Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Evidence: proof of the existence and the behavior of objects or of the truth of statements. Evidence can be direct or indirect. See also theories, facts._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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R. Nozick on Evidence - Dictionary of Arguments
II 237 Knowledge/Riddles/Kripke/Nozick: conundrum: why would you seek evidence against something that you know. - You know then that the evidence must be wrong. Nozick: a theory of knowledge must be able to handle it. >Knowledge, >Theory of knowledge, >Recognition, >Certainty. Solution: conversely, if one does not know that the evidence is misleading, one should not ignore it. >Method. II 250 Evidence/hypothesis/Nozick: often evidence can apply, even if the hypothesis is false. >Truth, >Hypotheses. Test: search for data that would not apply if the hypothesis was true, but the evidence is not. - Then, the hypothesis has not passed the test. II 254f Evidence/hypotheses/Nozick/(s): the initial probability (P0) of the hypothesis must be considered. One cannot just put up any hypothesis. Therefore conclusion from P (evidence e I Hypo h)> = 0.95, P (e,~h) <= 0.05 not sure if e is more likely to follow from h-h or not, depends on which of the two weighted conditional probabilities is greater, P (el h) times P0(h) or P(e l ~ h) times P0(not-h). >Bayesianism, >Conditional probability. II 261 Evidence/hypothesis/theory/Nozick: if e is evidence for hypothesis h, depends on what other theories we have that connects e and h . Problem: the other theories could in turn be embedded in a wider context, etc. - regress. >Regress, >Context, >Dependence. PutnamVsTradition: therefore "evidence for" is not a formal logical relation. - It is rather dependent on other theories. Cf. >Ontological Relativity, >Internal Realism. II 262 Induction/evidence/logic/Nozick: the inductive logic is twofold relative 1. probability is relative to the evidence 2. There must be a principle of total evidence, which is applied to the probability statements. >Induction. Some authors: Solution: an evidence is an evidence for what it explains. >Explanation, >Causal explanation. NozickVs: much evidence is not explanatory - e.g. lightning/thunder do not explain themselves mutually. E.g. a symptom makes probably more, but they do not explain mutually. Perhaps there are quite general statistical relations between statements - e.g. principles of the uniformity of nature. >Symptoms, >Uniformity, >Regularity._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
No I R. Nozick Philosophical Explanations Oxford 1981 No II R., Nozick The Nature of Rationality 1994 |
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Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-16