I think our witnessed, lived experience is all we have. It's all potentially valuable evidence, and must ultimately all be sifted through.
But I hope you'll agree - or at least agree to consider - that some of our witnessed experiences are more reliable as evidence of real world phenomena than others. And, if you're still with me, the question then becomes: what heuristics can we use to decide which experience to trust as evidence?
I'll suggest two:
- That the experience be Continuous or Repeatable
- And that it be Public
I hope the latter is clear. The more widely accessible a particular piece of evidence is, the more democratic it is, and the more trustworthy it will seem to more people. And if two people or groups of people have access to different, competing evidence, I think it's totally expected for them to believe different things.
And as for the continuous / repeatable bit, consider an example: In your head, you probably have a pretty accurate mental map of your home. And yet, if I asked you to navigate through your home with your eyes closed, you'd probably need to put your hands out frequently to feel where you were. Although your memory is good, it degrades over time, and doesn't compare to the continuous feedback provided by your hands (or your eyes, if you open them).
Similarly, although our thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams and memories are all valid, witnessed experiences, all undoubtedly useful for human's success as a species, and all inseparable parts of the human experience, they are likely not our best examples of usable evidence for the shared, physical world outside our heads. They help us understand the world, but they are a layer removed. By contrast, our senses of sight, hearing, etc are the best analog we we have to the shared / physical space, and are our continuous pulse on that reality.
Nothing is perfect in this world, and I'm not necessarily trying to throw out entire categories of experience altogether. But I do think that the more publicly accessible and continuously or repeatably observable our experiences are, the more fit they are to serve as reliable evidence. And the less public and less repeatable, the more dubious.
Does that seem like a fair starting point? Are there any points in there that you disagree with, or that you think would be subject to abuse?
