THE CATHEDRAL VIDYA SCHOOL LONAVALA

TOPIC NUMBER: 4

To what extent do we need evidences to support our beliefs in different areas of knowledge?

Candidate Name: Gandhi, shelly Candidate Session Number: 004669-015 Session: May 2011 Word count: 1548

Shelly Gandhi 2

"It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition."1 As truly said by Bertrand Russell, it is considerable to call evidence as one of the basis for a belief. At first sight, evidence seems to be core of many beliefs as most of our practical life is based upon it. However, on a deeper look, the phrase “To what extent” suggests that there may be a limit to the dependence of beliefs on evidences. Indeed, there are several thought provoking questions to this statement- are beliefs always based on evidence? Is there something called perception, inner voice, gut feel or sixth sense (I will call this „intuition‟)? Nevertheless, the answers to these questions lie in nature of the subject and to explain the same, I first need to describe meaning of evidence and belief. In general, Evidence is defined as a piece of information that forms ground for any theory, belief or conclusion. On the other hand, beliefs are defined as certain set of values or perceptions of a person. By definition itself, it is clear that Evidence is also the base (ground) for belief but experience tells us that human beliefs are constructed from a mix of reasoning, emotions and perception/intuition. Just to reinforce difference between evidence-based beliefs versus intuition-based belief, we analyse a crime situation where a mother believes that her daughter was kidnapped by the lady‟s own husband. Her belief is solely based on intuition until video recorded by an eyewitness appears.