In epistemologyEdit

The guiding intuition within epistemology concerning the role of evidence is that it is
what justifies beliefs.[2][3] For example, Phoebe's auditory experience of the music
justifies her belief that the speakers are on. Evidence has to be possessed by the believer
in order to play this role.[5] So Phoebe's own experiences can justify her own beliefs but
not someone else's beliefs. Some philosophers hold that evidence possession is
restricted to conscious mental states, for example, to sense data. [3] This view has the
implausible consequence that many of simple everyday-beliefs would be unjustified. The
more common view is that all kinds of mental states, including stored beliefs that are
currently unconscious, can act as evidence.[5][12] It is sometimes argued that the
possession of a mental state capable of justifying another is not sufficient for the
justification to happen. The idea behind this line of thought is that justified belief has to
be connected to or grounded in the mental state acting as its evidence. [5][13] So
Phoebe's belief that the speakers are on is not justified by her auditory experience if the
belief is not based in this experience. This would be the case, for example, if Phoebe has
both the experience and the belief but is unaware of the fact that the music is produced
by the speakers.
It is sometimes held that only propositional mental states can play this role, a position
known as "propositionalism".[11][14] A mental state is propositional if it is an attitude
directed at a propositional content. Such attitudes are usually expressed by verbs like
"believe" together with a that-clause, as in "Robert believes that the corner shop sells
milk".[15][16] Such a view denies that sensory impressions can act as evidence. This is
often held as an argument against this view since sensory impressions are commonly
treated as evidence.[2][10] Propositionalism is sometimes combined with the view that
only attitudes to true propositions can count as evidence. [11] On this view, the belief that
the corner shop sells milk only constitutes evidence for the belief that the corner shop
sells dairy products if the corner shop actually sells milk. Against this position, it has
been argued that evidence can be misleading but still count as evidence. [5][3]
This line of thought is often combined with the idea that evidence, propositional or
otherwise, determines what it is rational for us to believe.[3][2] But it can be rational to
have a false belief.[17][18] This is the case when we possess misleading evidence. For
example, it was rational for Neo in the Matrix movie to believe that he was living in the
20th century because of all the evidence supporting his belief despite the fact that this
evidence was misleading since it was part of a simulated reality. This account of
evidence and rationality can also be extended to other doxastic attitudes, like disbelief
and suspension of belief. So rationality does not just demand that we believe something
if we have decisive evidence for it, it also demands that we disbelieve something if we
have decisive evidence against it and that we suspend belief if we lack decisive evidence
either way.[3][2][5]
In philosophy of scienceEdit
In the sciences, evidence is understood as what confirms or disconfirms scientific
hypotheses.[2][3] The term "confirmation" is sometimes used synonymously with that of
"evidential support".[9] Measurements of Mercury's "anomalous" orbit, for example, are
seen as evidence that confirms Einstein's theory of general relativity. This is especially
relevant for choosing between competing theories. So in the case above, evidence plays
the role of neutral arbiter between Newton's and Einstein's theory of gravitation. [3] This is
only possible if scientific evidence is public and uncontroversial so that proponents of
competing scientific theories agree on what evidence is available. These requirements
suggest scientific evidence consists not of private mental states but of public physical
objects or events.[3][8]
It is often held that evidence is in some sense prior to the hypotheses it confirms. This
was sometimes understood as temporal priority, i.e. that we come first to possess the
evidence and later form the hypothesis through induction. But this temporal order is not
always reflected in scientific practice, where experimental researchers may look for a
specific piece of evidence in order to confirm or disconfirm a pre-existing hypothesis.
[3] Logical positivists, on the other hand, held that this priority is semantic in nature, i.e.
that the meanings of the theoretical terms used in the hypothesis are determined by
what would count as evidence for them. Counterexamples for this view come from the
fact that our idea of what counts as evidence may change while the meanings of the
corresponding theoretical terms remain constant