What is Evidence?

What is evidence? Is evidence a thing? Is it a procedure? What makes evidence good? What makes it bad? What makes it vague? Is all reasoning deductive? If so, what is Empiricism? Is It Science? please Jon

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

I want to know what evidence is. I used to think I knew, but I do not. Is it stuff? A process? A human construct? An amalgamation of the forces of Logic, Reason, and Reality? How will I know it when I see it? Will I see it? Can it exist in a vacuum?I could go on asking and asking whether it's [insert conceivable description here] or [insert some other conceivable description here], but I think it would be better if I just fessed up and said this is an open-ended question by intent. I have no answers for it, but would like to see if the fine folk here do. Often said is it 'support your assertion with evidence', but does that even mean anything? Who decides what is supporting evidence and what is not? How do they decide it? Is it. Oops; there I go with the questions.Does this clarify?Jon

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

Okay, that is a fine definition, perhaps, but let us insert the others where applicable to get a better feel for it: Oops... looks like your description creates a nesting error that can never end. Not sure how you could refer to that logical pong game as 'objective'. Try again, Joe.Jon

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

So here is something: JonEdited by Jon, : First person, duh.

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

Is this to say that empirical reasoning is illogical? Invalid?In being the thing external to logical reasoning, how can we say evidence connects to logic? What allows us to make a statement about 'the evidence'?Jon

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

Then you will need to define evidence, which is what the OP was trying to get at. Most folk would disagree, insisting that evidence is something which leads to only certain conclusions. For example, to such folk, 'leaves are green' would not be a possible conclusion from the evidence 'paper'. Afterall, the paper could just as easily evidence that 'the sky is green and sun purple' if we are allowing it to evidence any and all things, including those with which it has no (or a limited) relationship.I once proposed the following explanation for evidence:Iff X then EX=thing that creates evidence
E=evidence resulting from XIs this inadequate? Incorrect? I am no longer sure if it is a proper explanation anymoreit fails to capture the notion of things that do not emit evidence, for example. One possible way to ask this question: does evidence have to be something sensible (capable of being sensed)? (Note: knowledge is sensible in that we can be aware of its existence.)Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

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

It is too vague a definition with too many subjective constituents. What is reliability? What is truth? What is falseness? At what degree do we declare distinction?If evidence is only something that "allows us to [XYZ]", does that mean that for something to be evidence a human must sense it? And if this is the case, then is evidence merely a human construct? If so, in what way is evidence connected with the Reality? Or, is it not?JonEdited by Jon, : No reason given.

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

So, can one thing by itself constitute evidence? I would almost think it could be evidence, if of nothing else, of its own existence. Or is it that we must also contain additional evidence to conclude such, for example, the knowledge that things we sense exist? Exactly.JonEdited by Jon, : dern punchuation

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

When you use evidence in this sense, it sounds like you are equating it to material things. Is this reading of your understanding true?Jon

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

Depends on how we define evidence. Are you equating evidence to material things? Is one material/physical thing equal to one unit of evidence?

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

Is evidence indivisible, a non-count mass, or simply an holistic entity individually composed?Jon

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

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

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

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