and Richard Feldman agreed that evidentialism should be a default concept. Moreover, from Pojman’s viewpoint, he also agreed with the concepts of evidentialism as they were harmoniously logical for the world. Hence, the researcher agrees that evidentialism is still acceptable.
Application of this study: The results from this study can be the answer for argumentations for evidentialism and non-evidentialism in the issue of the ethics of belief, and they can also be the criteria for general people to make decisions when they have to choose what to believe.
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