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.

You Are A Reliable Authority

No One Else Can Be You

Let's see, your mind has made its way to this post, which proves through perception to be one source of evidence. Helping you form opinions about simple and complex things that may or may not be reliable information/knowledge. A reliable authority such as our individual minds combine four sources of evidence to attain, retain and experience with knowledge and life; coincidentally furthering the well being of our collective universe. 

The four sources of evidence are perception, memory, introspection and reason.

Perception

The mind processes external information by perceiving evidence from our five senses. Now, each of us vary to the degree of which we can use our senses, some of us may be lacking one or two of them, but the potential is there for the human body and mind to see, smell, touch, taste and hear external and internal stimulus. Which, provides evidence for physical objects as we perceive and store experiences into our memory. 

Memory

You like me, rely on memory to act in certain situations, and retain information from our past to use for present and future instances. Aside from the four sources of evidence our memory can pull resources from experts, published content, cognitive processes and research & development.

Introspection

In fact, we develop habits based on our memory as we introspectively act to attain a third source of evidence. By way of mental states such as being hungry and eating, tired and sleeping, emotional and crying, or fantasizing about the future or whatever else you dream of. Most of the time these mental states are autonomous, but we are able to survive and adapt by using our fourth source of evidence. 

Reason

Reasoning grants you and I with the privilege to rationalize our thoughts and behavior, along with other variables. This is done by recognizing variables that follow from other variables. In turn making another variable probable, because we are able to learn from our mistakes and attain valuable knowledge to prevent unwanted behavior. 

Conclusion

Perception | Introspection | Reason | Memory

These four sources of evidence allow each and everyone of us to attain and retain knowledge as we survive and adapt with our very own experiences. Furthermore, knowing this will allow you to become far more effective with any situation you face. After all, you are the reliable authority to face a situation and seek understanding, luckily for you, other reliable authorities have already experienced similar issues who can be of assistance. 

Enjoy 

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.