Re: Re:virus: Old Tired Riddles (was: Scientists and Philosophers)

Tim Rhodes (proftim@speakeasy.org)
Fri, 12 Feb 1999 13:36:31 -0800

Joe wrote:

>>>Whether of not a murderer's hair strand is discovered at the scene of a
crime, and regardless of whether the constabulary (who perhaps have a bald man as their main suspect) search for it, it IS evidence. It is possible or potential, rather than actual, evidence, and occupies the same ontological status nor permits of the same phenomenological distinctions as, say, photons of a certain spectrum, which are constituted as color only if perceived.<<<

No, it is not evidence. It is a physical fact. "Evidence" is the interaction of physical facts with the desire to prove something. (Again, the analogy to sound.)

Without that desire the hair is not evidence. It is hair, and nothing more.

-Prof. Tim