Evidence in the Dock | Nick Enfield, Timothy Williamson, Genia Schönbaumsfeld

Omari: think there's no such thing as qualia and I don't think there's anything ineffable in the sense that it can't be put into language and I don't think language misrepresents reality. It's true that there's snow on Mount Everest but not all languages have a word for snow. If we spoke this other language we'd have to choose another word like say ice. So once you get into the realm of truth you're not only invoking some attention to the world but you're also invoking some attention to the coordinate system I suppose which is a natural spoken language and that's a social, a piece of social reality. Hello and welcome to Philosophy for Our Time, the podcast brought to you by the Institute of Art and Ideas. I'm Amari Edwards. Today's episode will be diving into the heart of the docket. We'll be getting to evidence in the dock. Presiding over the matters, Jay Shapiro, who bring together three eminent speakers. I'll hand over Jay for the introductions, but I hope you enjoy and please do remember to subscribe to Philosophy for Our Times so that you never miss an episode. We turn to evidence to settle the matter, and we imagine it as evidence that confirms a scientific theory or perhaps the guilt of an accused. But perspective can result in evidence being interpreted radically differently. One person's terrorist becomes another's freedom fighter. More broadly, some argue that all so-called facts are context or theory dependent. And if evidence depends on perspective, it's no longer clear what counts as evidence in the first place. Unlike the French legal system that assumes evidence determines truth, the English system embeds opposing narratives, each employing their own evidence, to support a case. The same is true when physicists operate with different models of reality, recognizing that alternate frameworks can be used. So, the question, should we give up seeing evidence as the truth, and instead see it as a persuasive argument in favor of a given theory or narrative? Does evidence settle the matter? or is a counter-narrative always possible? If evidence is not the truth, how are we to choose between competing perspectives and models of the world? So, to discuss this, we have on the end, Nick Enfield. He's a professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney and director of the Sydney Center for Language Research. He is the author of Language vs. Reality and a newer book, I think, called What is Truth For?, which is very cool. Here is Timothy Williamson. He's an analytic philosopher and author of Knowledge and Its Limits. He's a senior research fellow at New College Oxford and former Wickham Professor of Logic. And to my left is Gania Schoenbaumsfeld. She's a professor at the University of Southampton and the author of several books, most recently Wittgenstein on Religious Belief. So first a round of applause for all of my guests. Great. Now. Try to earn that applause and we'll start with the opening pitch. We're gonna start with Nick. So the opening pitch, should we give up on seeing evidence as determining the truth? Well, hopefully people can hear me. Thank you very much for the kind introduction and it's a great pleasure to be here. Should we give up on evidence, finding the truth? Well, no, I don't think so. So probably like most of you, I think truth matters and to get to that truth. We usually have to give reasons for why we think something is the case or not. So if I tell you that there's milk in the fridge and you come home and there's no milk in the fridge, then kind of matter that I lied to you or that these mushrooms are good to eat and they turn out to be death caps. It matters. So truth obviously matters. And when we are coordinating around facts, we're using language to do so. So. My interest in all of this is the role of language as a kind of filter, I guess, given the fact that when we are trying to explain why we think something's the case, we have to go through language to get there. Because I'm not talking about what we individually believe, but about what we are able to do together. So that means we've got to really think about the role of language as a kind of selective filter and language is incredibly selective of the reality. So an example might be something like our kinship terminology. If I say something about your aunt, if I'm speaking English or about my aunt, we're speaking English, you can't tell if I mean my mother's sister or my father's sister. You can't tell if it's the older sibling or the younger sibling. Another language would make that specific. So, linguistically, you're always leaving certain information out and adding certain information. So in evidence, just to think about the kind of, now you're gonna cut me off, it's three minutes, right? I don't know if we're there, but I won't be long. I think in the courtroom, it's really interesting to look at the interplay between the different versions of a story that gets constructed using language. So one study, really interestingly compares the way that a lawyer is talking about a situation. A particular study comes from a rape case. The victim is, it said, this was a bar that you went to where girls and fellas go to meet. She says, people go there. The lawyer says, he sat with you. She says, he sat at our table. So these are seemingly subtle distinctions in how we describe a state of affairs, but given the situation at hand, they're consequential differences depending on what we accept. So I guess my bottom line is to say that I think truth is there and we can find it, but because words are filters and they're highly selective and because we need them to get at the truth, a lot of care needs to be taken. not only within one language, but also trying to think about what the limits of our own language are compared to the many other languages spoken in the world. So that's, Roli. Yeah. That's Tim. Why don't you respond? Yeah. So I mean, I don't think we really have any alternative but to use evidence as our best guide to the truth, least on most matters, because evidence isn't something that's always very fancy and like scientific evidence or legal evidence. It's really just anything that you know that... in some way bears on the relevant issues. So for example, if you'd had no evidence that there was going to be a festival here today, you wouldn't have come. So that you were using evidence in coming here. And there's no huge mystery about the relation between evidence and... what is evidence for and so on, because we've got pretty good probabilistic mathematical models of how evidence works in those kinds of ways that enable us to understand the relation. And if we were to call into question this whole idea that we should be guided by evidence or that evidence is some kind of guide to the truth, or not an infallible guide, but maybe the best guide that we have, then we would have to give up the idea that what the evidence indicated was our best guide, for example, to whether vaccines work or to whether there's man-made global warming. And if we stop trying to use evidence, at least to give us our best shot at giving the correct answer to those questions, then there are all sorts of really horrible political repercussions, some of which to some extent we're already living through. So we absolutely need evidence, even though it's not always easy to recognize what our evidence is and what is not genuine evidence. Yeah. I think we'll get much more into evidence versus truth in those words. But there is evidence that there's a festival going on. I think we can hear that. Yes, so I'm also of the view that evidence is important and doesn't always have to be fancy. And furthermore, I think it's a mistake to think that if facts are context dependent in the sense that you need a context in order to work out what the facts are, I think that's harmless and does not imply that A, we can't work out what the evidence is just because it's contextualized. or that it's not objective. So for that reason, I don't think we should give up on the idea that evidence determines the truth because I also think that if we do that, it can lead to very dangerous consequences. mean, going back to the law case, you know, having objective evidence for someone's guilt, for example, is really important. And what does it mean to have objective evidence? Well, it means that, for example, we're relying on eyewitness accounts, on forensic DNA evidence, and so on. Not to rely on such things would mean, say, for example, intimidating witnesses to say what someone wants. So, you know, if we give up on the idea that there is something that it is for evidence to be objective, then tyrants could just use... you know, any fabricated story to basically substantiate their show trials, et cetera. We've all seen this in history. So I think it's very dangerous. And I think at the root of this whole question lies a mistaken assumption, namely the assumption that unless we somehow have a completely perspective-less perspective, what Thomas Nagel once famously called a view from nowhere, unless such an impossible view is possible, we can't really have fully objective knowledge. And again, I think that's a mistake because the idea of a view from nowhere isn't really coherent. And the absence of such a thing doesn't mean that we can't have kind of perfectly bog standard knowledge and facts and we can debate about that. And as long as we understand or make an effort to understand what other people mean, so attending to the context is really important. But I don't think language stands in the way of us getting access to the world or to what the facts are. And I think to think otherwise can have dangerous consequences. There's general agreement. Nobody wants to give up on evidence as maybe our best. We shouldn't give up because we need it. But I guess my question, I'm going to start with you, Tim, in this sort of into the first challenge is are there kinds of facts or truths that are achievable and gettable that have only one, we talked about this before, valid interpretation or true interpretation, whether it's achievable or gettable through language, I also want you to address, but is there one really out there, something really true happened? Well, so yes, I mean, it's really true that there is a festival going on here right now. And it's not that somehow that's relative to something else. just is true. But you were also putting it in terms of, is there only one interpretation? And if by interpretation you mean some kind of account of what the significance of this is, then for sure there are always many different interpretations. a musicologist and a sociologist might have very different interpretations of this. festival and the accompanying soundtracks that we're getting. And so you can interpret things in the sense of connecting them to some kind of context in many different ways, but that doesn't alter the fact that there really is something, a difference between true and false that isn't just to do with what people's opinions are. But yeah, is it gettable, Nick, wanting to respond? Well, I would... actually like to suggest that we can't know if this is a festival or not apart from the fact that it says it's a festival on the sign. Now that's what makes us all agree that it's a festival but what I want to suggest is completely hypothetical but imagine that there are laws around what you can do in this park and it turns out the new law comes in which says you can't have a festival in this park. but you can have a party or you can have a gathering or God knows what, but some other word. And then it matters just purely for some kind of arbitrary legal purpose. And we often see these kinds of things that will, because the new law comes into effect or something, then we'll say, okay, it's not a festival, it's a gathering or it's a conference or it's a seminar set or whatever you like. I think then actually it would be an interesting, the claim as to whether it's a festival or not would actually become consequential, it becomes a substantial one where you might have to defend the idea that it's not a festival in a session of the local council when you're applying for your permit to hold this event. right, so I think, I don't know if that raises any challenge to your point, but I don't want to, I don't quite agree that it's completely straightforward to say this is clearly a festival. I mean, there are criteria of use for words. So whether something is a festival or a gathering or a party, I mean, most users of English know the distinction between these things and occasionally lines might be blurred. But we do have criteria of application. So, I mean, we can settle the question whether something is a festival or merely a gathering. so I don't really see the problem there. Sometimes cases might be controversial and people might have different views, but there are perfectly good answers to these questions. that's, that's, that's fascinating to me that, I I completely agree that you, that there are cases where everyone would agree this is not a festival. So if we just were having a cup of coffee at home, it would not be. No reasonable person perhaps would say, okay, this is a festival. But I think we have so many words in our languages and so many of them overlap to such a degree that when it becomes, when it really matters to settle on a particular description for a thing, I think that there's always kind of wiggle room. So clearly I agree with you that there are reasonable expectations about what words mean, but I don't think they can always be settled. Nick, do you want to? walk through the heap fallacy. I think we're on it right now, because there's this temptation for what you're saying, for people to say, well, then do festivals even exist? Do you want just to put that marker in the same? Well, mean, you're talking about the heap fallacy, suppose, where you put one being there, and when does it actually become a heap. I don't think the question is whether heaps exist. I don't think that's not what it's about. So clearly, festivals exist. I'm happy with that. The question is, when does it go from not being one to being one? And I guess my view is that there is a, I mean, basically in the idea of applying for a permit to run an event, it's like a power struggle over who's going to decide that this counts as a festival or not as a festival. So it's a consequential question rather than a philosophical one. And if there is a bit of leeway, then presumably it's the person who's in charge, the one who signs the form or gets the money from the... who's going to declare, this is a festival, therefore you are allowed to put your word festival on your paperwork. Timothy, do you want to... I that's really good with... So, I mean, of course it's true that there are borderline cases of festival. I mean, if this festival got smaller and smaller, there'd be a point where we just weren't sure whether it was still a festival or not. But as it happens, this is not a borderline case. The kinds of issues that philosophers are... interested in with borderline cases and vagueness in terms is whether our standard kinds of logic, which are based on a dichotomy of true and false, whether they still work for vague languages. And of course, if they don't, then that's a lot of trouble because so much of our language is vague. my own view is that actually standard logic is perfectly fine, even for very vague languages. There's a truth of the matter, either it's, even in the difficult cases, either it is a festival or it isn't, but we may not be able to determine which. And so we just have to live with that. And of course there are lots of alternative views about this. Like for example, some people may have heard of... fuzzy logic, which is a form of logic where instead of a dichotomy of true and false, you have a continuum of degrees of truth from perfectly true to perfectly false. And then people have tried to construct a logic on that basis. And I can tell you, you get into a horrible mess and you end up actually saying just as questionable things as if you take the very simple view that I defend on the logic of vagueness is really just standard logic. Yeah, let's shift this now into I really like what you brought in of like philosophically versus consequentially true. I think we're going to be going through like we're talking about legal terms where these lines become very important or applying for permits or whatever it is. But philosophically, I'm still a little bit unsure what you think if if truth and evidence, if there is such a thing as truth and evidence without consequence or without sort of a practical sort of consideration that determines the language we use and what we fight about. Does anyone want to respond to that? Is truth really out there philosophically? Maybe it was what you were saying, the view from nowhere. Yeah. So what I was saying is we should not suppose that only if a view from nowhere is possible. can there be such a thing as truth? So I think, yeah, I mean, the truth is out there. We all know this phrase. What does it mean? mean, truth as such doesn't exist. are only propositions that are true. People say true things. But in that sense, yes, I think it's a perfectly objective matter, whether, I mean, obviously it depends. on the complexity of the case and so on. But I mean, I think it's true that a festival is going on. And I don't think that vagueness about language implies skepticism. OK, so we've established we're at a festival, but I think it's good. Ten minutes in. But now can I bring it, which in the proposal where it says one man's freedom fighters, another man's terrorist, to bring in this question of moral facts. Is it possible to say that? Is there a truth about a terrorist and a freedom fighter? Or is that a different kind of fact or evidence? then I'll let you. Well, I think it is a different, I mean, we're talking about different things. I think if there are moral facts, they're not the same as empirical facts. But I also think that on moral questions in principle, there can be a truth of the matter. The question whether someone is a terrorist or a freedom fighter obviously always has very complicated kind of political implications and overtones. But in general, think killing people for a particular end is always a morally bad thing. And if you're supposedly doing it in the name of freedom, it's still a bad thing. might be mitigated by... know, various causes. But at the end of the day, I'm not a consequentialist in ethics. So I don't think the ends justify the means. Yeah. Do you want to respond to moral facts? Are they different than other facts? No, I don't think they're different. I think if you say that rape is wrong, you're committed to the the idea that it's true that rape is wrong. mean, that's just really the logic of the so, know, if you're not willing to give up all your moral views, then you are kind of implicitly committed to the idea of moral truth. But of course, it can be very hard to know and it can be very complicated. I mean, in the case that we were talking about, it could be that someone is both a freedom fighter and a terrorist because they might be using terrorism in order to fight for freedom. mean, there's no contradiction there. And then course, which description you use will depend on how sympathetic you are to that cause. Next to Avril. Well, kind of just coming back to this question about, you say that there's truth at all? I maybe just want to restate what was already said about true, what was already implied perhaps about true versus real. And I think that, you know, there's a real world is one kind of claim and another is that you wouldn't say there's a true world because as others have said, I think truth is a property of things we say. So that's true. It's either true or it's not true. And that implies two very different kinds of realms, I suppose. One is the realm of of atoms in the physical world and the other is the realm of ideas. And so once we get into that second realm, evaluating, you we don't get to just go and look at the world and test it. We also have to understand the internal, the nature of the claim that's being made about the world. So John Searle says, it's true that there's snow on Mount Everest and probably that there's a festival going on here, right? And we can agree with that, but not all languages have a word for snow. what exactly is being claimed here? If we spoke this other language, we'd have to choose another word like say, ice. Is that what was intended by the English language one? It's a little bit different, you see? So once you get into the realm of truth, you're not only invoking some attention to the world, but you're also invoking some attention to the coordinate system, I suppose, which is... a natural spoken language and that's a piece of social reality. Yeah. I mean, it's true that languages differ in what they can express. I mean, they don't differ massively, but they do differ somewhat. so there are propositions that can be expressed in one language and not in another. But whether the proposition is true or not doesn't depend on which language we're speaking or something like that. mean, whether given sounds, expressatrix varies from language to language. you know, I mean, the burro, you know, means donkey in Spanish and butter in Italian. that obviously the same sounds can be used to say something true or something false depending on what the language is. But the truth and falsity of what has been said isn't just dependent on language in that kind of way. sounded like you wanted to respond to the language that they do very drastically. Well, maybe it's just a side point of it. I think it's very important. But languages clearly do differ pretty radically in terms of the, at least just the vocabulary, the meanings of words. mean, all languages are going to have somewhere between 5,000 50,000 words. and very few of them are directly translatable. So you really have quite a vast difference in the tools that you can use to articulate things. I mean, think your point still stands that of course you can use language creatively to, I I gave the example before of aunt in English, of course we can say, well, my mother's older sister, if we need to be absolutely specific. So to a large extent, you know, we can overcome those language differences, but I, I don't want to say that they're not significant. you think the language doesn't determine reality? There is a real reality out there? Or how far would you go? Of course, there's a reality for sure. But I think what I want to emphasize is that as soon as we get into the position where we're talking about reality and we're trying to determine what's real or not, we've moved into a social coordination task. So we're actually having to rely on the terms that we agree on. I mean, you can't negotiate every single term in every single sentence. So, you know, we're really relying on a great deal of what is already embodied in the language. But also some subjectivity. So I'm thinking of an example like firm, somebody is firm versus somebody is obstinate. Is that, can we really determine what that is objectively by looking at the real world or is that a matter of framing? purely a matter of framing by the speaker. Right. Can I bring you in? So you recently just got a grant that, if I understand it correctly, is really interested in conspiracy theory. I mean, I this topic in particular in the world we're in now is important about access to truth and conspiracy theory. you finding things that concern you or cohere with your view about how truth is hitting and with language in the world that we're in now? Well, I I think what conspiracy theorists do, and I'm taking conspiracy theory in the pejorative sense, where a conspiracy theory is basically a more or baseless theory that people nevertheless believe. Of course, there are conspiracies and conspiracies go on all the time, but a conspiracy theory is a sort of outlandish construct where people believe things that are on the whole. more or less patently false. So one thing that conspiracy theorists tend to exploit is precisely the idea that there are no objective facts of the matter. It's just a way of interpreting the data and then they might latch on to sort of the idea of errand data that hasn't been properly explained and then a lot of skepticism is sowed in the minds of people who don't believe the conspiracy theory by saying, but look, what about all these weird things? Why did the 9-11 buildings collapse in this particular way? This must show that explosives were placed at various strategic points, otherwise they couldn't have all collapsed, et cetera. And of course, normal people who don't know about building construction and so on. are not going to know what to respond to that because they've not examined this, et cetera. So focusing on air and data and basically inviting other people to be skeptical of the so-called official account is one way of becoming, as in another context, someone has said, a sort of merchant of doubt who wants to get people to disbelieve the official story. I mean, of course, sometimes the official stories are wrong and there are conspiracies going on. So I appreciate Nick's point that, you know, things may sometimes be very messy and it may be difficult to get at the truth. But I think losing faith in the idea that we can arrive at the truth and that there are experts and that some people have a better idea of what's going on than others actually leads to a proliferation of conspiracy theories. fake news and people putting their faith in them. Yeah, or Tim, go ahead. So I mean, one, I mean, the conspiracy theory, that's a good case because you can really have a conspiracy theory about virtually anything. And in particular, for any piece of evidence whatsoever that someone presents, you can always... dream up some kind of wacky conspiracy theory according to which it's not genuine evidence after all and is just part of some kind of scam. so I think one thing that that brings out is that you can't make it a condition on something being genuine evidence that you're always going to be able to secure agreement on it amongst everybody because there will always be the awkward conspiracy theorists who denies it. And we know that these people, typically they just can't be reached by any kind of argument. They're just going to stick to their guns. And so if we say that their agreement to it is necessary for it to be evidence, then basically we're going to lose all evidence. And so we have to accept that sometimes something will be evidence even though people are rejecting it. And actually, in a way, that's pretty commonsensical because, mean, for example, suppose that you tell me that you've got evidence that you're starting a cold because you've got a sore throat or something like that. I I can say, no, you're just saying that because you want attention and sympathy and so on. You don't really have a sore throat. And I could go on insisting on that no matter what you said, which is a of like a mini conspiracy theory about that. But the point is that just because I'm insisting that you don't have a source right doesn't mean that you lose the evidence that you have a source right and you still have the evidence that you're starting a cold. And so we've got to stick to this somewhat awkward situation where something can be perfectly genuine evidence, even though there are people out there who deny it and that we will never be able to persuade to change their minds. Nick, I want you to respond. Well, these are great examples. I'm interested in the fact that for conspiracy theories, evidence giving or reason giving seems to actually be really important. so if you're looking at, example, someone saying 9-11 was an inside job or something about the buildings, the way they fell, it's not done just as an assertion. It's done by pointing at a granny video clip that says, look, see there's that thing there. That's my evidence. So there's still, it's still in terms of a kind of communicative practice, there's still evidence giving and it's not pure assertion. So I'm, I'm fascinated by. the slice of things that get conspiracy theories around them. It's usually where we don't have much knowledge about all of the underlying complexities, but one can pluck evidence. It's not that you can just make up anything. And I don't know if you work on the birds aren't real conspiracy. That one I don't understand. You know, the one where they say birds aren't real, anyway. But I think with this case of conspiracy theorists pointing to bits of evidence that's a crucial part of it. Often the last piece of that is to say the problem here is that the decision that gets made about what really happened is an official story that's backed by power. And so, you know, you were just saying to me that it's always possible to come up with an alternative. And someone who's radically skeptical might say, therefore, the only accepted alternative in the end is the one that is decided by the person with power. So I mentioned before the council worker who has the stamp, who gets to decide what a festival is and isn't. That's actually the reality. But that's just to say that there is no evidence at all and anything goes and... No, no, that's not because it's to say... Power wins, basically. Power wins is not saying that there's no evidence. So in that case... The conspiracy theorist still points to evidence. That's what I was trying to suggest earlier, but they're saying this is the evidence that matters. And the next person is saying, no, it's this other piece of evidence that matters. And then you're both playing an evidence game, but in the end, one of you prevails, just arbitrarily. weird thing about the evidence that conspiracy theorists tend to cite is that they basically don't hold the other side to the same standards as themselves. I mean, you know, they say all of this other evidence that people are citing against the theory, all of that will be dismissed and explained away by saying, well, this is what you would expect if you believe the official story. So the conspiracy manages to explain away all of the counter evidence while what they do is privilege these little bits of errant data. and on those they rest their entire building. And I mean, that is not, you know, honest kind of intellectual exchange. You know, if you dismiss all of the other evidence by saying, well, it's just, you know, part of this official story, so we don't need to care about it, well, then you ought to be a bit more skeptical about the stuff that you rely on yourself. And yet that isn't happening. So there is... something fishy going on there. mean, if it were genuinely, you know, two sets of evidence, more or less well balanced, then yes, maybe we should suspend judgment. But a lot of the time, there are bits of error data and then a dismissive attitude to anything backed by the official story. And that's kind of not entirely kosher, I think. Of course. So I don't want to imply that I'm coming into bat for the conspiracy theorists. But evidence is still a key part of it. I mean, I feel like I still feel that this question about authority really matters in the end because someone does, I mean, from the kind of, in terms of the consequences of these discussions we have and evaluations of evidence, okay, conspiracy theories are an extreme case, but in the end, a lot of the time when it matters, someone sort of gets the last word in some sense. So, I mean, know perhaps you'd say there was plenty of cases where, what, there was two glasses of water on the table here? Yeah, so we're not gonna. No one's going to end up being able to assert otherwise, but I think there's probably a large class of cases where it's too much wiggle room and someone just simply gets to decide in the end what the evidence stands for. Yeah. But I mean, in my experience, the countries where conspiracy theories are even more prevalent than they are in Britain are countries with a long tradition of the unreliable media where censorship and where you just people would not trust the official stories. so they're more prone to believe conspiracy theories because then they're not convinced by official assurances and so on. that means with things like conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines and so on. so, as were the kind of conditions in which they particularly thrive are ones where people actually don't trust the official media. so that the authorities can, I mean, they can, as it were, cover up the evidence and so on. it's not necessarily, it's not going to be the... authority's line that is believed because the theories are thriving on distrust of authority. I wanted to shift it back for the last bit, and I think it relates on this notion of authority, but I'm interested in truth and evidence and how much is trapped within our own subjective conscious experience that we perhaps even thought we were talking about this before, perhaps even at the moment you think something, it's now shaped by a kind of language that has altered it in some regard. Because when you're talking about terrorism or conspiracy theory or freedom fighters. I feel like there's this question of intention of an action, which feels like to me it slips out of the realm of something that I could potentially prove in some kind of way. The intention of somebody doing something, regardless of what happened when the buildings fell, the intention of it seems, does that escape the question of evidence and truth? Well, I think intentions manifest in actions. where actions also include what people say about something. So whether someone had an intention to do something, I think to settle the question whether it's true that someone had this intention, it's not actually enough just to ask the person. I mean, of course, you know, asking the person if they're truthful might help, but of course, there are such things as self-deception and so on. So people might themselves not be the most reliable guides regarding what their own intentions are. But I think actions speak louder than words. So, you know, for example, I say I have the intention to be charitable to people and then in action, I never actually manifest charity quite the reverse. I'm quite tight-fisted. I'm quite mean-spirited, etc. And this shows in all my actions, then, you know, my friends and the people around me might say, well, you only think... you've got the intention to be charitable, but actually you don't. It's not just a matter of you failing to be charitable because in order to fail, you at least sometimes have to be able to do it right. This seems to be a case where you simply never had the intention to start with. So I think obviously settling the question whether someone has an intention is more complex than settling the question of how many cups of water there are on the table. But nevertheless, In principle, these are also issues that can be settled. Yeah, I'm getting at the subjective, ineffable quality also of... Yeah. I mean, one thing to say, which I think relates to what you're asking about, is that it's important to emphasize that not all evidence is linguistic in form. So, for example, if I pointed a tree and I say that... that tree is dead and then you look at the tree and you get a whole lot of evidence which bears on the question of whether it's dead or not, whether the colour of the leaves and so on. But you probably wouldn't be able to summarise all that evidence adequately in words. It's evidence that you're getting in a specifically visual perceptual format. so we shouldn't think that as we're just looking at evidence through the lens of language captures all its dimensions. Nick, do you want respond to? Well, I think there's a kind of two-way street when we're talking about evidence. If we say something like, it dead? Are you charitable? You know, we're looking at the world in these interesting ways. But you can, so we say, to know if it's dead, we look at certain aspects of the tree to know if they're charitable, we look at certain aspects of their behavior. But what is constant in those examples is we have an idea of what dead means, which is an English word, and we have an idea what charitable means, which is an English word. So we're sort of assuming the meaning of this word is an anchor, right? It isn't really a sort of an objective anchor. It's something that's been learned. It's subjective. It's something that's kind of developed through the course of history of a group of people and this kind of thing. So I think there's always a sense in which we have to sort of do a reversal and remember that when we're evaluating evidence, we're evaluating it against words and commonly agreed ideas, which may or may not be unproblematic, but sometimes they are problematic. So yeah, just on that last point then though, I'm thinking of the ineffable subjective experience, what the philosopher's mind called qualia, does that lose, does that have some kind of truth in your view that is trapped inside of its own ineffable ephemeral experience that the moment it's even thought or expressed or painted or played on music, it has now altered into something symbolic or less true. I think that's right, but I wouldn't say true, I'd say real. So I think it's real before it emerges. if you try to articulate it, then what you're necessarily doing is being selective about what aspect of it you want to focus on. You're giving it some kind of... So I'll give you an example that in... I work on a language called Lao and in Lao, spoken in Laos, this language does not have a word... for deja vu. So this amazed me because I thought I understood that deja vu was just like a universal experience. And when I found out, when I tried to find the word for this in Lao, they said, you know, I tried to explain what it was and people looked at me funny and said, what is that? I've never had that experience of like remember as if it's remembering something that's happened, but you know, it didn't happen. Well, speaking then to neuroscientists about this problem, they said, well, maybe there's something that's much more diffuse as an experience. when you culturally, when you talk about it using language, what you're doing is giving some form, some shape to that thing. So that in my view, think that having language to talk about things, whether I experienced deja vu or not is actually something that's made possible by the history of language in a community. Timothy, last word on it? Well, I would just say. mean, it's not only humans who have evidence. mean, non-human animals have evidence. mean, a predator can have evidence about where the prey are and vice versa. so there are a bunch of cases like that where evidence isn't mediated by language at all because they don't have it. Yeah. So I think there's no such thing as qualia in response to your question. And I don't think there's anything ineffable in the sense that it can't be put into language. And I don't think language misrepresents reality because language is our only way of actually conceptualizing reality. And this shouldn't be seen as a barrier that stands between us and the world, but is rather our tool for making sense of the world. And languages are inter-translatable so we can learn the concepts other people use and therefore understand what they say and then assess what they say. So I think language is is key rather than a bad thing that distorts. Round of applause for everyone. Thank you. you've been listening to, Evidence in the Dock. Please make sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Share it with your friends and leave us a review. We really do read them. Thanks so much and we'll see you next week.