(May 9, 2025 at 6:31 pm)Sheldon Wrote: Evidence is simply the available body of facts or information, indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid. Whether that evidence is sufficient on any given proposition is another matter, but the more that evidence is interpreted subjectively, the less reliable it becomes, the more objective it is, the more reliable it becomes.
I don't think it's true to say that evidence is the available body of facts or information.
Facts and information on their own do not rise to the level of evidence.
They become evidence when a human being interprets them in support of a conclusion. Then the interpretation of the fact may be used to increase the credibility of a proposition -- which is what evidence does.
So a footprint on the beach is simply a footprint on the beach. If a person sees that footprint and interprets from its presence that someone has been there, then the footprint is evidence.
The interpretation requires certain priors on the part of the person doing the interpreting. The priors in the case of the footprint are simple -- the observer knows what another person's footprint looks like, how long it is likely to last on a beach, etc. Then the conclusion he draws is straightforward.
In many cases the interpretation of a fact requires more complicated priors. It is these prior beliefs (i.e. things we hold to be true) which allow us to use the fact as evidence to increase the credibility of a proposition.
So claiming that some fact, as given, counts as evidence one way or another in some kind of raw, uninterpreted manner, would be overlooking the prior beliefs that we have used to interpret what that fact points to.
