The Usefulness of Supporting Evidence

Attention: All Reliable Authorities, 

Everyday a justified belief has the potential to form, remaining until you, someone, or some experience/event crushes said justified belief with supporting evidence. In our last post we expressed why you should believe in yourself as a reliable authority with a conscience; click here to read more. This post will cover propositions with the potential to defeat an argument by way of supporting evidence. One proposition can undermine, or contradict another proposition resulting in an evidential defeat, with this said, there is also a way to potentially restore defeated beliefs.

Evidentially Defeating

An evidential defeat occurs when a reliable authority such as yourself presents or experiences new evidence that defeats a justified belief (proposition), such as beliefs about the past and future. This is to say, that you can experience something that undermines or contradicts your previously justified belief about one's past or the predicted future. Something simple as a sporting event allows reliable authorities to form justified beliefs about the outcome of a game. 

Undermining

Unless a person justified their belief for a game to end in a tie. A game resulting in a tie is an example of an undermining defeater, because both teams didn't win or lose; they tied. Which in turn, doesn't prove or deny the reliable authority of a justified belief about the prediction of the game. This is to say, an undermining defeat occurs when a justified belief has a proposition (such as a tie) that doesn't prove or deny a justified belief (team A will win the game). On the other hand, a win or lose will affect the justified belief. 

Contradicting

Suppose then a reliable authority predicted team A will win the game, and they gave enough supporting evidence to justify their belief system. In order for the justified belief to remain, team A will have to win. If team A loses supporting evidence has been formed, namely the game resulted in team B winning the game. Defeating the reliable authorities justified belief, which was team A will win the game. This is to say, a contradictory defeat occurs when the justified belief (team A will win) has a proposition (team B won), making the justified belief (team A will win) false. Now, suppose there was a way to restore the belief, allowing team A to win. 

Restoring Beliefs

In a game this would be known as overtime, or a final play containing a penalty. For the purpose of this post we will stick with overtime. Furthermore, let's assume this is a game of... football. Consisting of overtime if and only if both teams ending score results in a tie. For example, the final score of a game was 35 points for team A and 35 points for team B. This will cause both teams to go into sudden death, meaning the score remains, with a few extra quarters, and the object of the game is to score first. Giving the team who scores first the right to say they won the game. If team B scores first than they win, but if team A scores first than they win. Restoring the reliable authorities justified belief in predicting (team A will win) the game. 

Conclusion

As you can see this is an example for evidential defeats by using undermining, and contradicting supporting evidence as a reliable authority can apply this to relationships regarding multiple reliable authorities about any given subject both positive and negative. This is just a simple example to expresses how a justified belief can be undermined and contradicted, as well as, restoring a defeated belief. If you have ever got into an argument with yourself or someone else, I am sure you have taken an approach similar to this, using supporting evidence for a given situation; click here to read more about supporting evidence. This approach is also used in almost every legal dispute, until a decision has been made by the judge or jury

Go ahead and leave comments below to help me, help you. Note: I use examples from the book and from my own experience.

To be clear, I am taking notes from a book titled An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology by Matthias Steup; if you need a copy to follow along click on the the title in this sentence and a link will direct you.