“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” (Christopher
Hitchens). Do you agree?
Sample #1 (IB Score: 33)
The zeitgeist of modern society is undergoing a large shift towards the natural sciences.
The past century has marked large advancement in knowledge of the natural sciences that has
revolutionized the way in which people live, creating a sense of reverence among society. With
the continual growth and contributions of science and its effects on the way we live, its influence
continues to grow. As a result the mindset towards knowledge is changing. Science and its
methods are held in the highest regard. This change in mindset is represented by Christopher
Hitchen’s statement that “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without
evidence.” Today’s mentality holds that science is the best form of knowledge, that it is tangible,
real, and true; whereas things such as ethics are intangible, subjective, and ultimately
“unknowable” because they lack the evidence, in the empirical sense, meaning data gathered
from sensory observation, that science requires. Science holds its position largely due to the
prevailing idea that empirical evidence is objective while those areas of knowledge without it are
second rate, as implied in the previous quote. However, this growing sentiment is deeply flawed.
I do not agree with the claim made by the quote, while necessary to make a sufficiently justified
knowledge claim in some areas of knowing, evidence within itself is not sufficient nor is it a
universal requirement of knowledge.
One critical flaw with the notion that all knowledge “…asserted without evidence can be
dismissed without evidence” is that empirical evidence is not required in every area of
knowledge. One key implication of the claim made by the quote is that empirical evidence is a
universal requirement for knowledge. Empirical evidence, however, is not a universal
requirement of knowledge. Empirical evidence is obtained through the use of perception.
Perception, as a way of knowing, is incredibly limited in its ability to validate knowledge claims.
Perception is the act of using the senses to gather information about physical reality. Therein lies
the limitation of empirical evidence. It cannot be used to justify knowledge claims that are not
about physical reality. Such metaphysical claims are about subjects that are separate from
physical reality, subjects that transcend physical reality. One example of knowledge that
perception cannot be used to obtain is the laws of logic. The laws of logic are axiomatic, in that
they are self-proving and intrinsic. One law is the Law of Non-Contradiction, which states that
two contradictory ideas cannot both be true, and it is central to all knowledge. The Law of NonContradiction is self-proving in that in order to make an opposing claim it must be used. To
claim that two contradictory positions can both be true is self-defeating, as the claim seeks to
discredit, to contradict, its opposition while also claiming that both are true. Such a claim is selfcontradictory. Metaphysical claims, such as the Law of Non-Contradiction, are external of
physical reality. Such metaphysical claims can be proven true and to be knowledge without the
use of perception by the use of other ways of knowing, such as reason. This concept is similar to
the rationalistic thoughts of Rene Descartes, a renowned rationalist philosopher who believed
that the more self-evident something is the more certain we can be of its existence and truth.
Perception is a means of obtaining knowledge about physical reality, and is thus inapplicable to
claims about external reality and those claims of a metaphysical nature. The only possible way to
justify empirical evidence as a necessity for knowledge is to claim there is no external reality and
that there is only physical reality. However, this approach is problematic. Such a claim is selfcontradictory. The idea that our senses are capable of giving accurate representations of reality is
not manifested within physical reality itself. Such an idea is a metaphysical judgment. The ability
to know the characteristics of physical reality rely upon external reality. The question of reality
being rational and ordered must be answered before we can even begin to make claims about
reality. Such an answer relies upon other ways of knowing. Another example of other ways of
knowing being used to justify knowledge claims is ethics, an area of knowledge that relies upon
reason. Ethics relies upon axioms, fundamental premises whether categorical, meaning that
ethicality is determined by the act itself, or consequential, that ethicality is determined from the
action’s consequences. From these axioms knowledge is deduced. In order to claim or to refute
ethical knowledge it must be shown to be logically inconsistent with its axioms or that the
axioms are flawed. Ethical knowledge is obtained through the use of reason, as it does not
manifest itself in physical reality; however, perception may be used in ethics, such as observing
the consequences to determine ethicality in a consequential ethical system, it is not necessitated.
One such example of ethics being independent of perception is one of a personal note. After a
karate tournament a group of friends, myself included, celebrated at a friend’s house. It was there
I learned the truth about my instructor’s skin, which was horribly scarred all over. It was
something I had ridden off as an accident. However, I learned of his debilitating skin disease that
he has had since birth. He shared his experience and the trials he had overcome in life. I learned
about humanity, about how to live and to never let anything inhibit your pursuits, and about
karate itself. Karate, in Japanse, is “karate-do,” “do” being a Japanese word for “Way,” but not
as a method of physical combat, but a discipline, a way of life filled with profound ethical and
ideological concepts. It was a defining moment of my life, and a lesson learned through reason,
emotion, language, and, to an extent, intuitively. It was a metaphysical lesson, one that shaped
the mind, one independent of physical reality. Ethics is an area of knowledge that is
metaphysical, thus independent of physical reality. Perception, while necessary to make
knowledge claims about physical reality and the related areas of knowledge, such as natural and
human sciences, is not a universal requirement of knowledge.
Another problem with the position advocated in the quote is that empirical evidence, by
itself, is only capable of justifying knowledge claims through correspondence. Knowledge is a
justified true belief. Thus in order for something to be known it must meet all three criteria.
Knowledge being belief is largely self-evident, as a knower must be consciously aware of
something in order to actively know it. Justification is the reasoning behind a knowledge claim,
the attempt to establish a claim’s truth. There are three theories of what constitutes truth,
correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic. Correspondence claims that that which corresponds
to reality is true, coherence that truth is that which is consistent with existing knowledge, and
pragmatic which claims that that which is useful is true. Empirical evidence seeks to justify a
knowledge claim by attesting to truth via correspondence. Since empirical evidence is derived
from perception, it is used as justification for knowledge claims about the physical reality it
describes. Empirical evidence is necessary to make adequately supported claims about physical
reality. However, despite its necessity, it is insufficient within itself, as it is only capable of
justification through correspondence. Correspondence, while necessary, is within itself
problematic and insufficient. A major problem with correspondence is that truth cannot be
determined in isolation. With correspondence any claim that matches physical reality can be
considered true. Coherence must also be used, as two contradictory claims cannot be true. With
coherence knowledge can only be claimed when it is consistent and logically sound, a quality
that correspondence does not ensure. Another issue is that not all knowledge can be justified
using correspondence, as some areas of knowledge, such as mathematics, do not rely upon
physical reality. Mathematics relies upon coherence, as it, like ethics, relies upon the use of
axioms, from which theorems, mathematical knowledge claims, are deduced. Math is not a part
of reality, only its representation can be seen in reality. While necessary for justifying truth in
certain areas of knowledge, empirical evidence is, within itself, insufficient in justifying
knowledge claims.
The claim that “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without
evidence” is ultimately incorrect. The claim implies that empirical evidence is the only adequate
means of making a knowledge claim. However, this is deeply flawed. Certain areas of
knowledge are independent and transcend physical reality. Such claims cannot be subject to the
stipulations of knowledge of physical reality. Empirical evidence, when needed, is within itself
insufficient and must be coupled with other means of justification and ways of knowing.
Evidence, while necessary to make claims about physical reality, is, due to its inherent
limitations, not sufficient nor is it universal when seeking to make a sufficiently supported
knowledge claim.
1,472 Words
Sample #2 (IB Score: 29)
The idea that all claims require evidence to support them, and in the absence of this
evidence should be, as David Hume would say, “Committed to the flame” is essentially the idea
that Christopher Hitchens is conveying in this quotation. There are many underlying assumptions
obvious with such a statement that should be explored and evaluated critically. From the
beginning it is clear that this sweeping criterion for knowledge, which is a justified true belief,
can be very problematic, ignoring the value of faith (or perhaps overusing it). From there one
must question the fundamental presuppositions on which such a statement can be made and the
role that imagination and reason should play on the formulation of new knowledge using these
fundamental presuppositions, which is not to say this statement is entirely without value,
however.
One large problem with this quote that is necessary to address is that Hitchens uses the
word “can” when he says it can be dismissed. This means that many claims that are claimed
without evidence, any reputable source that may support a claim, can be dismissed based on the
whims of those involved, which is inconsistent and dangerous. For the sake of the argument, I
shall assume that he intends to be consistent and say “should be dismissed without evidence.”
When answering the question: “to what extend is faith necessary for knowledge,” one
must concede that faith is a fundamentally necessary component of all knowledge. Faith is belief
in something apart from, but not necessarily excluding the value of, evidence. One could posit
that Hitchens must have faith in such a statement because, in the context of what was provided,
no evidence was given. Indeed, even if some evidence were presented perhaps on pragmatic
grounds, the statement itself is a logical contradiction. It is claiming that anything asserted, such
as the statement itself, without any evidence can be dismissed, which means that it is selfdefeating. It is essentially a slightly less extreme view that David Hume espoused, essentially
claiming all truth to be empirical data, excluding the statement from its own criteria. One can see
that Hitchens is actually using quite a bit of faith to hold this contradicting view, but perhaps he
has too much faith with too little evidence to make up for the logical contradiction. A healthy
amount of faith is absolutely necessary, such as the faith one has in his or her own logic, but
using too much with no evidence to support it can lead to extreme views such as this. This makes
it clear that Hitchens in this statement is not expressing a valid view due to the logical
contradiction.
Once one has accepted the necessity of faith, it must be used to form the basis of one’s
knowledge and beliefs through the use of fundamental presuppositions (FP), assumptions that are
inherently impossible to prove. One must ask to what extent can we determine good FPs from
bad, however? One criterion for good FPs is being able to derive a large amount of knowledge
from said axiom, which is a judgment on pragmatic grounds. From this standpoint, accepting the
statement and its FPs allows for perceived crazy beliefs to be dismissed with ease, such as the
claim that angels exist or that there is a teapot circling the planet Saturn at this very moment. The
problem with this is that it may inhibit knowledge that may be true but not yet fully justified. For
example, when Einstein finally proposed his equations for the theory of relativity, there was no
evidentiary basis for their validity. Under this claim that Hitchens makes and its fundamental
presuppositions, Einstein’s equations should have immediately been dismissed. Although it is
true that much evidence has been gathered subsequently for the validity of these equations, this
view certainly would have not encouraged empirical observation for verification. Personally, I
know that my life would be much more difficult following this rule, such as in school. For
example, recently in my statistics class we used two new formulas that represent the mean and
standard deviation of a geometric distribution. The first equation, the one for the mean, we
derived ourselves guided by a worksheet. The second was simply given to us on the grounds that
it was too difficult to simply derive. I thought to myself that if I were to use Hitchens’ criteria,
my time in statistics would be much more arduous because I should either simply dismiss the
second equation because I never saw proof for it or derived it myself or systematically search for
and understand each of the theorems and equations that lead to that generalization. I am
admittedly far too lazy to derive it, making this view pragmatically very cumbersome. From this
view, the fundamental presuppositions leading to Hitchens’ statement, whatever they may be, are
not pragmatically effective in the formation of new knowledge.
Further thoughts about Hitchens’ statement may lead to the question: “To what extent
should imagination and reason alone play in the formation of new knowledge?” The statement
would suggest that these parameters play little role in the formation of new knowledge because
the knowledge is essentially worthless until some evidence can be gathered to support it. I say
otherwise, that imagination coupled with reason provides the necessary canvas on which we can
develop new knowledge that would initially have no evidence. Evidence for this has already
been presented earlier such as in the case of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Einstein used his logic
and imagination to postulate the behavior of matter and energy at incredibly high densities and
velocities. Furthermore, from these equations predictions can be made that may not necessarily
be observable. For example, no one knows for sure exactly what a black hole is like exactly once
you pass over the event horizon, and we cannot in principle ever know because they are simply
unobservable, outside the realm of science. We have no evidence to prove that the laws of
physics even apply to anything inside of a black hole, so Hitchens’ view would exclude black
holes from any meaningful scientific inquiry because one could simply dismiss the proposed
nature of the realm within black holes under the basis that we have no evidence that the laws of
physics apply to them internally. Using logic and imagination alone we can propose what it
might be like inside of a black hole, but Hitchens’ statement would restrict it from being taken
seriously. One could of course claim that there is evidence that the laws of physics apply inside
of a black hole because they apply everywhere else we have ever observed, which would be a
fairly decent argument, but it is making the assumption of the uniformity of the universe,
something we cannot every fully prove. In other areas besides the natural sciences, one can see
that in the area of history, a large amount of imagination is needed to explain certain events.
There is fundamentally a limited amount of information to work with, and there results certain
gaps in information. To fill these gaps, historians use their logic and imagination to fit with what
they already know, perhaps doing a very good job of matching with the events that actually
happened, and perhaps vindicating the propositions with evidence later. These propositions
would need to be discarded.
One deeply fundamental problem with this statement is that it would deny the one of the
most basic and fundamental assumptions we make as human beings that allows us to function
and learn, and forms the basis for all of our science. It could fundamentally deny the existence of
causality. The entire statement is based on empirical thought. For example, if I had two blocks of
ice on a smooth surface and I pushed one block into another, I would observe that the first block
would come in contact with the first block and stop moving, while the second block would begin
to move in the same direction as the first block. However, we never actually observe the first
block “causing” the second block to move. This is the idea that David Hume presented in his
philosophy. He basically rejected of a priori causality. If this is rejected as an empiricist, as
Hume was, one would have an incredibly difficult time justifying anything to be evidence of
some claim because it would be nearly impossible to demonstrate the causal nature of the claim
to the evidence or the evidence to the claim.
It is true, however that this mindset exemplified is crucial to scientific investigation to a
certain extent. Scientists’ claims have to be presented with evidence for any amount of
acceptance by the scientific community. For example, I was completing an experiment with my
friend for a club. We were testing the effects of oscillating electromagnetic field on the growth of
the population of brine shrimp. We initially had no clue as to how it would affect the results, but
after collecting some data we were able to provide an adequately produced hypothesis based on
some. Our claim required some evidence for it to have any weight, scientifically.
The affirmation that all claims require evidence is a truly difficult stance that is in the end
a logical contradiction, requiring even more faith or outright denying it in the process depending
on how one interprets. It also places limits on the role of imagination and reason alone on
developing ideas, but the statement itself is not without some truth.