I'd like to focus on the following statement from the OP...

"Obviously, in order to have evidence there must be a reason for it to be in consideration. "

In other words, if evidence is to be applied to anything at all, there must first be an end to which is it applied. Any judgement about evidence is dependent on why one is applying the evidence. And thus, the import/value of any such evidence can only be judged against an individual’s purpose behind, and desired goal of, considering the evidence.

And this, I believe, is the fundamental reason why arguments arise about “evidence”. It is simply because different people have different purposes in considering evidence.

So the question arises about what to do when there are two pieces of evidence that appear to be contradictory.

Well what can one do? One can throw out the evidence (e.g. deny it), or one can devise a (or revise an existing) world view such that the evidence is no longer contradictory, or one can simply label it as an anomaly and accept that it cannot be integrated into the existing world view.

But the bottom line is, and must always be, that the reason behind considering evidence, is to determine its import/value relative to personal purposes and/or goals.

Thus, “…to discuss the importance and/or value of evidence” is really to discuss personal viewpoints about how the consideration of evidence aligns (or not) with individual world views.

Now personally, I would say that, in general, any consideration of any evidence has the purpose of determining if it aligns with other evidence (i.e. the previous evidence that resulted in the current world view.)

So let’s take, for example, an out-of-body experience (OBE).

An OBE is evidence, there can be no doubt of that. Any personal experience of any sort must be considered as evidence.

Now there are those who consider OBE as evidence of “spirit” in the sense of spirit and body being separate.

And there are those who consider OBE as evidence of the unreliability of personal observation/perception.

Notice here that those who consider OBE as evidence of spirit, take the evidence at face value and thus support for their world view, but those who consider OBE as evidence of the unreliability of personal observation, deny the reliability of the evidence and use that evaluation to support their world view.

In other words, both sides make judgements as to the import/value of the OBE evidence. And it is that personal judgement that forms the world view.

Bottom line here is that the import/value of evidence is necessarily subjective and thus the import/value of a world view based on the evidence is also necessarily subjective.

So all we really end up with is the conclusion that no world view can be any more important/valuable that any other world view because all world views are necessarily subjective.

Very nice post Sky. I think you've made some very revealing points.



Truly. Like you say. Same evidence, two different conclusions. So this speaks volumes about how evidence alone is really nothing. It only become 'evidence' when as person feels it supports something they'd like to support.



Again I agree. And Jeanniebean has made this point quite often as well. There can be no such thing as an 'objective' point of view actually. Every point of view is necessarily subjective. So to even speak of an objective point of view is misleading. All it really suggests is that perhaps a large group of people have been trained to think a certain way and are therefore in majority agreement, and so they call that an "objective" point of view.

I like what Dr. Feynman had to say along these lines:

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman.

Although, I'm sure he simply meant that scientists don't really know nearly what they'd like to believe they think they know.

Perhaps a better quote would be the following:

"Science is a belief in the conclusions of people who have been trained to make conclusions using the same set of rigid biases." - Abracadabra

I had to give myself credit for that quote because I just now made it up. Although I wouldn't be surprised if someone else had said something similar because it surely is true.

But you're right. The chosen methods of forming conclusions do indeed affect what conclusions will be arrived at, and what will be considered as 'evidence' and what will be rejected as 'not evidence'. Like you say, "evidence or not evidence" for what?

It can only make sense relative to whatever theory or goal it is being applied to. Outside of that context the very term 'evidence' has no meaning.

What a semantic playground...

Please accept my apologies jr,

You seem to have taken my post entirely differently from how I had intended it. I was actually agreeing with you that we use the term differently. I was merely attempting to communicate what it means to me. Nothing more.

My reply wasn't meant to be an 'argument'.

a report of obe is testimonial evidence and is subject to how one deems the credibility of the witness and the testimony. without physical evidence to support the testimony the report may just as well be considered outlandish as plausible depending on how credible the testimony seems to someone who's expected to render a judgement. i know of no physical evidence that supports a testimony of an obe.

so far what most seen to equate as being physical evidence is when the eyes move during R.E.M. sleep

the rub is that the eyes move and many people do not report an obe. like saying that jesus cured an ill when the same disease was cured in a muslim or an atheist.

I am more interested in the proper form of examining evidence, in and of itself. Evidence is anything that constitutes an indication or a sign which provides proof. Evidence has certain attributes which help determine it's sufficiency. Evidence, in order to be considered as aequate, or reason enough to base a conclusion upon, must be sufficient enough. If the evidence in question can logically lead to different conclusions, then either of those conclusions is as valid as the other, and it can become a matter of liklihood. Relevance and adequacy need to be assessed whenever examining evidence.



Keep looking for more evidence. Determine it's adequacy and relevance by applying it to as many situations as possible in order establish warrant to draw a conclusion. Sometimes that conclusion may be to say that the evidence at hand is insufficient to be able to draw a firm conclusion.



Conflation of entirely different things.

it's that most if not all, had the "out of body experience" during R.E.M. sleep and can never give any information or evidence beyond the experience being anything more than just a dream

agreed. testimony not unlike one who says they were sexually abused by ailiens. i suppose there is some evidence to support sexual abuse by illegal aliens though. i still say that most contribute to our society damnit. illegal aliens that is, not people who are under the delusion that they were raped by extraterestrials. lol.

Here's a different way of approaching it:
"I don't have any evidence that taking that walk is going to help."
"Well, I'm not too busy to do it so I think I will test if the walk improves my condition."
one walk later
"I feel better/don't feel better so now I have some evidence for/against walking by the river affecting my mood."

If you're really upset you probably wouldn't be concerned with testing this but if that someone that suggested it notes your mood when you return they will then have evidence that it works or does not.

Obviously a single walk by a river impacting someone's mood or not is not very compelling evidence but after you sum up many people's walks through nature you could come to the conclusion that it always helps, often helps, sometimes helps, or never helps.

If you had the time/interest/money or a suitable combination of those you could attempt to isolate the factors that make the difference between a successful walk, though with all things human there are a great many factors in play so it is no easy task to isolate them.


But more alarmingly is that someone with your professed knowledge of science doesn't understand how to apply the scientific method. I can't imagine how you could have missed it.

But you've just recognized that I do indeed have a perfect understanding of the scientific method and how to apply it.

And it's in your following words:



I simply recognize that we currently don't have the ability to apply the scientific method to something as immensely complex as the human spirit. So I don't even pretend that it could be done.

Pretending that it could be applied would be a display of someone who doesn't understand how to apply the scientific method.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The scientific method is an extremely elementary and very limited reductionistic view of the world. As a professional, I'm fully aware of this. I would suggest that most of the truly credible professional scientist are indeed aware of this.

"Science is a belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman.

It really is true if you stop and think about it. The scientific method is extremely crude, and quite limited about what it can actually say. Most of what scientists think they know actually represents large leaps of intuitive conclusions that may or may not have any validity at all.

The Big Bang. A Conclusion? Or a Guess?

Take the Big Bang for example. We observed that light coming from what appears to be very distant galaxies is red-shifted and this red-shift increases as the galaxies appear to be further away. From this we conclude that the universe is expanding.

Do we have any evidence that the universe is expanding? No. All we have is evidence that light is red-shifted. We must jump to the conclusion that this is caused by an expanding universe, which seems to be reasonable. However, this assumption also assumes that the physics of the intergalactic space is the same as the physics we experience here on Earth and that it has been homogeneous and isotropic over all of time*.

*Keep this lst thought in mind because it's going to play a huge role in just a minute.

Next we devise a 'theory' based on the idea that the universe is most likely expanding due to the evidence that light is red-shifted. And that assumption was based on the above assumption that the laws of physics have been homogeneous and isotropic over all of time.

Moreover the theory crashes and cannot be made to work if we stick to our guns assuming that the laws of physics have been homogeneous and isotropic over all of time. The theory has major problems and basically fails.

So then a New Idea is proposed that the laws of physics have not been homogeneous and isotropic over all of time, and there was actually a time when the universe underwent a major period of unprecedented Inflation. Keep in mind that there is no evidence for this New Idea. On the contrary this New Idea is entirely fabricated to salvage a theory that wasn't working!

There is no evidence that any such thing as "inflation" ever took place. That is purely an idea that was created to salvage a theory that wasn't working.

Moreover, even the theory of Inflation has its own problems because there is no way to "shut down" the inflationary process evenly throughout space without also having non-local faster-than-light communication. So as ironic as it sounds, the Inflationary Theory just took the non-local problem that caused the original Big Bang theory to fail, and moved it from the first instant of explosion to the end state after Inflation.

In any case, there is no evidence for Inflation. Inflation is merely a plausibility argument to salvage a theory that wasn't working. And that theory wasn't even based on evidence that the universe was expanding, but rather it was merely based on the evidence that light is red-shifted. And that also included a need to assume that that the laws of physics have been homogeneous and isotropic over all of time. But now to save that theory we must assume that that the laws of physics have not been homogeneous and isotropic over all of time because we now need a period of Inflation that would have represented a different physical situation.

So how much of the "Big Bang" theory is actually based on "evidence" and how much is based on a biased desire to simply "save a theory"?

Now you might argue that there is also the CMBR (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation) that also supports the "Big Bang". But this isn't necessarily true at all. The CMBR would exist in any case. It's simply a measurement of the temperature of the universe as a whole. It doesn't necessarily point to a "Big Bang". The real argument there boils down to an idea of pure logic that suggests that IF the universe were infinitely old, and also static, that it would today then be infinitely hot. However, that's an argument that's also based on many unprovable assumptions as well.

In short, the only "real evidence" that we have for a "Big Bang" is the red-shifted light and the belief that this means that the universe is expanding and has always been expanding and that the laws of physics are homogenous and isotropic over time.

In fact, if you stop and think about this, it even gets more interesting!

The most recent cosmological observations suggest (from observing red-shifted light, again) that the universe is actually accelerating in its expansion. Well this throws a whole wrench into everything!

The entire picture of the "Big Bang" was originally proposed in the belief that the expansion was fairly constant, or at best, slowing down due to gravity. But now we see that the physics of the universe is indeed changing. The universe is accelerating in it's expansion at least based on the 'evidence' of observations of red-shifted light.

Well, if this is true then why should we assume anything about the rate of expansion in the past?

Yet, we must make assumptions about the rate of expansion in the past for the Big Bang theory to hold.

So, in truth, we actually have basically no evidence that there was ever a Big Bang. All we have is some observations about red-shifted light a whole bunch of assumptions and guesses after that.

Like Richard Feynman says: "Science is a belief in the ignorance of experts."

Ok, my bad. I didn't specify the viewpoint from which the evidence is examined, other than the statement "personal experience".

I intended to mean that OBE is evidence to the person who experienced it. I agree that it cannot be claimed as objective evidence in any way because it is, by nature, an entirely subjective experience.

Now on the other hand, there is some confusion/disagreement as to the difference between Remote Viewing and OBE. Most scientists that I have read up on use the term RV instead of OBE, since it lends itself better to a more subjective evaluation.

Now in the sense of RV, there actually is some objective scientific evidence. (ref: Puthoff&Targe at Standfodr Reseach Insititue and Jahn&Dunne at Princeton Enginerring Anomalies Research.)

But in any case, whatever evidence is put forth, "proof" is entirely dependent on an interpretation of the evidence. And that interpretation is necessarily dependent on the purpose of interpreting it.

I appreciate your viewpoint. I really do. And in many circumstances I agree completely.

However, there are several key words you’ve used that are what I consider to be indicative of the subjectivity involved:

proper
sufficiency
aequate
reason enough
sufficient enough
relevance
warrant

These are all relative terms. That is, in order to determine any of them, they must be measurable. And therein lies the problem. Who determines what “ruler” to use for measurement? I see no reason to assume that everyone does, or must, use the same ruler. The only real reason for agreeing on a ruler is to provide for an agreement on the measurement. But if one does not desire to agree on a measurement, then there is no real reason to agree on the ruler.

Just as evidence is meaningless without being compared to something, “sufficiency”, “adequacy” “reason enough”, etc. are meaningless without a standard by which to measure them. And possibly more importantly, there must be a purpose for performing the measurement. If there is no such purpose, then “evidence” and “sufficiency” are irrelevant from the outset.

In other words, consideration and evaluation of evidence has a prerequisite, which is most easily expressed by the question “Why is the evidence being considered/evaluated?”

And that is why I think different people come to different conclusions when evaluating the same evidence. Their purpose behind evaluating it is different. And I also think that may be the source of much conflict – too often people assume that others have (or should have) the same purpose in evaluating evidence. But they simply don’t.

I think that was vividly shown in the Einstein-Bohr debates over "evidence" in Quantum Mechanics.

Bohr's purpose for evaluating any "evidence" was to support his personal belief that the theory is complete. Complete in the sense that no future information can possibly be known about the system.

Einstein's purpose for evaluating any "evidence" was to support the idea that something more could be known about the system and thus the theory was incomplete.

So this was how the two men evaluated and interpreted any "evidence" they could find. Of course, in the case of the Einstein-Bohr debates, it is generally accepted that Bohr 'won' all of the debates by presenting the best explanations and showing flaws in Einstein's reasoning.

Ironically, even today, most scientists still believe (at least intuitively) that Einstein was potentially right and they still continue to seek for "evidence" to support their suspicions that more can be known about a system than QM allows for.

So the quest to find "evidence" to back up an intuitive subjective hunch continues.

amen.

In fact, if we think about this isn't this precisely what modern scientists are actually doing all the time?

Someone, I guess it was Leonard Susskind, had an intuitive insight that quarks might be made of 'strings'. Of course, his intuition may have been influenced by his understanding of various of pure pure mathematics. None-the-less, his insights were basically intuitive.

As this intuitive String Theory grew it quickly became apparent that more than the three dimensions of space would be required. Before long the dimensions grew to 10 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time.

So this left us with a search for the 7 "hidden dimensions". In fact, they are actually referred to as "hidden" dimansions because currently there is physical 'evidence' that they exist.

So here we have a prime case where scientists are following an intuitive hunch to search for 'evidence' of the existence of hidden dimensions for which we have no 'evidence' for at all.

So where do we even come up with the idea that "science" is driven by "evidence"? I think it's often driven the other way around.

We often come up with intuitive ideas first, and then seek to find 'evidence' to support those intuitive ideas afterward.

neither for crying out loud!!! will you ever get it? the big bang is a theory. a theory is neither a conclusion, as it has not been proven nor is it a guess as it has evidence that has been tested and the results support the theory. using your definition of a theory as a premis, whatever it is, when nobody here agrees with you and making a point on that premis is the very definition of strawman. you and i have been over theory now for months and i doubt that one person here agrees with you or even understands your idea of what a theory is. i'll do this once again. here's hawking's view of what a theory. i agree with the definition. if you don't agree then you need to say you don't agree and give your definition. either this gets settled or there's really no sense discussing the issue of evidence. not unlike discussing missing cookies and milk as evidence that santa was here with my grand daughter. jeez.


"A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested. If the predictions agree with the observations, the theory survives that test, though it can never be proved to be correct."

do you see any reference to a conclusion or a guess? is this an acceptable definition to you? because if you are going to profess to know scientific methodology better than sir stephen your credibility in anything science just went way south.



none of it is based on any desire to "save a theory". that's what you don't get. sientists don't try to "save a theory". i suppose in your world you'd think that but why then do they keep testing new evidence as well as old evidence if not to DISPROVE the theory. what better way to "save a theory" than to refuse to keep testing the theory or looking for new evidence to test. why launch hubble if we were satisfied that the big bang was proven? you really should stay in your spiritual world as you'll never get what science is all about it seems.



rub being of course, the word "belief" is not in the vocabulary of science. who the hell is this feyman anyway. ah crap never mind. can't imagine i want to know.

well here are my words. see if you can twist them to your advantage. YOU KNOW LESS ABOUT THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD THAN MY TEN YEAR OLD GRAND DAUGHTER.

pssst. hey. buddy. c'mere. yeah you. c'mere a sec. got sometin for ya. ya see, another word for intuitive hunch? listen close now. closer, this is important. another word you can use for intuitive hunch is HYPOTHOSIS!!!!! AS IN HYPOTHOSIS, THEN EVIDENCE, THEN THEORY. YOU KNOW, SILLY SCIENTIFIC METHOD CRAP.