Empiricism & Evidence

One of the most established and reliable ways to demonstrate knowledge on an issue is to cite evidence to support a claim. 

 

When you evaluate evidence you engage in empirical analysis - looking to see what conclusions the available evidence supports, and determining if those conclusions are well-founded, mistaken, or made-up. 

 

Sometimes this process is very easy - there's lots of evidence for something, and no evidence that disproves it. Or there's no evidence at all to support a claim, and it's totally unfounded. 

 

But often, the truth is trickier than that, and we have to evaluate competing claims by examining the evidence for and against them. 

 

Often, in the complex real world, we can't be absolutely sure whether something is true or false. In most circumstances, we need to accept some uncertainty and ambiguity, and base our reasoning on the preponderance of evidence - what most of the available evidence suggests is true. 

 

This means that our understanding of the world might not be absolutely black and white - absolutely true and false. And that's often the best we can really do.