Method
Claim (philosophy)
Overview
A claim is a substantive statement about a thing, such as an idea, event, individual, or belief. Its truth or falsity is open to debate. Arguments or beliefs may be offered in support, and criticisms and challenges of affirming contentions may be offered in rebuttal.
Philosophical claims are often categorized as either conceptual or empirical. Conceptual claims rely on existing concepts, such as colors or objects, and cannot be answered with direct facts; empirical claims are backed by scientific analysis and can be answered given direct facts. The conceptual claim, "That action is wrong", is debatable and requires extensive arguments to support. Empirical claims like "There will be snow in Washington tomorrow" can be proven given statistics and empirical data.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
I know well how hard it is for those who are accustomed to what I have called the superstitious view, to realize that every _de facto_ claim creates in so far forth an obligation. We inveterately think that something which we call the 'validity' of the claim is what gives to it its obligatory character, and that this validity is something outside of the claim's mere existence as a matter of fact. It rains down upon…
William James, The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
Names Claim several times; states what Claim is.
We cannot believe in this by hearing only, for this faculty is not the thing by which such things can be proved. At the same time we cannot claim this premise to be true by experience and habit, except that the miracles performed by the prophets can be seen by one who believes in their mission, and has never seen them to have been performed by anybody else, so that they may be taken as a convincing sign for…
Averroës, The Philosophy and Theology of Averroes
Names Claim several times; states what Claim is.
Either then the case is really as we have supposed it and then the claim is not equal, or it is not so but supposed to be; and still in so acting people are not to be thought to act wrongly. In short, as has been oftentimes stated before, all statements regarding feelings and actions can be definite only in proportion as their object-matter is so; it is of course quite obvious that all people have not the…
Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle
Names Claim several times; states what Claim is.
Related ideas
- Anaximander
- Argumentation theory
- Stephen Toulmin
- Empirical evidence
- Universal (metaphysics)
- Peter Abelard
- Concept
- Proposition
Place in the tradition
Part of Metaepistemology.