At Fri, 12 Feb 1999 13:36:31 -0800, you wrote:
>
>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
If it is a strand of the murderer's hair, it is different from happenstance hair A and happenstance hair B at the scene in a different way than A and B are different from each other, for it is possible/potential evidence and they are not. Reconsidering my earlier assessment of color and sound, undetected air pressure differences and photons are potential sound and color (so long as ears and eyes exist); this potential is actualized should they interact with ears and eyes.
Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher