In terms of evidence

Hivemind187

I'm probably going to get publically lynched for this but ...

... What does a skeptic do when the evidence upon which an established position/fact/concept/truth etc is called into question?

Specifically, when you are dealing with man made manipulations of man made institutions (governments, beuraucracy, authorities, services, media etc), how do you decide what constitutes "evidence". Documents are easily forged ("The Ems Telegram") people are unnecessarily or erroneously discredited ("The Dreyfus Affair") and in a number of cases, the official line has been concocted to protect the privilaged ("Watergate" & "The JFK Assassination").

Under those circumstances and with a cynical eye born of historical precedent, how do you tell the difference or do you just assume that someone is telling the truth until shown otherwise?

Its something I was thinking about recently after spending some time on the religion and conspiracy theories boards, two places where this issue has come up a couple of times (with varying degrees of rationality).

Myksyk

No need for public lynching Hivemind ... perfectly reasonable questions. My quick thoughts before I rush out the back to have my brekkie in the sun is that 'evidence' is the key word on both sides. Anyone can call something into question; it is whether any genuinely reliable evidence (there is a whole debate here about ther quality of evidence) can be produced in favour of the opposing argument - conspiracy theories and hunches are not enough. Also, you are essentially discussing history, a subject not necessarily open to scientific enquiry and certainly open to all sorts of manipulation and mangling.

bonkey

Hivemind187 wrote:

... What does a skeptic do when the evidence upon which an established position/fact/concept/truth etc is called into question?

Specifically, when you are dealing with man made manipulations of man made institutions (governments, beuraucracy, authorities, services, media etc), how do you decide what constitutes "evidence". Documents are easily forged ("The Ems Telegram") people are unnecessarily or erroneously discredited ("The Dreyfus Affair") and in a number of cases, the official line has been concocted to protect the privilaged ("Watergate" & "The JFK Assassination").

Evidence which stands up to scrutiny must be accepted. Evidence which fails to stand up to scrutiny must not be accepted.

That evidence which stands up to scrutiny could be inaccurate (deliberately or accidentally) is neither here nor there.

Where there is doubt, the evidence should be discarded. This is often where people misapply the process. A classic example would be the commentaries of Van Romero with respect to September 11. On the day in question, he made a claim that the collapsed were too methodical. Within a short period of time, he retracted that statement and said that he was mistaken.

There are a number of possibilities here, but we can boil them down to two :

1) He changed his mind, and made a genuine retraction
2) His retraction did not reflect his honest beliefs.

No firm evidence for option 2 was ever found. There's curcumstantial evidence , perhaps, but absolutely nothing firm.

So, we should either accept Romero's testimony, or ignore it as being untrustworthy. Even in this latter case, however, we cannot then use our dismissal of it as "evidence" that there is something suspicious afoot. That would result in circular reasoning - that we suspect something suspicious, so we reject his evidence as untrustworthy, which in turn suggests something suspicious is afoot.

So, we can either take his comments at face value, or we can discard them. We cannot use Romero's comments to support either the notion that the towers did or did not collapse "too methodically". Given that Romero was not willing to name the people he claims to have discussed the issue with who changed his mind, we shouldn't use his evidence to support the notion that there was nothing suspicious, as we cannot corroborate his claims.

Under those circumstances and with a cynical eye born of historical precedent, how do you tell the difference or do you just assume that someone is telling the truth until shown otherwise?

The scientific method is a very good example of how you can/should approach such things. Its not perfect, but its far and away the best we have.

Uncorroborated evidence is worthless, other than to act as a basis to seek corroboration. If a scientist claims to have discovered anything, other scientists rush to test those claims. Either outcome is acceptable - verification or refutation. However, until the claims have been independantly corroborated, they are not accepted.

In the real world, you can apply something similar. Evidence rarely exists in isolation, and when it does it is generally considered to be inconclusive. The merit of evidence increases as it is shown to be consistent with other evidence, ideally from reasonably independant sources.

Your comment regarding the "cynical eye of historical precedent" concerns me somewhat, however. History is surely rife with people trying to con other people. Science is no different. Unscrupulous people will manipulate the system to cast doubt on issues by introducing carefully crafted studies to support their pre-chosen point of view. Its by no means a perfect system but no-one has been able to demonstrate an improvement to the scientific method and its reliance on falsifiability, reproducability, corroboration, etc.

Surely, therefore, what you should want is skepticism and not cynicism.

Skepticism says "make your case and meet the burden of proof". Anything which meets that standard is accepted subject to it not being falsified at a later stage. If it is falsified, we reject it.

Cynicism suggests that even when we can't say why something is wrong we should consider rejecting it because it doesn't meet with our preconceived beliefs.

Cynicism allows us to say "this could be wrong because it could be a lie, even if there's no evidence that it is". Skepticism allows us to say "until I can show what is wrong with this, I accept it".

skeptic griggsy

I have thougt that the death penalty did not deter,but in light of new evidence I have to plead uncertain.I otherwise would approve but then I am vengeful towards murderers.Then again,I favor life imprisonment without parole for such. I thus have a nuanced opinion.

skeptic griggsy

:cool: Disregard the vengeful comment, please! Actually, I favor getting at root causes and finding ways -causes- to change the prisoners' attitudes for the better. Being emprisioned is punishment enough without making prison life even harsher. We must in the tradition of Beccaria find ways to make prisons more humane not only for the prisoners but also for the future benefit of society. What helps prisoners, helps society. A vengeful prisoner would take out her revenge on society.We therefore need to to focus more on rehabilitation. Naturalism calls for that! Robin would no doubt agree with that!

davros

OK, that's way off-topic.

To address the original question, for most issues there is no cost to me if my belief turns out to be wrong. So if a credible source tells me that Trevor Sargent has resigned as Green Party leader, I'm happy to take that on trust. It's not worth the time and effort to dig out corroborating evidence.

If I find out later that it's not true, no big deal, my belief can change. It often has. I suppose as time passes, I expect my longer-held beliefs to become more reliable since there has been more opportunity for them to be discredited.

skeptic griggsy

Our beliefs vary in strength and are subject to change.


:cool: Mine on the nonsense of God :eek:won't, for no one has put forth a valid argument and as no one will, here absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence, following the autoepistemic rule[ Charles Moore], and no argument from ignorance.However, others might quite rightly disagree,finding truth in God.

skeptic griggsy

:In the end even the most fervent defender of natural theology rests in faith, the we just say so of credulity. Faith begs the question of its subject in order to obviate giving evidence. Science is acquire knowledge while as Sydney Hook so notes, begs the question of being knowledge.:(
Arrogant theists like the haughty John Haught seek to avoid evidence by resorting to the claim that there are other venues of knowledge than that naturalists acknowledge, but he begs the question of those other venues. We rationalists demand evidence which the purveyors of the scam of religion ignore.
Blaise Pascal and others recommend[ like taking mass] that we self- brainwash by having faith in order to know Him. With other bets, there are at least two known choices, but with his wager, there is only the choice of unbelief as the other shows no there there.