No Evidence is False

Abstract

URL identifying the publication in the King's Portal: [https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/no-evidence-isfalse(a49e8dcf-4994-477d-96a7-f9149debf4cc).html] 1No evidence is false Clayton Littlejohn Forthcoming in Acta AnalyticaIf evidence is propositional, is one's evidence limited to true propositions or might false propositions constitute evidence? In this paper, I consider three recent attempts to show that there can be 'false evidence' and argue that each of these attempts fails. The evidence for the thesis that evidence consists of truths is much stronger than the evidence offered in support of the theoretical assumptions that people have relied on to argue against this thesis. While I shall not defend the view that evidence is propositional, I shall defend the view that any propositional evidence must be true.

Hindsight bias is not a bias

“…Why is this? Well, to begin with, if you know H, you can rule out the hypothesis that A's evidence decisively tells against H. After all, truths cannot entail a falsehood, so if evidence can include only truths (Williamson 2000, Littlejohn 2013, then you can rule out A's having evidence which logically entails ¬H. Moreover, it is rational to believe that in the actual world, evidence is not generally misleading, and hence that a randomly selected body of evidence is more likely to support truths than falsehoods.…”

Learning from Learning from our Mistakes

“…They have been taken to show that knowledge isn't evidence, it isn't justified belief, and it isn't the norm of belief: E=K One's evidence includes p iff one knows p (Hyman 2006, Williamson 2000. KN: One shouldn't believe p unless one knows p (Littlejohn, 2013, Williamson 2000, Sutton 2007. J=K: One's belief about p is justified iff one knows p (Sutton 2007).…”

Approximate Truth, Quasi-Factivity, and Evidence

“…In order to see where and how the problems to be discussed in this paper arise, it is instructive to take a closer look at the motivation behind the view that all evidence must be true. Recently, there has been some important discussion of the nature of evidence qua its truth/falsity and Littlejohn (2013) is an instructive introduction to this debate. Littlejohn (2013) is also a spirited defense of the view that evidence must be true, and it is a direct response to some arguments against that view given by Fantl and McGrath (2009) and Rizzieri (2011), among others.…”