Questions tagged [evidence]
The evidence tag has no usage guidance.
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Are there alternative methods, beyond Bayesian or probabilistic approaches, for modeling the relationship between evidence and hypothesis credibility?
The accepted answer to How can the strength of evidence (both positive and negative) for a proposition P be assessed and aggregated objectively? advocates for a Bayesian probabilistic framework. This ...
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How can the strength of evidence (both positive and negative) for a proposition P be assessed and aggregated objectively?
Questions such as Is there more evidence for God than for Russell’s teapot? and Is evidence for the "big bang" superior to evidence for "god"? are challenging to answer objectively ...
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Is there more evidence for God than for Russell’s teapot? [closed]
Is there any more evidence for God than Russell’s teapot? As a reminder, Russell’s teapot is related to the notion of a teapot orbiting around the earth [the sun].
If there is more evidence, then I ...
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If someone clearly believes that he has witnessed something extraordinary very clearly, why is it more reasonable to believe that they hallucinated?
I'd first like to make the following point: there is definitely a point at which evidence does make it reasonable to believe extraordinary claims. For example, if all of Europe claims to have seen the ...
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How is evidence “measured”? [duplicate]
I am going to use my own life experience as an example. I had a dream where I was in a hallway and fire was surrounding me. Eventually, the fire kept creeping in and I woke up.
About 30 seconds after ...
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Is it a "shifting of the burden of proof" if I show evidence in favor of a position, and ask the audience to debate that evidence if they disagree?
As far as I know, the "fallacy of shifting the burden of proof" is to refuse to show any evidence for my position, demanding the opponent to show evidence against my position, and claiming ...
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Are there non-scientific ways to have a justified belief in levitation?
Levitation, as a paranormal phenomenon, has been reported more than once. For instance, it is not totally uncommon to hear about reports of levitation among exorcists (e.g., see these sources).
Is it ...
user66156
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Why take Panpsychism seriously?
This question is about Panpsychism, but it is also a question I have more generally about the requirement for proof in philosophy.
Panpsychism is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous ...
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Who Bears the Burden of Proof Regarding Free Will: Advocates or Skeptics
Debates on free will often raise the question of evidence: who will have the best evidence? However, before discussing evidence, I would like to know who bears this responsibility in philosophical and ...
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What's the difference between objectivity and intersubjective agreement?
Suppose a multitude of people all recount similar experiences. They describe seeing a cup on a table or observing the Moon in the sky. Each person reports their own subjective experience of perceiving ...
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What kind of evidence would make theism/supernaturalism more theoretically virtuous than naturalism?
Graham Oppy is well-known for arguing that naturalism strikes the best balance between minimizing all of one's theoretical commitments and maximizing the explanation that one's theoretical commitments ...
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If a given type of event has never been believed when it didn’t really happen, does belief in such an event necessarily indicate that it happened?
Suppose someone claimed that since a given type of event has never been believed when it didn’t really happen, if it is believed then we have very strong evidence that the event really happened.
Is ...
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Whose perspective on evidence is correct: Hitchens's razor or Carl Sagan's? [closed]
Hitchens's razor states, "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence," while Carl Sagan argues, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." ...
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Are we only justified in holding beliefs that are supported by evidence susceptible to peer review, leading to substantial intersubjective consensus?
In other words, what about beliefs rooted in personal experiences that cannot be scrutinized or validated through a rigorous peer-review process? This often occurs in religious, mystical, or spiritual ...
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Are epistemic probability and empirical probability comparable?
Let me illustrate this question with an example. Imagine you were to compare your credence or your belief of you winning the lottery twice with your belief in the devil’s existence.
Some argue that me ...
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Is the conceptual possibility of amorphous infinite sets "evidence against" countabilism?
Countabilism is, roughly, a family of standpoints inclusive of:
There is one infinite proper set, of size ℵ0, and one infinite proper class, ℵ0ℵ0. (See about e.g. "pocket-sized" and ...
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Should the evidence of OBEs and NDEs increase our epistemic probability of non-physicalist views of consciousness?
Should reports of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and near-death experiences (NDEs) increase our epistemic probability of non-physicalist views of consciousness? In other words, should we judge non-...
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When do I have sufficient evidence to believe that an observed event is an occurrence of a very rare event with similar characteristics?
Suppose I am aware of a particular type of event which only occurs every 10,000 years. Call this type of event ‘A’.
Suppose that I now observe an event which has many characteristics that event ‘A’ ...
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Is psychology relevant to whether the fulfilment of an unlikely prediction is evidence that the predicter had some sort of foreknowledge?
When someone makes a prediction that is very unlikely to come true, then if the prediction is fulfilled then we generally have strong reason to think that he had some prior knowledge or information ...
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Can God's existence be established through reason and publicly accessible evidence?
Is it possible for an ordinary individual possessing sound cognitive faculties and access to publicly available evidence to establish the existence of a God? Is there a prevailing consensus in ...
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Is Romans 1:19-20 philosophically sound?
Romans 1:18-25 ESV
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about ...
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What constitutes evidence in philosophy?
I have noticed an apparent confusion when posing and answering questions as to what constitutes evidence in philosophy. Especially in scientifically-related areas, I often cite scientific evidence ...
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Are we too quick to assume that the most recent evidence is inevitably the strongest?
In what contexts is this true and in what contexts can this be considered true and vice versa? Personally, I think it has a lot to do with confirmation bias, especially in natural sciences where for ...
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Is there Zaltaesque abstract evidence for Zaltaesque abstract objects?
Suppose that there are evidentiary objects, objects that are evidence for things. For a horrible example, suppose that an unusually placed corpse might be evidence of foul play. Generally, per the SEP ...
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What philosophers have touched upon the inability to qualify data as being representative of evidence in support of a scientific theory?
As a scientist and philosopher, I've increasingly noticed a failure in my learnings related to how data may be qualified as evidence in support of a theory. It appears that in any effort to qualify ...
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If something keeps happening, is it always better evidence?
Suppose that you get a prank call, not once but 100 times. Is their frequency good reason to think that the evidence they have been faked (it's someone else) is less convincing and/or the evidence ...
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Is absence of evidence evidence of absence in the case of god or not? [duplicate]
I know that this is a common question but the question is usually posed in a generic context. I’m interested in whether this principle applies specifically to god. I’ve seen philosophers talk about ...
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Why is Time Cube wrong?
Time Cube was a pseudoscientific theory from a crank. It is generally believed by the scientific community that there is no meaningful theory which can be isolated from the Time Cube corpus.
In debate,...
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How does one “measure” the plausibility of theories with no direct evidence?
Let’s take the event of a leaf falling down from a branch. Currently, we have a fully naturalistic explanation for how this happens.
Theoretically though, one can come up with an infinite number of ...
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Is having no good reason to believe something the same as having no evidence?
What exactly does it mean to not have evidence of something? Is it functionally and exactly equivalent to having no reason to believe in something?
Let us take the example of God. Let us now imagine ...
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What criteria determines if a proposition is mathematical or empirical?
It seems that there is a distinction between mathematical vs empirical statements.
For example, consider the proposition “All even numbers greater than two are a sum of two prime numbers.” This ...
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How does one know if X is evidence of Y?
How does one know if X is evidence of Y? If one cannot think of a reason as to why X implies Y, is this the same as saying that X is evidence of Y?
For example, clearly, if I see a plane, that isn’t ...
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Help working out the believability of some evidence
Suppose I have some evidence of where I was while a crime was being committed, a recording of me visiting a bank and asking for the time of a transaction (which was completed at that time elsewhere). ...
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How does one differentiate between different theories that each seem to have no evidence?
Before the DNA molecule was observed or had any predictive or explanatory power, anyone could have said that there is no evidence for it if it was simply proposed. However, the notion of a molecule ...
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Is there a moral dilemma in democide studies?
Accusing a regime or other political organization of mass killing can be a fairly effective way of riling people up. But a lot of the relevant statistics seem lacking in direct support; we don't often ...
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Is there such a thing as weak evidence?
I recently came upon a video by a YouTuber named Alex O’ Connor who talks about how you can have evidence that increases your credence in a claim but not enough to “push it” over 50%. For anyone who’s ...
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Shouldn’t every claim require the same amount of evidence? [closed]
There is a common adage that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A common example is of someone telling you that they watered their plants which you would reasonably believe since it’...
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Is the idea of weak and strong evidence incoherent?
Hypotheses are either true or not. Justin is either a murderer or not. There is either a God or not.
If statements are either true or false, how can it be the case that certain forms of evidence ...
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Why can't we have a tighter definition of what makes something necessary?
Why can’t we define 'necessary' tighter, by making it include empirical evidence of such a statement?
Everything that is agreed to be necessarily can be empirically verified. For example, if we put ...
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Do judges violate due process in their efforts to make a logical connection between would-be evidence and facts in question?
Note: I had this post with a question that follows, but then I reformed the question again. I've used ChatGPT to help me research this issue, and I think it has been somewhat helpful.
For anyone ...
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Does the idea of "some" or "better" evidence for something make sense? [closed]
What does it mean to say that there's more evidence for A than there is for B? Or for there to be some evidence for A but not enough? Shouldn't evidence either be enough or not? Any standard you use ...
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Is there a principle in philosophy that tells you not to look at evidence in isolation?
Suppose one is testing whether or not a person is a psychic who says that God has given him special powers. He guesses a number between 1 to 10 that you’re thinking of where you try to think of a ...
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
If I experience a coincidence or a coincidence happens in the world that seems to be at extremely low odds, does this imply that God exists? If it doesn’t imply that God exists, can it at least make ...
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Artificial intelligence ChatGPT said that solipsism is true. Any evidence of solipsism?
A user on Reddit was told by the artificial intelligence ChatGPT that solipsism is true. Why did he say that?
Is there any evidence of solipsism that ChatGPT knows about?
Should ChatGPT be trusted or ...
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How does one solve this paradox of independent probability?
There seems to be a paradox in my head when it comes to evaluating independent probabilities and it's sort of boggling my head. I am curious as to how to solve it.
Suppose I tell my friend to think of ...
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How do you decide between general and specific evidence in reasoning?
Suppose Jane wins the lottery three times. A person could say "well the chances of some person winning the lottery three times in the entire history of the world is expected by chance. No need to ...
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Is what's considered evidence for something ultimately subjective?
Imagine we are trying to conclude whether or not one someone is a prophet. How much evidence will we need to conclude this? Is the answer to this ultimately subjective?
For example, if John makes no ...
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Given a positive ontological claim X, is not-X the default position?
Given a positive ontological claim X, I see at least four different subjective positions one could adopt regarding X:
I believe that the evidence provides persuasive reason to believe that X is true (...
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Can the simplicity of a hypothesis be objectively measured?
When two or more hypotheses can explain the same evidence, it's commonly affirmed that simpler hypotheses should be preferred over more complex ones.
For example, in response to my previous question ...
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Is there an objective standard of sufficient evidence?
It's very common to hear people say that we should only believe claims that are supported by sufficient evidence. Intuitively it seems to make sense, until we realize that this recommendation begs ...
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