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Nov 13, 2015 · This entry focuses on the modern concept of evidence that operates in the legal tradition to which Anglo-American law belongs. [ 1] It concentrates on evidence in relation to the proof of factual claims in law. [ 2] It may seem obvious that there must be a legal concept of evidence that is distinguishable from the ordinary concept of evidence.
- Objectivity and Truth
- Probability, Evidence, and Truth
- Self-Evidence
- Experiential Evidence
- Strategies For Evaluating Premises
- Summary of Chapter Nine
- Guidelines For Chapter Nine
- Glossary For Chapter Nine
9.1.1 Two Laws of Truth
There are two venerable so-called laws of truth which serve us well for practical purposes. One of them, the law of noncontradiction, says that no statement is both true and false. It follows from this that truth is objective and absolute—there cannot be any statement, for example, that is true for you but false for me. Its flip side is the law of the excluded middle, which says that every statement is either true or false. It follows from this that there is no middle ground between the true...
9.1.2 Ambiguity Rather than Relative Truth
Some statements appearto violate these laws even though, on closer inspection, they do not. Consider the following: Today is July 9. My name is David Carl Wilson. A train station is one mile from here. Chocolate ice cream tastes bad. When I express these words here and now the statements are true. But when you express them at a different place and time, the statements are probably false. Does this mean they are both true and false or, perhaps, that they are neither? No. In each case there are...
9.1.3 Some Cases in Which You Can’t Decide
I have described the two laws of truth as “useful for practical purposes”—not as necessary, inviolate, and unbending. This is because language is not always law-abiding. The ordinary folks who constantly use language in new and serviceable ways seldom get a note from their logician first. The result is that there are some interesting and puzzling cases in which it is at least conceivable that a statement is both true and false, or that it is neither true nor false. And in each case, there is...
What makes a statement true is the way the world is; and it is always possible for me to make a mistake about the way the world is. This is because the world is one thing, while my judgment about the world is something else—and as the ancient proverb says, there is many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip. Many things can go wrong in that gap between...
Because your evaluations must be expressed in language, you will typically support your beliefs by referring to other beliefs of yours. Recall sample evaluations we have already done. Why do I think, for example, that the sentence Not many people are qualified to work as lifeguards is probably true? Because of another belief of mine—Lifeguards must...
So far we have covered two broad categories of evidence that you will find relevant in putting together the evaluation of a premise. First, there is inferential evidence—that is, other beliefs of yours from which you can infer your evaluation. Second, there is noninferential evidence of a sort that we have termed self-evidence; this is the evidence...
To evaluate the truth of a premise is to consider its epistemic probability—that is, to consider the quality of your evidence for it. How should you describe this evidence in the relevant portion of your evaluation of the argument?
Although people often reasonably disagree about the truth of a premise, that does not mean that what is true for one person may be false for another. Truth has to do with whether a belief fits with the world. It is not relative to the believer. This is consistent with the law of noncontradiction, which says that a statement cannot be both true and ...
For practical purposes, assume that no statement is both true and false and that every statement is either true or false.If it looks as though the truth-value of a statement will be different depending on who expresses it, it is usually because the statement is referentially ambiguous. Look for the ambiguous term, wh...The rare statements that appear to violate the two laws of truth, yet do not merely suffer from a referential ambiguity, should be evaluated as can’t decide, with an explanation.Evaluate premises according to their epistemic probability—that is, according to how strong your evidence is for their truth or falsity—using expressions such as probably true and probably false.Authority—someone who is presumed to be in a better position than you to know the truth about a statement. This superiority may be due to either special ability (as with a scientist or expert) or special access (as with an eyewitness or a journalist). Epistemic—having to do with knowledge. Epistemic probability—the likelihood that a statement is tr...
- David Carl Wilson
- 2020
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Mar 30, 2010 · Truth is the positive, and falsehood is the negative logical value. …. Logic is the science of objects of a special kind, namely a science of logical values. (Łukasiewicz 1970: 90) This definition may seem rather unconventional, for logic is usually treated as the science of correct reasoning and valid inference.
Mar 10, 2017 · What is scientific truth? Truth is a seemingly simple concept. From childhood, all of us are admonished to ‘tell the truth’. When this follows a dispute and both sides ‘tell the truth’, we are reliant on the wisdom of an arbitrator (initially a parent) to decide whose version of the truth is true. To define truth seems simple, yet the ...
- Rod Baber
- 2017
evidence, in law, any of the material items or assertions of fact that may be submitted to a competent tribunal as a means of ascertaining the truth of any alleged matter of fact under investigation before it. To the end that court decisions are to be based on truth founded on evidence, a primary duty of courts is to conduct proper proceedings ...
Even though philosophy is not an empirical science, philosophical claims require evidence, and philosophers ought to have reasons for the claims they make. There are many different types of philosophical evidence, some of which follow. History. A basic but underappreciated source of evidence in philosophy is the history of philosophy.
Jun 13, 2006 · Truth is one of the central subjects in philosophy. It is also one of the largest. Truth has been a topic of discussion in its own right for thousands of years. Moreover, a huge variety of issues in philosophy relate to truth, either by relying on theses about truth, or implying theses about truth. It would be impossible to survey all there is ...
