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A note on the grammar of 'have evidence of'. Philosophers sometimes distinguish 'success terms' from not. 'Knowledge' is a success term. You can't know that P unless P is true. 'Belief' is not a success term. You can believe that P even if P is false. 1/
'Have evidence of' is a semi-success term. Or a not-fail term. As with belief, you can have evidence of P, yet P is false. But, like knowledge, there must be reasonableness. You can't have evidence of P, yet it is unreasonable to suspect /believe P, based on what you've got. 2/
This creates temporal anomalies. We would not say 'We have evidence that phlogiston exists.' That sounds too much like still being open to it. But we might say, 'the 18th century proponents of the phlogiston theory had evidence of its existence.' 3/
That second sentence is a bit odd and so would probably be followed by a clarification, consisting of an itemization of the more or less reasonable-sounding reasons they had. 'I'm not saying they were right, but they weren't just a bunch of kooks!' 4/
Probably we would just say, instead: 'the 18th century proponents of the phlogiston theory thought they had evidence of the substance's existence. But now we know there is no such thing as phlogiston.' That sidesteps whether what they had was/was not 'real' evidence. 5/
We sidestep to avoid the mild paradox of 'evidence' retroactively evaporating. We are torn between two options. On the one hand, if P is wrong, whatever you thought was evidence of P can't be, after all. Evidence is CAUSED BY what it is evidence of. No cause -> no evidence. 6/
On the other hand, evidence is what you can KNOW you've got in advance of any final verdict. 'I don't know whether Smith murdered Jones; I know I have evidence Smith murdered Jones.' Seen at the scene, had a motive, weapon recovered near his home, etc. 7/
Of course, if it turns out Smith was deliberately framed, I will stop saying 'I have evidence of Smith's guilt.' That would be misleading. (We owe Smith better.) We won't even say 'there was evidence of Smith's guilt'. Even that sounds too prejudicial, retrospectively. 8/
Suppose it turns out to have been all weird coincidences. Smith innocent, but no frame. He just happened to ... it just happened that, etc. I think we might say in such a case, 'there really was evidence.' That emphasizes the facial reasonableness of the initial suspicion. 9/
Then again, we might say 'everything that looked like evidence turned out not to be.' Smith's case has two salient features: innocence and coincidence. It's hard to give them equal, semantic emphasis, as we would like, so we wobble, even to the point of self-contradiction. 10/
What if Smith is bad? True, he is innocent of this particular crime, but he's done so many, his character and associates are so low. That he looks so guilty isn't really due to coincidence. He chose this life! I think we say 'there was evidence of Smith's guilt.' 11/
What if it's Smith's accusers who are bad? Admittedly, there were some curious facts of the case, but this pack of hounds was just baying for his blood. And it all turned out to be nothing. I think in this case we would not say 'there was evidence of Smith's guilt'. 12/
Here our sense of justice is dictating where proper emphasis is placed. It is very bad to persecute people to an unreasonable degree. If you have done so, that should be called out. You shouldn't get to hide behind some reed of 'evidence', which isn't really WHY you did it. 13/
Now, the Mueller Report. There is a vexing, vexed, ongoing dispute. It is almost incomprehensible to me, yet I am trying to comprehend it. Some people, who I regard as intelligent and amenable to reason and evidence, are maintaining the following. 14/
The Mueller Report establishes that there was 'no evidence' for Russiagate collusion allegations. Let's take Aaron Maté's new piece in "The Nation" as a representative statement. "Presents no evidence that ..." 15/
thenation.com/article/russia…
thenation.com/article/russia…
I'm with Wheeler, slapping down Maté, starting with her quote from the Report and rolling on from there. "A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts." 16/
But, unlike Wheeler, I don't want to get into the Report weeds. I want to back out, go back to Smith, notice that, and how, people's willingness to deploy 'was evidence' or 'was not evidence' seems to be a function of which overall moral frame they prefer for the whole story. 17/
Maté (and others) favor the following: basically, the story of Russiagate is the story of 'the Resistance' baying for Trump's blood in neurotic reaction to 2016. (Per 12 & 13, above.) When people act like that, you don't let them figleaf their failure with 'but evidence!' 18/
There are frame-like elements (per 8, above). It could be the Steele dossier is, genealogically, basically Russian disinformation. Certainly Trump has enemies; people are out to get him, and wouldn't scruple at mongering false Russiagate stories and rumors. 19/
Yet I (and others) don't see Russiagate as an 8, 12 & 13 combo (again, per above). Why not? First, it's still possible there WAS collusion, only Mueller couldn't get to it. /20
I'm not trying to keep the resistance flame alive: 'if only we can prove collusion this nightmare will end!' Yet: maybe collusion. So stuff that suggests it is 'evidence'. But maybe not collusion! And are we defining 'collusion' legally or what? /21
Back to Smith. Imagine a perfect storm of elements likely to confuse use of 'evidence'. Smith: innocent. (Let's stipulate, for argument.) Yet things point to him. There are elements of curious coincidence. There is also the fact that Smith is a low, suspicious character. /22
There is also the fact that some people are irrationally out to get Smith. But there is ALSO also the fact that some people, who are investigating his potential guilt, who may not like him, are rationally responding to (let's call it 'apparent') evidence. /23
Do we say, in this situation, that 'we have evidence of' Smith's guilt? Honestly, the term is fucked. It tries to be pragmatically responsive to context but this context is too complicated for the poor word to register all complications even-handedly and appropriately. /24
We get a Schrödinger's cat-grade is/is not. Is Trump Tower meeting 'evidence' of collusion? We can't say until that 'evidence' has a real observer. If the observer is mostly sore about the 2016 election and determined to find Trump guilty, then it's not. /25
But: if the observer is basically reasonable, then it is evidence. If there are two observers, one reasonable, one not, then it both is AND is not evidence of collusion. Conclusion: we should stop arguing about 'evidence'. /26
The fallacy that Maté and co are guilty of is this. They infer from the fact that there are some unreasonable collusion-boosters, relative to whom there is no 'evidence' of collusion, that therefore they cannot be reasonable collusion-considers, relative to whom there is. /27
All this 'no evidence therefore hoax' talk' should be dropped. It IS the case that there are/have been people so unreasonably determined to find Trump guilty that, in their minds, they have basically run a hoax. Yet, outside their minds, it isn't a hoax, necessarily. /28
Indeed, outside their minds it's NOT a hoax, actually. Because, per the Mueller Report, there is/was evidence of collusion. For those who regarded it reasonably. I'll stop. /29
One final tl;dr. We deploy 'evidence' to make sure moral emphasis is rightly placed. That we do so has confused the collusion-as-hoax crowd. Their point is moral: the 'resistance' is infantile. They misconstrue their own point as epistemic: the investigation was baseless. /30
