Do clever people outsmart themselves?

[JoeMorgue]

There's no such thing as "non-scientific evidence."

Either you collect under scientific concepts or it's not evidence, it's a belief.

 

[HansMustermann]

There's no such thing as "non-scientific evidence."

Either you collect under scientific concepts or it's not evidence, it's a belief.

Or even more clearly, in both science and just logic, evidence is only what helps support or disprove the conclusion. As in, you can make a sound argument (logical, probabilistic, just maths, whatever) from it as a premise, to the conclusion. Anything else may be a belief, or may in fact be even provably true, but it's just a red herring either way.

 

[Dave Rogers]

All I can say is there'd better be beer in my fridge when I get home, and if there isn't my son will get a talking-to.

Dave

 

[Myriad]

I beg your pardon, I believe we are speaking of scientific evidence. I don't know what "prima facie" evidence is.

Your claim that knowledge does not end with evidence was not qualified by specifying "scientific" or any other particular kind of evidence. If you wish to revise that claim by adding such qualifiers, then you can disregard the rest and we can get to arguing about what kinds of evidence are or are not "scientific." Otherwise, let's continue.

Anyway:

I have no evidence that the woman in bed with me loves me. I have some clues and a great deal of confidence in her. This is love. This is not evidence. Maybe she put poison in my coffee to marry the milkman. I don't have any evidence that's not true.

Does she not behave as if she loves you (or at least, as if she enjoys being in bed with you)? If not, maybe you shouldn't be in bed with her.

Does she tell you she loves you, and pass up opportunities to tell other random people that she loves them? That would be evidence she loves you.

Do you even have a milkman? (They're pretty rare, in the present day.) If not, that would be evidence that she's not planning to marry that nonexistent person.

Has drinking the coffee she prepared for you ever caused you to become suddenly gravely ill or drop dead? That would be evidence that she did not put poison in it.

I have no evidence that the shiny disc I see through the window is a large incandescent sphere. Scientists say it and I believe them by the principle of authority.

Have you ever observed for yourself the shape of that shiny disc in the sky? If so, and it appeared round, that is evidence that it is a shape that is round from at least one viewpoint, such as a disk, cylinder, cone, or sphere. It's also evidence against an infinite variety of alternative conceivable shapes (triangle, cube, line, etc). If you've observed it multiple times and it always looked round, that is further evidence that it's either a shape that's round from every viewpoint (i.e. a sphere) or that you're always seeing it from the same relative viewpoint. When you observe the disc in the sky, is it always in the same place in the sky, or does it appear to move? If the latter, that's evidence that you're seeing it from different relative viewpoints at different times, which is further evidence that it's a sphere.

Further, that scientists say it is a large incandescent sphere is strong evidence that it is so, as they've had ample means and opportunities to observe it in ways that you cannot easily have done yourself. The evidence that that's the case is available in books about how solar astronomical observation is done; the history of scientific observations and theories of the solar system; the availability of instruments with which you can make congruent (or potentially conflicting) observations for yourself, such as telescopes and filters with which you can observe the shapes of sunspots as they move across the "face" of the disc; and many other forms of evidence.

I have no evidence that my car will run in the morning. I have four ideas that I have read about how the engine is that are not evidence of anything and a series of machine gestures and intuitions that allow me to start it.

Has your car run most mornings? That is evidence (though not proof) that it will run in the morning, whether you understand how it runs or not.

Driving is a series of habits, intuitions and reflexes. If I were to search for evidence of uniformly accelerated movements and trajectories while driving, I would cause a monumental traffic jam at least and I would not get to the office in time.

If you have not caused collisions, or traffic jams such as you describe, that is evidence that your movements while driving are reasonably uniform, because if your movement differed excessively from other's movements (which you can see for yourself with your own eyes are usually reasonably uniform) that would cause collisions or delays, which you acknowledge not causing.

I have no evidence that the President is the one in the photo. Newspapers say so and I believe them. They say he is in Somalia. I have no evidence of that.

Yes you do. The person in the photo looks like the President, and newspapers (presumably ones that you've experienced to be reliable, not crackpot tabloids) reported so. That's evidence.

I've been up for two hours and I don't have much evidence. And I haven't started working.

If you remember performing about two hours' worth of activities this morning (eating breakfast, reading news stories about the President, looking at a clock after getting up and again more recently and noting the change in indicated time, writing the post I quoted, and so forth), that is evidence you have been up for two hours.

You're surrounded and bombarded by evidence of the world all the time. It's not your own imaginings what time it is, or whether the sun's disk is visible today, or that you haven't succumbed to poison in your coffee.

If you really thought you have no evidence of how the car ahead of you is moving in traffic, then you'd have to conclude that you'd be no worse off if you closed your eyes and guessed how hard to press the accelerator or brake. I hope for your own and others' sake that you don't really do that, or think that.

 

[applecorped]

it's never happened here

 

[Thor 2]

I beg your pardon, I believe we are speaking of scientific evidence. I don't know what "prima facie" evidence is.

Prima facie is not unscientific. The term only refers to evidence based on the first impression.

I have no evidence that the shiny disc I see through the window is a large incandescent sphere. Scientists say it and I believe them by the principle of authority.

Myriad answered this quite comprehensively:

Have you ever observed for yourself the shape of that shiny disc in the sky? If so, and it appeared round, that is evidence that it is a shape that is round from at least one viewpoint, such as a disk, cylinder, cone, or sphere. .........

I will add the following however:

I assume the disc you are referring to is the Sun. If it were the Moon, (which is not incandescent), you would see the spheroidal shape clearly shown by the moving crescent as it goes through its phases.

The moon is special only in the sense that we can make this observation with the naked eye. Other celestial bodies that reflect light can be observed, and confirmed, as being spheroid in the same way. A small step from here is to conclude that all celestial bodies are spheroid. This assumption is confirmed by our knowledge of gravity and how this force will pull such bodies into this shape.

Even those of us with rudimentary knowledge of physics can make these observations and come to these conclusions without just accepting what Scientists say and believing them by the principle of authority.

 

[HansMustermann]

Actually, I would add something I've said before, but is nevertheless relevant to such "ah, but how do you know the sun is round?" diversions: does it matter?

There is a great number of things we don't bother proving or disproving, not because of some great faith in figures of authority, but because just that: we don't bother. Because it doesn't matter to any course of action at hand.

E.g., when I wake up in the morning, it doesn't REALLY matter if the sun is a sphere, or a disc, or a lightbulb hanging from the dome of the firmament. I'll go with it being a sphere, because it makes no difference, and it's not worth my time to prove or disprove it. There is no point in wasting time getting philosophical about what is the real nature of the sun, or what does "morning" REALLY mean. The fact is that it's morning, and I'm supposed to go to work. Whether the sun is a star or a lightbulb or just part of a simulation, makes exactly zero difference.

If it DID matter, then I probably would investigate. E.g., if there suddenly were a bright reddish light in the east when all clocks say it's midnight, I probably wouldn't just get dressed and go to work. I might in fact, hypothesize that the best course of action is to duck and cover.


So here's what this all means: just because we don't follow every irrelevant detail for our interests and decisions, doesn't mean it's a valid alternate way to knowledge. It means literally it NOT being a way to knowledge. Because we're just not that interested in taking any road to knowledge there at all.

It simply is to epistemology what staying home is to tourism


Even shorter version: as I was saying before, concentrate on the parts of the model that matter for the problem at hand, ignore the rest. All the "ah, but not everyone checks if the sun is really spherical" twaddle is nothing more than the observation that most people are sane enough to do just that.

 

[theprestige]

Actually, I would add something I've said before, but is nevertheless relevant to such "ah, but how do you know the sun is round?" diversions: does it matter?

There is a great number of things we don't bother proving or disproving, not because of some great faith in figures of authority, but because just that: we don't bother. Because it doesn't matter to any course of action at hand.

E.g., when I wake up in the morning, it doesn't REALLY matter if the sun is a sphere, or a disc, or a lightbulb hanging from the dome of the firmament. I'll go with it being a sphere, because it makes no difference, and it's not worth my time to prove or disprove it. There is no point in wasting time getting philosophical about what is the real nature of the sun, or what does "morning" REALLY mean. The fact is that it's morning, and I'm supposed to go to work. Whether the sun is a star or a lightbulb or just part of a simulation, makes exactly zero difference.

If it DID matter, then I probably would investigate. E.g., if there suddenly were a bright reddish light in the east when all clocks say it's midnight, I probably wouldn't just get dressed and go to work. I might in fact, hypothesize that the best course of action is to duck and cover.


So here's what this all means: just because we don't follow every irrelevant detail for our interests and decisions, doesn't mean it's a valid alternate way to knowledge. It means literally it NOT being a way to knowledge. Because we're just not that interested in it.

It's as much an alternate epistemology, as staying home is an alternate kind of tourism [emoji14]


Even shorter version: as I was saying before, concentrate on the parts of the model that matter, ignore the rest. All the "ah, but not everyone checks if the sun is really spherical" twaddle is nothing more than the observation that most people are sane enough to do just that.

Similarly: For almost everyone, almost all the time, the Earth is flat.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, more like, for almost everyone almost all the time, it doesn't MATTER if it's really flat or a sphere of such great radius that the local curvature is too small to observe.

 

[Thor 2]

Well I suppose this just illustrates the difference between us. I am driven to find explanations for different phenomena I observe. Saying "this doesn't effect me so I won't bother with it" won't work for me.

 

[HansMustermann]

The point was that if it does interest you enough, then you do something about it. The things that you don't bother to check -- and there must be SOME -- those obviously don't interest you that much, do they?

The whole taking some things without evidence, which David seems to think is a good enough source of knowledge too, is in fact what we do when we can't really be bothered to look for reliable knowledge. It's not an alternate way to know stuff. Is all I'm saying.

 

[Cheetah]

Well, technically it does fit under 'life experiences', but just for completeness sake, a large part seems to also be learned from others, e.g., via inculturation.

From the chemical composition of the amniotic fluid the newly conceived fetus is exposed to in the womb, to every experience your senses take in, to every chemical that interacts with your bio chemistry through life, literally everything that happens to you, apart from the information in your genetic code, falls under 'life experiences'.

 

[David Mo]

This is my general answer. If I find the time, I will answer some particulars.

In the context in which we were talking it was understood that we were talking about scientific evidence:
Hans: “If yes, then that's science either way. It can be in a philosophy book, it can be in a standup comedy joke, it can even be in a SF novel or movie. It's science”.

Such a broad concept of science can lead to quite a lot of confusion. That's why I specified that I was referring to scientific evidence (Joe says there is no other). I will specify more: I refer to the one that is obtained through controlled observation (test) and mathematically formalized quantification. It is the one taught in universities and published in scientific journals.

If you don't precise your concepts, how do you distinguish what is mere hint from what is evidence? How do you explain the difference between science and informal observation?
Obviously, none of the knowledge I discussed above was obtained by that method.

But although you insist on confusing science with informal observation and calling simple observation a "test", several of the knowledge I mentioned referred to knowledge not based on observation and informal tests: of authority, by habit, by intuition and analysis. Go over the list and you'll see.

 

[David Mo]

No evidence? Not even her behaviour toward you is evidence that she loves you? If you actually have no evidence at all that she loves you then then why do you think she loves you (assuming for the sake of argument that she does in fact love you)?

The "prove love really exists" or "prove your loved ones really love you" is a very silly argument. Whatever its trying to prove.

Silly or not silly they had asked me for knowledge of something that is not based on evidence. Except in extreme cases one cannot prove that his wife loves him. Love is a case of intuition and trust. If you put your wife to the test, the most normal thing would be she to send you to hell. I don't advise you to try it.

 

[David Mo]

I think you're confusing evidence with proof. The way my wife has behaved towards me for the last thirty-five years falls short of proof that she loves me, but I find it very convincing evidence.

Dave

Proof and evidence are used as synonym words in the scientific literature. I can provide you some examples.
I can use evidence in a softer way than proof or vice versa. Only let us know how we use the words. And how you differentiate them from intuition, hint or analysis.

 

[David Mo]

Or to quote Vince Ebert, the physicist turned comedian I mentioned before, "The Scientific Method is, simply put, just a way to test suppositions. If I supposed for example 'there might be beer in the fridge' and go look in the fridge, I'm already doing science. Big difference from Theology. There they don't usually test suppositions. If I just assume 'There is beer in the fridge' then I'm a theologian. If I go look, I'm a scientist. And if I go look, find nothing inside, and still insist that there's beer in the fridge, that's esoteric."

If you use a comedian as authority, we're finished.

Your problem is to test. If you don't strictly define "to test", everything is science. In science, testing is controlled observation. Without that an Aristotelian theologian can say that he is a scientist because his doctrine is based on observation. In fact, there are some that say so.
If you define it more strictly, ordinary experience can be the antecedent of science. Never science.

 

[David Mo]

There's no such thing as "non-scientific evidence."

Either you collect under scientific concepts or it's not evidence, it's a belief.

Sorry. You can use scientific concepts and doing pseudoscience. Concepts alone don't make science. Science is a method.

 

[David Mo]

Have you ever observed for yourself the shape of that shiny disc in the sky? If so, and it appeared round, that is evidence that it is a shape that is round from at least one viewpoint, such as a disk, cylinder, cone, or sphere. It's also evidence against an infinite variety of alternative conceivable shapes (triangle, cube, line, etc). If you've observed it multiple times and it always looked round, that is further evidence that it's either a shape that's round from every viewpoint (i.e. a sphere) or that you're always seeing it from the same relative viewpoint. When you observe the disc in the sky, is it always in the same place in the sky, or does it appear to move? If the latter, that's evidence that you're seeing it from different relative viewpoints at different times, which is further evidence that it's a sphere.

Further, that scientists say it is a large incandescent sphere is strong evidence that it is so, as they've had ample means and opportunities to observe it in ways that you cannot easily have done yourself.

With the same data from the immediate observation men have considered that the sun was a small rock hanging a short distance from the Earth or a hole in the celestial vault.
That's right. Scientists say otherwise. But I can't directly test what they say. So I give them my trust. I believe in them.

I can do such a reasoning for my wife. The difference is that I love my wife and not the scientists. That's why I trust my wife more.

 

[David Mo]

If you really thought you have no evidence of how the car ahead of you is moving in traffic, then you'd have to conclude that you'd be no worse off if you closed your eyes and guessed how hard to press the accelerator or brake. I hope for your own and others' sake that you don't really do that, or think that.

If evidence is to have a proof that allows to discard the wrong choices I have no proof that the steering-sudden wheel movement I make is the right one to avoid the bike crossing, I have no proof that the newspaper photo is of the President, I have no proof when I analyze something. I have habits, customs, intuitions, confidence and methods of analysis (comparison, synthesis, etc.).

I can have more or less justified confidence (this is not an evidence) in the way I drive, but the specific movement I make two meters away from the bike is not based on a test of any kind. I do it intuitively.

The proof that I am guided by things that are not evidence is that exploiters and demagogues try to rely on it to deceive me. And many times they do. If I had evidence about everything, they wouldn't be able to deceive me. And let it be known that I am deceived less than many others. Or so I think.

The question is: how do you differentiate evidence for mere indication?

To consider as a mental experiment: The Truman Show.

 

[David Mo]

Prima facie is not unscientific. The term only refers to evidence based on the first impression.

(...)

I will add the following however:

I assume the disc you are referring to is the Sun. If it were the Moon, (which is not incandescent), you would see the spheroidal shape clearly shown by the moving crescent as it goes through its phases.

The moon is special only in the sense that we can make this observation with the naked eye. Other celestial bodies that reflect light can be observed, and confirmed, as being spheroid in the same way. A small step from here is to conclude that all celestial bodies are spheroid. This assumption is confirmed by our knowledge of gravity and how this force will pull such bodies into this shape.

Even those of us with rudimentary knowledge of physics can make these observations and come to these conclusions without just accepting what Scientists say and believing them by the principle of authority.

About the lack of evidence in "prima facie" observation see my 318 comment. Thanks.