Facts vs evidence

[TagliatelliMonster]

They exist by the definition of unexplained physical or circumstantial phenomena that results in an extraordinarily positive outcome. It's completely irrational to deny this just to support a bias against the idea that "unnatural" phenomena can exist.

Nobody is denying your definition. Your claim, your definition.
I also don't deny the definition of santa claus or leprechauns.


What I deny is that what is being defined also actually exists in reality.

The problem with those things is that they are just being "defined" into existence.
They are completely indistinguishable from non-existent, imagined things.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

It is estimated that approximately 5% of people incarcerated in US prisons are actually innocent.

Very many of the 95% are going to have evidence besides "eye witnesses".
So for this comparison, you are going to have to split those numbers between
- among the cases based on only "eye witness" , how many of those end up in jail while innocent?
- among the cases that had objective evidence , how many of those end up in jail while innocent?

I don't know those numbers, but i'll bet whatever you want that it will proportionally be higher in cases with only testimony.
Just look at the innocence project. Take a look at the solved cases. The extreme vast majority of them = all put in jail based on mere testimony and "eye witness".

People lie. People misremember. People make mistakes. People think they have seen something but are instead making false connections / conclusions.
Testimony can be unreliable for all kinds of reasons.

If only they had those scientific results during trial. The problem here is that either science hadn't advanced enough yet or evidence wasn't gathered for the trial. The problem is not that trials go on and on and on and on while someone takes years to conduct a science experiment.

No. The problem here is that witness / testimony is unreliable.
And yes, in court they have to take a decision when there is no evidence and just testimony to decide on guilt
And when you have to do that, you will often be mistaken when accepting the claim.

95% accuracy in courts appears to be a practical degree of certainty to the alternative of saying we don't know anything (yet).

As said, that number is for all cases. What you need for this conversation is a comparison between cases based on only witness testimony and cases that include objective evidence.

 

[PureX]

Nobody is denying your definition. Your claim, your definition.
I also don't deny the definition of santa claus or leprechauns.


What I deny is that what is being defined also actually exists in reality.

Well, that's just silly, as you couldn't possibly know the parameters of the natural realm. Even the "laws of physics" can't be shown to define those parameters.

The problem with those things is that they are just being "defined" into existence.
They are completely indistinguishable from non-existent, imagined things.

Everything is "defined" into existence, including "existence" itself. Everything that exists, exists as a defined human experience. Whatever may or may not exist apart from that, we have no way of knowing. That you're not grasping this exemplifies the failure of philosophical materialism.

 

[Brian2]

It seems to me that when a scientist or a scientifically minded person asks "what is the evidence that supports your claim?", what they are really asking is "what facts support your claim?"

I think it may help resolve our debates on whether such things as alleged witness testimonies of the Bible constitute "evidence", because whilst a testimony could be factual or fabricated it may be considered "evidence" from a purely legal perspective, the legal perspective considers there to be "false evidence".

From wikipedia;
'False evidence, fabricated evidence, forged evidence, fake evidence or tainted evidence is information created or obtained illegally in order to sway the verdict in a court case.'

Source: False evidence - Wikipedia.

By comparison i would argue there is no such thing as a false fact, only things believed justifiably or unjustifiably to be fact.

So I think it would help to separate witness testimony which could be considered admissible in a court as evidence whether false or true from fact and instead ask the question, "what facts support your claim" in the place of "what evidence supports your claim" so as not to invite the potentially false evidence of testimony being presented as valid where I think it can be argued that it is not such as with regard to supernatural or miracle claims.

Your thoughts?

There are plenty of things that come out of science that are opinions and not facts.
There are plenty of things that come out of history that are opinions and not facts.

 

[PureX]

Claims are "conclusions", I would say.
A certain series of events or a set of data is going to make you believe a certain thing.

Those events / data = "if this and this, then that".
And "that" here, is your claim.




Redifining what the argument of ignorance is just so you can say all arguments are arguments from ignorance, doesn't magically make the argument at hand a reasonable argument on equal footing with arguments that don't employ the argument of ignorance as currently(/correctly) understood.

When you're itching for an argument, everything becomes a challenge.

 

[Augustus]

Sometimes, it's just not possible to provide empirical evidence for claims.

But when that is the case, we don't just simply believe whatever the "testimony" says.
Instead, we give it a degree of reasonableness and believeability.

We try and correlate independent, preferably contemporary, "testimonies" with eachother and cross reference.
For example, if two opposing factions of a battle have independent records of said battle, and they both agree with eachother... then it's quite reasonable to conclude that a battle took place and that that's likely how the battle happened. If they both have totally different accounts of said battle and there's no empirical evidence of it and say even the timeframes don't match, then how are you going to decide which one is right? Was there even a battle to begin with?

And if you then have even only a as-good-as a single source mentioning it, what then?
Then you look at the kind of claims it makes. If the claims are compatible with what we already know, then that is "advantage believability". If not, then the claim is rejected (and how dismissive we are is usually in proportion to the extra-ordinarity of the claims).

For example, that's how we have less problems believing Socrates was real, as opposed to Atlantis even though we (basically) only have Plato talking about either.

I agree, the careful and critical evaluation of evidence is important, especially where we have incomplete or ambiguous information.

For example we can judge that death tolls for historical wars are likely significantly overstated.

For things we can judge, army numbers seem to be far higher than was plausible given logistical requirements, battlefield dimensions, etc so we know the tendency was to overstate large numbers.

In addition, it was generally in the interests of both parties in a war to overstate death tolls for propaganda reasons. Also that population decline in a region was often caused by migration.

So, while we often can't know the true number with any real degree of accuracy, we can be pretty confident that death tolls of pre-modern wars are significantly lower than the numbers that were chronicled at the time.

We don't simply say "Ye Olde Historian says X therefore it must be true."

 

[exchemist]

There are plenty of things that come out of science that are opinions and not facts.
There are plenty of things that come out of history that are opinions and not facts.

This is yet another false dichotomy. Religious believers do themselves no favours by indulging in such superficial rhetorical ploys. There is a huge difference between an opinion, which is typically an individual's view of any given matter, significant or trivial, informed or otherwise and a theory, which generally expresses a collective, explanatory, informed account of something that ties together several pieces of evidence.

The contrasts to be drawn are between fact, evidence and theory. Opinion is not relevant when we are discussing the status of serious ideas.

 

[Audie]

Nobody is denying your definition. Your claim, your definition.
I also don't deny the definition of santa claus or leprechauns.


What I deny is that what is being defined also actually exists in reality.

The problem with those things is that they are just being "defined" into existence.
They are completely indistinguishable from non-existent, imagined things.

You find that a problem inherent to
"Philosophy"?

 

[osgart]

Within the scope of scientific discussions that is a valid consideration. I don't know that everything is explainable with objective facts.

But within the scope of these discussions, I don't think it is out of order to demand support of claims using evidence and reasoning that others can examine and weigh for themselves.

Evidence can't tell you if naturalism is false or true. It can't tell you if religion has any true or false considerations either. So then all that is left is philosophical reasoning that interprets evidence or dismisses it.

Naturalism is saying go no further than what senses and logic can tell you about reality. I could know everything about consciousness phenomena scientifically, and still never experience qualia from consciousness scientifically. How do you begin to measure qualia experiences in any physical sense?

Knowledge argument - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Brian2]

This is yet another false dichotomy. Religious believers do themselves no favours by indulging in such superficial rhetorical ploys. There is a huge difference between an opinion, which is typically an individual's view of any given matter, significant or trivial, informed or otherwise and a theory, which generally expresses a collective, explanatory, informed account of something that ties together several pieces of evidence.

The contrasts to be drawn are between fact, evidence and theory. Opinion is not relevant when we are discussing the status of serious ideas.

I'm not sure what else to call them. Historians have opinions about evidence and there are a variety of opinions about the same evidence. Then after reviews and discussion and arguments etc we are told that the consensus is something. This consensus of course just means that most of the historians are said to hold a certain view. I don't know how this consensus is reached or if it is just something that those who agree with that idea say to try to win a debate on RF. Do some big wig historians come out and declare a consensus? Is the idea of consensus a vibe that goes around amongst historians? Is a vote taken of historians?
So what should I call it?
It is the same with the conclusions reached in some parts of science, which may be still debated but which people call a consensus view.
So what I wrote is more than a superficial rhetorical ploy imo.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Everything is "defined" into existence

And the question always is: how does what is being defined hold up against observable reality?

But when you come right and say that it even can't be held up against reality, then what is it that you are talking about?

Everything that exists, exists as a defined human experience. Whatever may or may not exist apart from that, we have no way of knowing. That you're not grasping this exemplifies the failure of philosophical materialism.

Call it whatever you wish.
The fact of the matter is that if you want accurate answers to questions, your best shot is to look for answers that have empirical underpinnings.
Otherwise your answers are indistinguishable from fantasy.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

When you're itching for an argument, everything becomes a challenge.

You're just continuing to dance around the actual issue.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You find that a problem inherent to
"Philosophy"?

I think "philosophy" is useless in this converstation.

Don't know anymore where I heared this, but I like the quote:

Philosophy is good at asking questions. Science is good at answering them.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Evidence can't tell you if naturalism is false or true. It can't tell you if religion has any true or false considerations either. So then all that is left is philosophical reasoning that interprets evidence or dismisses it.

Naturalism is saying go no further than what senses and logic can tell you about reality. I could know everything about consciousness phenomena scientifically, and still never experience qualia from consciousness scientifically. How do you begin to measure qualia experiences in any physical sense?

Knowledge argument - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

What does it matter?

The (sub)topic here is miracles. This refers to external events. Events that occur in objective reality, caused by supposed entities other then ourselves.
So our "personal experience" here seems irrelevant when the question is if those "miraculous" events actually took place and how.

 

[exchemist]

I'm not sure what else to call them. Historians have opinions about evidence and there are a variety of opinions about the same evidence. Then after reviews and discussion and arguments etc we are told that the consensus is something. This consensus of course just means that most of the historians are said to hold a certain view. I don't know how this consensus is reached or if it is just something that those who agree with that idea say to try to win a debate on RF. Do some big wig historians come out and declare a consensus? Is the idea of consensus a vibe that goes around amongst historians? Is a vote taken of historians?
So what should I call it?
It is the same with the conclusions reached in some parts of science, which may be still debated but which people call a consensus view.
So what I wrote is more than a superficial rhetorical ploy imo.

No it doesn't "just" mean a certain proportion hold a certain view.

It means a considered judgement has been reached, based on reviewing the available evidence and arguing through the pros and cons. I've told you what to call this. It is not just an "opinion".

Bear in mind also that history is different from natural science in that it can be a great deal harder to find corroborating evidence. Furthermore much of the evidence is often documentary and thus subjective, written from a particular viewpoint, rather than being reproducible (i.e. by other workers, in other settings, often using different methods).

So you are trying to push two misleading notions here:
- that theories are no more than "opinions": a collection of personal views, reached on some unknown basis that may be purely arbitrary. That is wrong.
- that history and science deal in the same kinds of evidence. They don't.

 

[Audie]

No it doesn't "just" mean a certain proportion hold a certain view.

It means a considered judgement has been reached, based on reviewing the available evidence and arguing through the pros and cons. I've told you what to call this. It is not just an "opinion".

Bear in mind also that history is different from natural science in that it can be a great deal harder to find corroborating evidence. Furthermore much of the evidence is often documentary and thus subjective, written from a particular viewpoint, rather than being reproducible (i.e. by other workers, in other settings, often using different methods).

So you are trying to push two misleading notions here:
- that theories are no more than "opinions": a collection of personal views, reached on some unknown basis that may be purely arbitrary. That is wrong.
- that history and science deal in the same kinds of evidence. They don't.

The misled being the author
of said faulty and useless excuse
for reasoing.

 

[PureX]

And the question always is: how does what is being defined hold up against observable reality?

But when you come right and say that it even can't be held up against reality, then what is it that you are talking about?

"Reality" is experience observed. Objectivity is an unobtainable myth. Because you have bought into philosophical materialism you are not able to understand this most elemental fact of human cognizance.

Call it whatever you wish.
The fact of the matter is that if you want accurate answers to questions, your best shot is to look for answers that have empirical underpinnings.
Otherwise your answers are indistinguishable from fantasy.

Ultimately, all our answers are indistinguishable from fantasy. This fact is the big "boogey-man" that philosophical materialism is so desperately trying not to acknowledge.

 

[Valjean]

How could we possibly even know that something was "naturally impossible"? We have no idea what the limitations of nature are. All we can know of is our own limited experience of nature.

Yes, the term "miracle" refers to how we are perceiving an experience of something unexplainable and fortuitous, to us.

I'd call "naturally impossible" that which violates the accepted laws and constants of nature. I'm not saying an 'impossible' miracle might not occur, but if one did it would indicate that our understanding of natural law was wrong, and that the event wasn't a miracle/impossible after all.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So I think it would help to separate witness testimony which could be considered admissible in a court as evidence whether false or true from fact and instead ask the question, "what facts support your claim" in the place of "what evidence supports your claim" so as not to invite the potentially false evidence of testimony being presented as valid where I think it can be argued that it is not such as with regard to supernatural or miracle claims.

Testimony is evidence, but not good evidence that the testimony is accurate - just that somebody said it and maybe believes it.

Here are some working definitions that I find useful: Truth is the quality that facts have in common, facts being sentences that accurately map some aspect of reality and experience (correspondence theory of truth), and knowledge is the collection of facts. The fact regarding testimony is that the claim was made, and very little else. As interobserver consensus grows, the likelihood of the claim being factual increases with it.

Also, evidence is whatever is evident to the senses. When a sensation appears in consciousness, the mind fleshes it in with associated memories and logical connections to inform us of what we are experiencing and the ramifications of that (cognitive meaning of the evidence), followed by how we feel about it (affective meaning). Thus evidence and evidence of are a little different, which is why I'm careful not to say, "You don't have evidence" when what I mean is that the offered evidence doesn't justify the conclusions it is said to lead to.

I guess because I'm trying to come up with a coherent approach to assessing evidence, and if testimony are evidence and miracle claims are testimony then I believe miracle claims are some sort of evidence - even if they are only fabricated evidence or evidence that is the product of delusion.

Yes, testimony is evidence, but evidence of what?

A fact is something that is known to be true. How is something known to be true? Through consensus? Through repeated observation, perhaps? But then it was known to be true for millenia, that the sun rose every morning in the east, and set every evening in the west.

The facts were and remain that the sun appears on the eastern horizon every morning as night becomes day, and the opposite happens in the west. The initial working hypothesis accounted for these observations, and there was no reason to modify it until a paradigm shift was required to account for new information. Likewise with a flat earth with edges. That idea worked fine for hunter-gatherers, but not so well for sailors. We can call an idea correct if it accurately predicts outcomes, even if it needs to be updated later. We still rely on Newtonian mechanics for mundane purposes because it works, turning to Einstein's update for special cases, where Newton can no longer be called correct for its failure to accurately predict outcomes. It's a pragmatic approach to the idea of truth that avoids the counterproductive distractions that a quest for absolute or objective truth beyond subjective experience of it entail.

Placing too much emphasis on science to resolve every question leads to the problem that science doesn't actually resolve every question.

One can't make a mistake by placing too much emphasis on science. Suppose one believed that science would eventually answer every question. He may be incorrect, but what's the harm? One can, however, put too much emphasis on faith, which answers no questions. Your complaint is generally part of a plea to accept the idea of a religious magisterium, that religion can make valuable contributions to man's fund of knowledge, which is voiced as too much reliance on science rather than what is actually is - a complaint that there is not enough respect given faith as a source of knowledge by critical thinkers.

Many faithful feel strongly that revelation of God is evidence for God. Revelation is prophetic, and subjective.

Yes, but they're faith-based thinkers, meaning that their opinions aren't meaningful to empiricists. I know exactly what people are experiencing when they say that they experience God. It's the same thing they experience when they experience beauty or value or humor. As I mentioned above, when we have an apprehension (raw, unprocessed evidence) such as a spiritual experience, we then assign it meaning. Calling it experiencing a god is guessing. I have first-hand experience with that, having guessed that way once myself, when I was a Christian. Fortunately, evidence surfaces that I was not experiencing the Holy Spirit, but rather, my own mind in the hands of a charismatic preacher, the one that led me to the altar in my late teens while in the Army, which only became apparent when I moved away following discharge and began experiencing other congregations and less gifted preachers.

There's no way to proceed with debate strictly using objective facts. Imo. I think debate is more fruitful if one introduces a claim and the opponent makes a counter claim. That way both have to defend their claims.

It's the only way to do it correctly. One must begin with common evidence or shared premises previously established using evidence properly understood and use fallacy-free reasoning to arrive at sound conclusions or it's not debate, just discussion with dissent.

Regarding your second sentence, yes, that is debate. Somebody makes a claim whether evidenced or not, and somebody who disagrees explains why it can't be correct in his opinion. Think of two attorneys debating in front of a jury. The prosecutor makes a case for guilt, say of murder. Suppose it is plausible - believable to jury beyond reasonable doubt if it can't be contradicted. The defense must provide a rebuttal - a counterargument that if correct, makes the prosecutor incorrect. If he can't or doesn't, he loses the case. Verdict: guilty. If a plausible alibi is presented, then THAT needs to be falsified, or else the verdict will be not guilty. And back and forth until one attorney makes a plausible case for guilt or doubt that the other cannot successfully rebut. But what I described is all about facts.

 

[PureX]

I'd call "naturally impossible" that which violates the accepted laws and constants of nature. I'm not saying an 'impossible' miracle might not occur, but if one did it would indicate that our understanding of natural law was wrong, and that the event wasn't a miracle/impossible after all.

If we needed a word for that situation we would have invented one. But we invented this word to refer to unexlained fortuitous events, instead, and it seems to have worked for us ever since.