Subject: Re: [lojban] Objective Reality & krici (was: Random lojban questions/annoyanc...

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 12:42:17 EST

In a message dated 3/20/2001 8:09:36 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> , I return to my original challenge: Show
> me a case of a belief without any evidence, for commonly used definitions
> of "evidence".
> 
American Heritage: ev·i·dence n. 1. A thing or things helpful in forming a 
conclusion or judgment: 
I take it that the things must be propositional since only propositions can 
enter into forming a conclusion; ordinary things enter only as they become 
the subjects of claims (not necessarily uttered or even consciously 
formulated). Alternatively, this could be about the causes of judgements 
(not conclusions, of course), though I doubt that most people would agree 
with this (the claim that Berkeley's immaterialsm was caused by his bad 
toilet training is usually called ridiculous, for example). As written, it 
would include the abacus used to calculate the area of a room from the floor 
measurements. Pretty useless, then.
Webster Collegiate: 1.a. an outward sign b. something that furnishes proof.  
a. doesn't seem too relevant, but b. seems spang on, aside from "proof" being 
somewhat more than we can usually hope for, so taking that as "gives support 
for claims."
It does not seem that causes enter into this at all and that seems quite 
right, contrary to xod's opinion that they are evidence in some cases.

So, if we ignore causes, then sense-data claims, e.g., "I have a yellow patch 
in my visual field," are beliefs that do not have evidence. If asked to 
justify/give evidence for that belief, the experience can answer at best "I 
have this experience" (even "am having") and when asked evidence for this 
second claim, surely can't do anyhting more than say, "I just am."  
Admittedly, we would ordinarily not ask for evidence in these cases, taking 
the experiencer's word for it -- and that, in itself, suggests that we 
recognize that evicence is not to be called for in these cases. And the same 
pretty much applies even for more complex cases: "I see a robin on the lawn" 
and the like (though, for many of us, "I see a UFO" will probably require 
evidence and most of the complex cases could be called into question in 
certain situations).

If we let causes in as evidence, then presumably sense-data claims have 
evidence in this sense. But then the claim that every belief has evidence 
becomes trivial, since like every other event, beliefs have causes, hence, on 
this view, evidence. And, on the other hand, we find among the evidence for 
the structure of the benzene molecule Kekule's dream of Ouroboros, which 
would normally be thought irrelevant. If we restrict the cases where causes 
are evidence to those cases which lack any other kind of evidence, then this 
appears to be an ad hoc definition, designed simply to make the general claim 
true, despite flying in the face of ordinary usage. so, let's drop causes 
once and for all.

Then I say that no belief as such has evidence. That is, the status of being 
a belief does not in any way depend upon evidence. This is clearer in the 
case of {krici} than of "belief," because {krici} overtly has no place for 
evidence (or even epistmology) and, in fact, has "not based on evidence" 
written into the definition (indeed, that is where this all began). The 
matter of evidence comes up only when the issue is whether the belief is 
justified, and that presupposes that it is already a belief. People do not 
usually (indeed, it is hard to come up with a contrary case) come to their 
beliefs on the basis of evidence -- back to the old issue that belief is not 
volitional, if nothing else. They ahve the beliefs from whatever cause and 
then try to justify them as best they can when they are challenged. Even the 
cases of "believing because of the evidence" in fact involves a number of 
other factors than the evidence itself (believing the evidence being a major 
one).  

Now, xod's point may be simply what it says on the outside, that there is no 
belief for which there is not evidence, not anything about how one comes to 
believe or what constitutes a belief, but an empirical claim about beliefs in 
general. I don't know how one would go about proving such a claim. As I 
have said, there is probably no belief so bizarre but that something could be 
taken as evidence for it, maybe even something we accept as true (look at all 
the things that have been taken as evidence for the existence of God -- or 
for God's non-existence, for that matter). I'm not sure that I would want to 
buy into this, especially if what one came up with -- for "There is a unicorn 
in the garden," say -- is not something that the claimant did not propose.  
Nor would I want to accept something whose connection to the claim was also 
not something the claimant could explain. I think that the resulting claim, 
for everything thing that x believes there a true claim that x would make and 
which is plausibly connected to the belief as support, would be hard to prove 
and might, in fact, be easy to disprove. I believe (let us imagine) that I 
have squared the circle. The evidence is a number of scribbled pages whichI 
claim constitute a proof of the construction I offer. The claim is plausibly 
connected to the belief, but it is false. Does it constitute evidence? If 
yes, then we have to drop the "true" part above. And then again, the whole 
become trivial: the hoof prints that no one else can find, the gouges that no 
one else can see, the white hairs in the bushes, etc. are all evidence for 
the unicorn in the garden, even though the claims about them are all false. 
So, of course, I can fadge up some evidence, as long as it does not have to 
be true.

Maybe, what we have in a psychological principle: no one believes anything 
unless he believes he has evidence for it. This is more plausible, though 
the beliefs of small children might constitute difficult cases (but that just 
may be the difficulty in formulating those beliefs to begin with) -- or they 
may all come down to "So-and-so told me so." The sense-data cases would 
also be a difficulty, but, happily, they almost never occur, and, when they 
do, there are usually factors about the environment that allow for reasonable 
evidence to be formulated. The obvious possibility for infinite regress can 
be handled in the deep-sea ship-repair sort of way, taking care of one step 
at a time and, provided no circle turns up before, stopping at a point of 
agreement between challenger and challenged (or, for radical disagreements, 
when they get tired).