Objective Direct and Indirect Evidence, and Subjective Inferences

[Jim]

@dga471

If by “unaided observation” you mean observation “by the naked eye” or observation similar to the things we find in everyday life, I would say that that among scientists, it’s probably more common to distrust such unaided observations, because selection bias and noise is rampant.

So since I’m not really concerned with that particular aspect, I’m not sure if what you covered in directly observable is directly related or not. (No pun intended. Kinda ) And you are right, what I did mean by unaided observation is “by the naked eye.” However, there is another distinction which I brought up which I’m not sure you were aware of from what you posted.

The main distinction I’m brining up is between subjective and objective. So objectively confirmed unaided observations would be things that no one would dispute, like the apparent features of a cat, or a dog, say. I’m not so much concerned with measurement, but with features of reality, like, we don’t observe things popping into and out of existence. Does that make sense?

I’ll repost here my comment on different distinctions I’m concerned with.

@Jim

I’m trying to work this out. I’m not sure how to distinguish between something directly detected, and something directly observed. I guess detection would be in a sense direct access, but just very limited access. So I guess there would be degrees of being directly accessible, some providing a more complete picture than others.

But, when I say indirect empirical evidence, I essentially mean empirical evidence used to infer something that cannot itself be objectively verified. Empirical evidence used to infer possible explanations of how past events like OOL could or couldn’t have happened would be an example of this.

Though it might be more clear in some sense to just use the already available term of scientific fact, when I say direct empirical evidence, I mean an entity/event that is directly accessible to objectively verifiable observation or detection, and has been empirically confirmed by multiple observations or detections.

E.g., the existence of Pluto is an established fact, i.e., objectively confirmed through multiple direct observations using a telescope. There may need to be more distinction made here, but that’s the general gist of it.

To approach it from another angle, there are subjective inferences, and objective confirmations. Subjective inferences would be dependent on indirect empirical evidence and/or logical proofs. Whereas objective confirmations would be a result of direct empirical observations and/or logical proofs. In other words confirmations are established facts that are not susceptible to subjectivity.

I’m not real familiar with LIGO, but I would say a detection is direct access, but in the most limited sense. It provides a very small piece of the whole. Now LIGO may be described as a multiple instrumentation detection as opposed to a single instrumentation detection, like, say, a microscope.

But whether or not that distinction is necessary I’m not sure. Guess it would depend on the context. So with LIGO I would say if it is indeed shown to be accurate, it confirms the existence of CGW, but only provides a very limited picture of their existence.

Now I’m no philosopher, nor do I pretend to understand all of the scientific terminology, but I’m just trying to come up with a general way of making distinctions in order to be able to discuss these issues in a way that I, and maybe others like me, can follow and make sense of what’s going on in a discussion.

I’m not claiming this is the perfect way to go about the distinctions, and there are probably adjustments that would need to be made. It’s just an attempt on my part to provide a somewhat coherent way to keep a conversation on track.