PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS RELEVANT TO THE FRINGE SCIENCES

GENERAL TRUTH:

THE “EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY IS NOT EVIDENTIAL” ARGUMENT

Dialectician 1. (a)If any kind of putative evidence is completely unreliable in the fringe sciences, then it is not of any use in justifying our belief in the truth of any proposition in this area — i.e., it is not really evidence at all in the fringe sciences. (b)As countless examples show, eyewitness testimony is completely unreliable as evidence in the fringe sciences. (c)Therefore, human eyewitness testimony is not of any use in justifying the belief in the truth of any proposition. It is not really evidence at all. [a,b,c Id+MP] (d)If something can be dissected, photographed, discussed, looked at, etc., then it can be used as evidence to justify our beliefs in things. (e)Physical evidence can be dissected, photographed, discussed, looked at, etc. (f)Therefore, unlike eyewitness testimony, physical evidence can be of use in justifying our belief in the truth of a proposition. (For instance, for a biologist to claim that a new species of animal exists, to name a new species, he or she has to have a type specimen.)[d,e,f Id+MP] Eyewitness testimony can be used to start a research project, but the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. (And physical evidence can constitute that proof.) The method of science embodies the two principles that, first, eyewitness testimony is poor evidence, and, second, that physical evidence is what is needed. (g)Therefore, anyone who accepts eyewitness testimony as evidence is not doing science, and his or her conclusions are not scientific. [Argument adapted from arguments by Michael Shermer: Larry King Live, on CNN, July 13, 2007 and Coast to Coast radio show, Aug. 1, 2007]

Dialectician 2. Dialectician 1, your wholesale condemnation of eyewitness testimony in the fringe sciences (at b) seems to me to be false — it represents an extreme view, a view which one might not expect to encounter in much real-world debate. But, in fact, skeptics all too often refuse to give any evidential weight at all to eyewitness testimony, and even in cases where a great deal of solid eyewitness testimony exists to support an extraordinary claim, the skeptical argument often includes the phrase “there is no evidence,” which is taken as being synonymous to “there is no physical evidence.” All eyewitness testimony in these cases is glibly, without any analytical appraisal of it, characterized as mere “anecdote.” Actually, it is easy to show definitively that it is false that “eyewitness testimony is completely unreliable as evidence,” a statement that is at least implicit in many skeptical arguments. Consider the following inductive argument:

My friend Don has, hundreds or thousands of times, told me the truth. I can’t recall a single time when he didn’t.
Don told me he saw a dog chasing a cat across his front yard this morning.
Therefore, a dog chased a cat across Don’s front yard this morning.

The above is an ordinary, totally unproblematic, example of inductive reasoning that provides a clear example where eyewitness testimony is evidential. Such examples are ubiquitous. If eyewitness testimony is of value in ordinary life, and, I might add, in courts of law, the burden is on the skeptic to show why it is not evidential in the fringe sciences. Also, consider this case:

If a respectable scientist describes, in a journal, an observation he made — an instrument reading, say, and another scientist repeats the experiment and reports the same result, we’re entitled to believe this eyewitness testimony.

So, eyewitness testimony is given its due in both ordinary life and in science. Juries, detectives and historians could not do their work if they shared the skeptic’s extreme view, a view that pits itself against ordinary induction.

Of course, much eyewitness testimony is, indeed, worthless as evidence. Those who uncritically accept all eyewitness testimony in the fringe sciences are making a mistake that is the mirror image of the skeptic’s. Clearly, some eyewitness testimony is evidential — some is even conclusive — and some is unreliable and not evidential at all. The task then is to determine whether or not a particular piece of eyewitness testimony is evidential, and if it is, to determine to what degree it is evidential. (The skeptic may reply in a particular case, “I meant to say that this particular eyewitness testimony is not evidential.” But this is then a new argument.) Any argument that fails to look at the relevant distinctions is unsophisticated and “clunky.”

Roughly speaking, the factors that determine the evidential value of any eyewitness account seem to be these:

1. The character of the witness.

2. The susceptibility of what’’s reported to multiple interpretations .

3. Corroboration: the existence of other witnesses to the same thing.

Dialectician 1, here’s a second point about your argument (see g): The question of whether or not a conclusion is “scientific” is best ignored in many cases. First of all, views on what exactly the word “science” means may differ. Moreover, although the skeptic’s argument often implies that if a belief was not arrived at via a scientific method, then it is not justified, science is clearly, by anyone’s definition, only one kind of rationality. Philosophers, historians, detectives, and people in ordinary life may not, by anyone’s definition, be doing science, yet they may well be forming beliefs in a rational way. In many arguments, the skeptic’s reply, “It’s not scientific,” may be factual but, actually, not a criticism. So the important question in most cases is not “Is this scientific?” but is “Does this particular testimony rationally justify belief, and, if it does, to what degree does it justify it?”

THE “EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS” ARGUMENT

Dialectician 1. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Dialectician 2. The Extraordinary Claims argument is so vague and so general, that it could probably be used convincingly, but not always legitimately, to dispose offhandedly of any and all evidence for any extraordinary claim whatever. It might be said against the most common use of this principle that any good evidence for extraordinary claims is extraordinary evidence, but let us examine the principle more closely.

The principle (first articulated by Carl Sagan) is this: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But what, precisely, does extraordinary mean here? In the phrase “extraordinary claims,” “extraordinary” cannot simply mean “astounding” or “fascinating,” or even “unexpected”; rather, it can only mean “improbable”, and in the phrase “extraordinary evidence,” the word can only mean “unusually strong.” Thus the principle actually amounts to this:

Improbable claims require unusually strong evidence.

The principle seems clearly to be a true principle. But, thus clarified, we can see that it does not apply to any claim unless there is something improbable about the claim.