Street Epistemology - Practice

[RoadRunner79]

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Your #2 I would agree with, and would add that we need to weigh anything against. 

The first principle , is where we disagree, as I have been discussing.    By out of the ordinary; do you mean frequency of occurrence?  How does that effect your knowledge of what happened?     It seems to me, that statistics of frequency may be useful when you do not have knowledge (to bolster assumptions or possibly predictions), but have little weight when evidence points towards the less ordinary.   These bolster assumptions based on probability, but have little to do when talking about knowledge and epistemology.

I work quite a bit, troubleshooting  machine controls.  Frequency of certain types of failures often come up as a starting point, but then I need to look for evidence and reason to support and gain knowledge.  I'm not a happy camper, when I have to rely on just that initial guess or what may ordinarily occur.  Also the out of the ordinary happens quite often.  Working as a contractor, I often am involved in the out of the ordinary.  Where the average customer may have the odd problem maybe once a year or so, I am often called in, because the solution is  particularly difficult to find.  And sometimes they knew the solution, but didn't want to consider it; because it was out of the ordinary, and I get to be the hero when they did all the work.

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It doesn't matter if it's frequency, it's what ever variable you're looking at that you deem to be out of the ordinary. However, maybe out of the ordinary isn't a good word to use in this case. Let's rephrase #1 to:

1. There is a positive correlation between the quantity/quality of evidence for a claim where you have low confidence of it's truth...ie to get from low to high confidence, you would thus need more evidence.
   
2. All the available evidence I can find will get me towards a certain confidence level on how much I believe the claim in question.
   

Do you agree with the rephrased principle?

Curiosne,

First, I do want to thank you, for the enjoyable conversation. 

If I am understanding correctly, I see two ways to interpret your first point.  One would be the inclusion of evidence or reasons against, in weighing the evidence towards a conclusion.  This I would agree with.  If you have a reason to have low confidence in the evidence, then that should be accounted for.

However, from the previous part of the discussion about moving the bar, I suspect that this is not what you are talking about.  I think that what you are talking about is not reasons against it, but some other subjective thing;  could be feelings, personal aversion to the conclusion, or just plain old incredulity.  That while not saying that it is false, because of your incredulity, you are going to stack the deck against it, by "raising the bar".  

Now if it is the first, description, then I would agree.  We need to account for all the evidence, both for and against.  If for some reason you have low confidence some of the evidence, then that should certainly be weighed.  It is also these type of things, that I think it is difficult to come up with some hard and fast rule.  On the other hand, if it is the second interpretation I gave; then I do have issues with it.  For one; what you are basing the conclusion on, largely is the result of the individual, not the external evidence and reasons.  Second, as we touched on before, if you are talking about logic and reason, then I think that similar inputs, should produce a similar result.  The conclusion will follow from the premises and be independent (as much as possible) of the individual. I think that with a good epistemology, that we should be doing are best to avoid such biases.   Would you disagree?

I think in your re-phrasing, it's going to depend what the reason for the low confidence is.  If it is personal bias, incredulity, or something else based on you the individual, then I think we should be trying to avoid that in a good epistemology.  If you provide good reason for the low confidence and support it with objective facts and logic,  then that is fine.   I think that low confidence is something which is arrived at, based on the evidence, not something which is started with, and needs to be overcome.  If this is correctly representing your view, then how do you justify the prominence of the subjective in speaking towards the objective truth of the matter.

I look forward to your response.

Brian