What is Evidence?

Hey Jon,I think he's sticking on the IFF (if and only if) X then E: therefore Y only occurs when E occurs.Was the IFF intended?Edited by RAZD, : y or e ynot.

Yup.

What I am trying to get at is this: Here is the issue, and here is why I cannot answer your question until you tell me how you define evidence. If we consider the 'rock' itself to be evidence, then we would undoubtedly conclude that there is not a one-to-one correspondence in which each event can lead to only one evidence. However, if we consider each aspect of the 'rock' to be evidence, then it is possible (though, as I said, I am even in doubt that such an understanding can be borne out) that we can consider each event to lead to only one evidence: the weathering evidences wind of XY type; the pulverizing evidences forces of XY type; the seashells evidence an evironment of XY type; and, of course, that wind of XY type means desert, force of XY type means earthquake, and environment of XY type means sea are all pieces of evidence in themselves, as well as the fact that we can infer XY types from the aspects of the 'rock' with which we find ourselves currently presented.In other words, it is seemingly possible to understand evidence in both ways, and the way we define evidence will determine whether the equation I gave was satisfactory. So, to answer your question: If we define evidence as something begotten each of only one act, then the definition that each act begets only one evidence and one evidence is begotten of only one act is true. If we define evidence differently, then it is not necessarily, and likely not, true that each act begets only one evidence and one evidence is begotten of only one act. So, you see now that I was not dodging the question; the way in which you meant evidence was very much important to whether my equation was potentially accurate or not, and thus whether I could offer up potential examples.S'pose one way of showing my equation incorrect is to either show, to borrow an ID term, an irreducibly holistic unit in which more than one conclusion (i.e., more than one act) can be witnessed to occur without the addition of further knowledge. Interestingly, it seems that nothing can point to any act without at least the knowledge of its connection to that act; so choosing this path to refuting my equation is likely in vain. However, the equation can also be refuted by simply showing that evidence is NOT just the one-to-one we get from each act, but can be (and is) a single unit irreducible which as a whole points to various conclusions. In otherwords, show why the 'rock' and its relations are not reducible to smaller units.Might we say, then, that evidence is a thing irreducibly holistic, which in its wholeness as a single indivisible unit can, as a symbol of sorts, stand for or mean just one thing? If we say this, the issue becomes showing how the whole 'rock' is irreducible or demonstrating how the notion of irreducibly holistic is silly/illogical and so cannot stand as part of the understanding for any thing at all.How can we go about this? I am not convinced these notions are right, but I am still unsure they are wrong.JonEdited by Jon, : holey hole whole!

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"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer

Not even the individual characteristics of the rock mean your iff standard. Maybe, just maybe, if you took all the known knowledge about a geological area you could narrow things down to a single geological history, but even then you'd have uncertainty - what happened in the lost horizons? When precisely did the sea dry up? Was there a brief reversal in the drying process? Etc., etc. Now, I suppose, that you could paint your theory in such broad terms that all the possible theories that could have formed your evidence are contained; but even then you can always jump the rails and offer a ridiculous alternative (i.e. "it was martians!").So, again, I'm left asking: can you think of any evidence that means your definition? Any evidence at all?

Are you saying, then, that a particular irreducibly holistic piece of evidence could potentially evidence more than one possible thing? Or, are you saying that being irreducibly holistic is not a criterion for evidence?

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[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

I have no idea what an irreducible holistic bit of evidence would consist of, or why it is relevent to anything. And, yes, I'm saying that every piece of evidence is evidence of more than one thing.Now, will you please provide one single example that you think meets your 'iff X then E' criteria?

Hi Sir Jack, No, because someone could always make some shit up. Even OJ Simpson had blood evidence all over the bloody place and was aquitted. This is an example of how the perponderance of evidence doesnt mean diddly. Some postulate the EDTA in the blood samples from the scene where contaminated by OJ eating a BigMac with Special sauce on his fingers (which contains EDTA). Page not found | truTV.com

LOL. I already pointed to the irreducibly holistic aspects of the 'rock'. Can the existence of pulverized seashells be anything more than evidence for the existence of pulverized seashells? And can the knowledge that pulverized seashells are begotten from full seashells be anything more than evidence for the knowledge that pulverized seashells are begotten from full seashells? We can list each irreducibly holistic aspect of the 'rock' and its associations if we want to, but I think the point is clear: given a certain definition of 'evidence', it is possible to conceive of each evidence as evidencing only one thing, with things such as 'rocks' being merely host forms to multitudes of irreducibly holistic evidences. Given other definitions of 'evidence', this may not be the case. Thus the importance of the particular definition of 'evidence' in use.Now, the question to you is this: is there a reason why we should not break the 'rock' down into separate irreducibly holistic aspects, each of which may evidence only one other thing? Or, is there some way you can conceive of evidencing two separate things from the same irreducibly holistic unit aboard either the mental or physical host form of the 'rock' and its associations?Jon

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[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

So, you're claiming that your rock is an example that meets your criteria? Well, that's clearly wrong. Yes, it could be evidence for the rock making space people, it could be evidence for the existence of a race of ancient fish with seashells instead of scales, it could be the result of a bizarre geological process that produces pseudo-organic remains, it could be the result of a mass extinction of land living shelled organisms in a massive flood. The rock alone cannot tell us. I have no idea what an irreducible holistic evidence would be, or how it's any way useful as a concept. You seem to believe that you can take the rock reduce it to a finite set of individual concepts and treat those as it's fundamental "evidences", I think that's fundamentally at odds with reality. Taking your rock, it's brute structure is powerful evidence for it's origin, but it's microscopic structure provides supporting evidence and evidence for the exact species involved, it's chemical composition provides another evidence. But if we wanted to use the rock as evidence for something else, say the law of gravity, then it's mass is suddenly relevant. And if we want to consider the geological history of the area it's from, well, it's one tiny peice of a vast jigsaw puzzle.So, once again, I come back to this: evidence is only meaningful in the context of what you are trying to present it as evidence for. Being "evidence" is not a property, irreducibly holistic or otherwise, of a thing; it's a property of what we're doing with a thing.

I am digging this thread back up because I would like to ask a question of its kind participants, namely, what, if it is, is the difference between evidences and premises? What qualities, if any, do they share? What qualities, if any, distinguish them?I think if we can come to some sort of an agreement on this issue, it should be possible for me to turn back to the main question with a better sense of direction.Jon(btw: did the post form's font change from monospaced to plain sans-serif?)

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[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

Jon,premises are the inputs to some reasoning process - what are you taking as a start point.Evidences are information that can be used to justify or repudiate a hypothesis.

A premise is a statement used as the basis for logical reasoning. E.g:Premise 1: If I am an astronaut, then I have red hair.
Premise 2: I am an astronaut.Reasoning: modus ponens.Conclusion: I have red hair.Note that the premises need not be true. However, if they are true, then anything deduced from them by valid logical reasoning will also be true. (E.g. if premise 1 and premise 2 above were both true, then the conclusion could not possibly be false).To establish whether a premise about the real world is true, we need to look at the evidence for or against the premise.

True.Too many people follow their impeccable logic directly to the wrong answers.

"Logic is an organized way of going wrong, with confidence."

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Kettering's Law

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Yes, I understand the textbook definition of "premise"; I was looking for something a little bit more in-depth than a cut-n'-paste from page vi of the Philosophy 101 coursebook.Maybe that was out of line; what I mean to say is that the main thing I am concerned with is in describing how it is a premise goes about doing its job of supporting/refuting a given conclusion. How do we figure out if an evidence supports our premise? In other words, how is it that evidence goes about doing its job of supporting/refuting a given premise?So, to rephrase my question so as to avoid more silly replies: How do premises go about supporting/refuting whatever it is they support/refute? How do evidences go about supporting/refuting whatever it is they support/refute? How are the ways they do these things similar? How do the ways they do these things differ?Looking forward to some good answers Jon

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[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

Then perhaps you should have asked a completely different question --- one to which the answer is not "a cut-n'-paste from page vi of the Philosophy 101 coursebook".You cannot expect us to read minds. Just to be clear, if I give you the standard answer that you can find in any philosophy textbook, are you going to complain and sneer and not say "thank you"? By "silly", do you mean "absolutely accurate, but irrelevant to the question that I didn't actually ask"?