What is empirical evidence?

[fromderinside]

EB may choose to accept or reject the subjective evidence he has that he is looking at a keyboard, but that particular question would probably lend itself to repeated third party observations, if it was important enough to him to validate or falsify it that way.

Wow. We're up to the 1820s.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Exactly. Why the fuck are we re-inventing the wheel just because someone in France took his first bong hit?

 

[ronburgundy]

You are making stuff up.

Please look again at the definition.

See? Not one mention of the four words you used here, "supports", "verifies", "conclusion" and "hypothesis".

Wow. that might win the award for the most intellectually dishonest post ever on these boards, and that is quite a high bar.

You posted a definition in your OP, and now have cherry picked 1/6th of it (1/2 of 1 of the 3 parts of the definition), cutting out the rest in order to claim I am "making stuff up".
Here is the full definition you yourself provided as the basis for your OP.
[P]

empirical
adj.
1.
a. Relying on or derived from observation or experiment: empirical results that supported the hypothesis.
b. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment: empirical laws.
2. Guided by practical experience and not theory, especially in medicine.

[/P]

Gee, notice the underlined words in your provided definition that correspond to the words you claim I "made up".
And "conclusion" is logically implied by the definitions. It is the the unstated thing that is verified, supported, and that "relies upon observation".

So, "empirical" just means relying on or derived from observation or experiment. That's not enough for you?

No, it is not enough for anyone who understands basic grammar and wants to have an honest intelligent discussion about your stated topic of "empirical evidence". "Empirical" by itself is an adjective whose specific meaning is derived from the noun that it modifies. The thing that has the property of relying upon observation is the process of evaluating hypotheses and conclusions.

That's also how language work. If you need more than a line or two to define one word, it's probably because your definition doesn't fit with what most people mean. Open any English dictionary if you don't believe me.

I just need to look at your own provided definition to show you are definitively wrong (or just understand what an adjective is).

So, then we must specific what those terms refer to.

Are you saying that you don't understand "rely on", "derive from", "observation", "experiment"?!

So, no, there's no reason that we would have to define those words beyond whatever definition they have in an English dictionary.

Really? because rely means "depend" and "derive" means "obtain". Precisely how are you going to depend upon observation? People can depend upon something emotionally. Are you depending emotionally on an observation when you engage "empirical" (note the absurd lack of meaning when the word "empirical" is used devoid of a noun referent as you insist.)
There are countless ways that something can be "obtained". Do all of them count as providing empirical evidence? You can derive oil from a well. Are you gonna stick a drill in the experiment and see what spurts out? Are you only going to use formal deductive logic to derive something from an observation? Because that won't get you very far which is why virtually no science does so. If you use inductive reasoning, well, that is just the kind of thing that I was referring to.
IOW, you anemic definitions don't get us remotely close to understanding anything about what empirical evidence is.

An observed event is evidence for an idea to the extent that idea predicted an event that was not predicted otherwise, and/or can explain an event that cannot be explained otherwise, and the prediction is improbable by random chance (that is where precision come in b/c the more precise the prediction, the more possibilities it does not include and thus the less probable that one of the possibilties included in the prediction would be observed by mere chance.

That's not what the word "evidence" means:

Evidence
Evidence is anything that you see, experience, read, or are told that causes you to believe that something is true or has really happened.

So, if I fart and that causes me to believe that you cannot reason about the meaning of words, then I have evidence that you cannot reason about the meaning of words. Gottcha, but nope. While your posts certainly provide evidence of this, my farting experience would not be evidence of it.

What you are describing is simply things than might motivate a person believe something. Evidence refers to facts and information that can actually indicate whether or not that belief is true (IOW, is objectively accurate). Some observations and experiences are just motivations to believe and some are evidence that the belief is true. The application of reasoning, such as I described regarding explanatory power, is what determines which are which and to what degree.

Sorry, but we're apparently not speaking the same language.

The only valid thing you've said.

Me, I speak English.
EB

No, you speak internally contradictory nonsense ignorant of basic English grammar and of how formal definitions of isolated words that inherently must oversimplify fail to capture important nuance in complex concepts like empirical evidence.

 

[Speakpigeon]

And then, non-empirical evidence. Here, I’ll give just two examples.

One, that you don’t see a dragon is empirical evidence, but it is not empirical evidence that there is an invisible dragon. And it may well be evident to you that there is an invisible dragon. So, this in itself would be empirical evidence. But, that you don’t see a dragon is not evidence that there is an invisible dragon.

Second, that there are people who believe in God is empirical evidence but not empirical evidence that God exists.
EB

Just to clarify, by "non-empirical evidence" you do NOT mean evidence that is non-empirical (which is what I would say that logical arguments are), but rather you mean things are not evidence, empirical or otherwise?

"It may well be evident to you that there is an invisible dragon". So, no, unfortunately, that you don't see any invisible dragon may be evidence that there is no invisible dragon because evidence is anything "that causes you to believe that something is true" (see definition below). There's nothing particularly rational to it and as such isn't open to any contradictory process as empirical evidence is.

Evidence
Evidence is anything that you see, experience, read, or are told that causes you to believe that something is true or has really happened.

With that in mind, I agree. The lack of seeing a dragon is not evidence of an invisible dragon, precisely for the same reasons that determine whether not seeing a dragon is evidence of no dragon. While an invisible dragon does predict not seeing it, the exact opposite claim of "no invisible dragon" makes the same prediction. Thus, there claim of an invisible dragon lacks predictive power relative to the alternatives. The only way that not seeing a dragon would be evidence of an invisible dragon would be if you already had sufficient evidence that a dragon was definitely in your bathroom, then not seeing him would be evidence he was invisible, presuming you could rule out him having escaped.

As for God, again, the lack of evidence for God provided by belief in God is due to their being many other plausible ways to explain the observation that people belief in God. Thus the theory that God exists lacks explanatory power relative to the alternatives.

Not seeing a dragon, if it causes belief, is evidence of an invisible dragon for the person "affected", but not empirical evidence because it is not open to any contradictory process; something which is implicit in the notion of observation. Empirical evidence is subject to qualification: good empirical evidence, bad, better etc. Non-empirical evidence is just evidence which is immune from contradictory evidence. Hence, belief in God based on non-empirical evidence is immune from contradictory evidence. So is qualia as qualia, although qualia are also empirical evidence of just about anything we accept as real.

Predictive power is obviously very important but it's not decisive. Predictive power is used to rationalise empirical evidence into an economically justifiable process.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Wow. that might win the award for the most intellectually dishonest post ever on these boards, and that is quite a high bar.

You posted a definition in your OP, and now have cherry picked 1/6th of it (1/2 of 1 of the 3 parts of the definition), cutting out the rest in order to claim I am "making stuff up".
Here is the full definition you yourself provided as the basis for your OP.

empirical
adj.
1.
a. Relying on or derived from observation or experiment: empirical results that supported the hypothesis.
b. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment: empirical laws.
2. Guided by practical experience and not theory, especially in medicine.

Gee, notice the underlined words in your provided definition that correspond to the words you claim I "made up".
And "conclusion" is logically implied by the definitions. It is the the unstated thing that is verified, supported, and that "relies upon observation".

I don't cherry pick.

First, the two words "supported" and "hypothesis" are not part of definition (a). They are only given as part of the example sentence and cannot be assumed part of the definition.

Second, verifiable is part of the second definition. The first definition given is always the sense most frequently used. So, there are two senses, I'm only talking about the most frequent one. You can't mix these different meanings, even if they are closely related as indicated by the fact that they are (1a) and (1b).

And "conclusion" is not logically implied. A conclusion is a formal operation which will be there in case of an experiment but may not be there in case of a simple observation.

So, if you still think I'm intellectually dishonest then we can stop here because you are intellectually sloppy and biased. You are selectively reading the definition because you are biased and you are sloppy because you're not even aware of it.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

So, "empirical" just means relying on or derived from observation or experiment. That's not enough for you?

No, it is not enough for anyone who understands basic grammar and wants to have an honest intelligent discussion about your stated topic of "empirical evidence". "Empirical" by itself is an adjective whose specific meaning is derived from the noun that it modifies.

Please explain how exactly "basic grammar" supports your position?

The thing that has the property of relying upon observation is the process of evaluating hypotheses and conclusions.

Again, there's no mention "hypotheses" and "conclusion" in the definition of empirical.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

That's also how language work. If you need more than a line or two to define one word, it's probably because your definition doesn't fit with what most people mean. Open any English dictionary if you don't believe me.

I just need to look at your own provided definition to show you are definitively wrong (or just understand what an adjective is).

What are you talking about?! All definitions I provided are short one-liners. Three definitions, three short lines:

empirical
adj.
1.
a. Relying on or derived from observation or experiment.
b. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment.
2. Guided by practical experience and not theory, especially in medicine.

Or is it that you mistook these three definitions for just one definition?!
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Are you depending emotionally on an observation when you engage "empirical" (note the absurd lack of meaning when the word "empirical" is used devoid of a noun referent as you insist.)

Please quote the relevant bit in my post and explain how that supports your claim here.

You can't have any rational debate if you're just pleased with yourself throwing unsupported claims about what I say.
EB

EDIT
I'll wait for that before resuming addressing the rest of your post.

 

[Speakpigeon]

This conversation makes me wonder if "empirical", "objective" and "scientific" all have different meanings.

Well, it's easy because you've classified them correctly.

Empirical is any observation.

Objective is empirical and therefore observation but one subjected (so to speak) to third-party confirmation.

Scientific is empirical and objective plus, essentially, a method.

And in some many scientist, an ideology, like in all mass organisation. Ideology in this case works essentially like in any group of people trained by and dependent on the organisation they work for.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

And in some many scientist, an ideology, like in all mass organisation. Ideology in this case works essentially like in any group of people trained by and dependent on the organisation they work for.
EB

... except all evidence suggests what is organized this way works without exception. Scientific observations must the the result of extreme luck.

 

[steve_bank]

Thomas Edison knew little sconce, He was almost entirely empirical. In this context he made large numbers of trial and error solutions to the problem of a filament of an incandescent light bulb.

On the other hand Einstein's solution to the problems with Newtonian gravity and space were mostly theoretical;, later proven by empirical demonstration and evidence.

The same can be said of Maxwell and electromagnetics.

 

[Speakpigeon]

This is empirical evidence:

Exactly. Why the fuck are we re-inventing the wheel just because someone in France took his first bong hit?

Dogma.

Anything goes to dismiss criticism as long as this can preserve the sanity of the dogmatic mind.
EB

- - - Updated - - -

Thomas Edison knew little sconce, He was almost entirely empirical. In this context he made large numbers of trial and error solutions to the problem of a filament of an incandescent light bulb.

On the other hand Einstein's solution to the problems with Newtonian gravity and space were mostly theoretical;, later proven by empirical demonstration and evidence.

The same can be said of Maxwell and electromagnetics.

Yeah and pretty much everything we do in life when we're not insane somehow.
EB