I probably should have put this as an Addendum to my reply below, but oh well; putting it up here may work as well:
>> The Axiom of Evidence: The evidence of the senses is not entirely unreliable evidence. <<
This can be rephrased as follows using Modal Terms:
AE : {Possibly} Sense perception -> Reliable Evidence.
So "Possibly, If Sense perception then Reliable Evidence" prevails.
The negation of this would be as follows:
~AE : [Necessarily] Sense perception & un-Reliable Evidence.
So, "Necessarily, Sense perception & un-Reliable Evidence" prevails.
Thinkers like Plantinga (probably the top Christian Philosopher of this era; so not a "pushover") would say that ~AE best coincides with Reality, and not AE. In his Naturalistic Argument against Evolution, he implies ~AE by using several examples; all of which come back to the same point:
Naturalistic drives and forces (selective, 'random', etc) do not NEED to sculpt organisms with faculties (or "senses" if you will) that are Truth-tracking (i.e. "Veridical). What said drives and forces NEED to do is merely sculpt organisms that survive and reproduce at certain rates.
A human for example does not NEED eyesight that covers the entire light spectrum; he just needs that narrow bandwidth which enables him to avoid aberrant stuff such as Infra-red and UV spectra lights; and so his faculties are not Veridical; they are "good enough" so that he can eat and mate.
His eyesight therefore is *un-Reliable; if by Reliable we mean that which grounding wise pursues Truth (Classic Externalist Epistemology definition) and is known by custom to do so.
"Refutation" wise... he alone can never refute his own eyesight (others can do it in his stead), and he can only ever find Repugnant whenever others do decide to refute him... but this does not mean that GLOBALLY his Senses are "Irrefutable"... it just means that LOCALLY they appear to him that way. For there are those who do Refute him... and they pay quite the Heavy price to do so.
I probably should have put this as an Addendum to my reply below, but oh well; putting it up here may work as well:
>> The Axiom of Evidence: The evidence of the senses is not entirely unreliable evidence. <<
This can be rephrased as follows using Modal Terms:
AE : {Possibly} Sense perception -> Reliable Evidence.
So "Possibly, If Sense perception then Reliable Evidence" prevails.
The negation of this would be as follows:
~AE : [Necessarily] Sense perception & un-Reliable Evidence.
So, "Necessarily, Sense perception & un-Reliable Evidence" prevails.
Thinkers like Plantinga (probably the top Christian Philosopher of this era; so not a "pushover") would say that ~AE best coincides with Reality, and not AE. In his Naturalistic Argument against Evolution, he implies ~AE by using several examples; all of which come back to the same point:
Naturalistic drives and forces (selective, 'random', etc) do not NEED to sculpt organisms with faculties (or "senses" if you will) that are Truth-tracking (i.e. "Veridical). What said drives and forces NEED to do is merely sculpt organisms that survive and reproduce at certain rates.
A human for example does not NEED eyesight that covers the entire light spectrum; he just needs that narrow bandwidth which enables him to avoid aberrant stuff such as Infra-red and UV spectra lights; and so his faculties are not Veridical; they are "good enough" so that he can eat and mate.
His eyesight therefore is *un-Reliable; if by Reliable we mean that which grounding wise pursues Truth (Classic Externalist Epistemology definition) and is known by custom to do so.
"Refutation" wise... he alone can never refute his own eyesight (others can do it in his stead), and he can only ever find Repugnant whenever others do decide to refute him... but this does not mean that GLOBALLY his Senses are "Irrefutable"... it just means that LOCALLY they appear to him that way. For there are those who do Refute him... and they pay quite the Heavy price to do so.