Evidence
Updated 2026-09-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Evidence is a core concept in epistemology and philosophy of science, usually understood as what justifies a belief; although a rational thinker ought to respect her evidence, giving a definition of evidence proves extraordinarily difficult. Candidate accounts appeal to probability raising, to knowledge, or to the total information available to the agent, and each faces objections about what counts as evidence for what.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Calibrate confidence: make the strength of belief match the strength of evidential support, avoiding both excess and deficiency. - Interrogate the support relation: press on the conditions under which a piece of evidence supports the conclusion and how strongly. - Separate source from support: keep the reliability of where evidence came from apart from what it actually supports.
Anchor fast decisions
Evidence is defined in relation to justification, rationality, and confirmation: its force lies in constituting a relation of support for a belief, and rationality requires a person's belief state to match the strength of that support relation, since excess and deficiency alike fail to respect the evidence.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evidence/verified
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