Tillers on Evidence and Inference: 03/28/2010

Monday, April 05, 2010

A Closer Look at Spindle Law's Evidence Module

Top level:

Proof:

Admissibility:

Weight and sufficiency:

See the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Inference from Signs

People long ago -- in the ancient Greek world -- talked much about inference from signs. Indeed, what we today call factual inference was not discussed under the heading "evidence," which then had a quite different meaning. See James Allen, Inference from Signs: Ancient Debates about the Nature of Evidence (Clarendon 2001). By the late 19th century talk about inference from signs was largely passe [accent over the "e"]. However, Charles Saunders Peirce revived talk about signs. The strange breed of theorists known as semioticians aside, scholars today do not think about signs the way the ancients did. Rather, theorizing about signs is viewed an adjunct to abductive inference. However, the ancient debates about inference from signs -- or, in any event, some of those debates -- may be pertinent to modern theorizing about drawing inferences about matters such as human writings and utterances. Moreover, although we do not want to import "intelligent design" theories into modern theorizing about inference, some sort of talk about evidence as some sort of cosmic "sign" may be necessary -- because, as Einstein and others have noted, that the universe is or can become (to some degree) intelligible to the human mind is a great mystery (and it is doubtful that crude forms of evolutionary biology will resolve this mystery in a non-circular way).

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Redone Taxonomy of First Part of the Law of Evidence and Proof

I have tentatively redone the outline of the first part of Spindle Law's evidence module. The major sections of the the first part of my taxonomy of the law of evidence now look like this:

Do you approve? Disapprove?

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Disappearing and Moving Corpses, Statistical Analysis, and Causal Explanation

In an earlier post I mentioned Stanislaw Lem's The Investigation, which was originally published in Polish in 1959. As I reported earlier, in Lem's novel "corpses mysteriously begin disappearing from mortuaries in and near London. A statistician is brought in to help with the investigation." I have not yet read the whole book. However, I skimmed ahead this morning and I found that the statistician has reappeared. In the interim, corpses have apparently been moving about. The question is, perhaps, who or what has been moving them or making them move. However, the statistician -- Dr. Sciss -- believes that is the wrong question:

"This isn't a criminal investigation, it's a scientific study." He [Sciss] stood up and continued. "What do you want--an explanation? You'll get it, don't worry."
"... This case has nothing at all in common with criminology. No offense of any kind was committed, no more than when someone is killed by a meteor."
"You mean that the operative causes are ... forces of nature," Gregory [a police detective, the novel's hero] asked....
"... Can you define those 'forces of nature' you mention so glibly? The problem in this case is strictly methodological. ..."
...
"Please look over here." [Sciss points at a map of England. The map is covered with red speckling in different degrees of density.]
... "Do you recognize the lightest area over here?"
"Yes. That's the area of Norfolk where the bodies were stolen."
"Wrong. This map shows the distribution of deaths from cancer in England for the last nineteen years. The region with the lowest death rate--that is, less than thirty percent...--falls within the boundaries of the area in which the corpses disappeared. In other words, there is an inverse proportion; I have formulated an equation to express it, but I won't go into that because you wouldn't understand it." ...
"It is your primary duty to respect the facts. Some corpses disappeared. How? The evidence suggests they walked away by themselves. Of course, you, as a policeman, want to know if anyone helped them. The answer is yes: they were helped by whatever causes shells to be dextrorotatory. But one in every ten million snail shells is sinistrorsal. This is a fact that can be verified statistically. I was assigned to determine the connection between one phenomenon and other phenomena. That's all science ever does, and all that it will ever do--until the end. Resurrection? Don't be ridiculous. The term is used much too loosely. ...[T]he corpses moved around, changed their positions in space. I agree, but the things you're talking about are nothing but facts--I have explanations!"
...
"A phenomenon is subject to analysis only if the structure of its events, as in this case, conforms to a regular pattern. ... If I were to ask why a rock falls, you would reply that it is due to the actions of gravity. Yet if I asked what gravity is, there would be no answer. But even though we don't know what gravity is, we can determine its regular pattern of action."

I wonder how the story unwinds. I will have to find out. It appears that a motive force underlying the plot is a struggle between statistical explanation and causal explanation! Which one prevails? Or is the victor an entirely different type of explanation? If so, what?

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.