To say it abstractly:
For an event to be evidence about a target of inquiry, it has to happen differently in a way that’s entangled with the different possible states of the target.
That means if I want to show evidence that waters changes its solid form by melting (target of inquiry), there must be evidence that I can freeze water (different possible state)?
And on top of that there must be evidence that gas can condense to a fluid and the fluid can vapourware into gas?
Is my rewritten interpretation correct?
I’m very sorry I have a hard time wrapping my head around this concept.
It seems to me you confused by overlap in meaning of word “state”.
In this context, it is “state of target of inquiry”—water either changes its solid form by melting or not. So state refers to difference between “yes, waters changes its solid form by melting” and “no, waters does not change its solid form by melting”. Those are your 2 possible states, and water itself having unrelated set of states(solid/liquid/gas) to be in is just coincidence.
Your example seems still confused to me. Maybe try something simpler like “Will it rain tomorrow? ” because you want to pack for a trip. There’s lots things you can inquire to figure out if this is likely. For example if it’s cloudy now that probably has some bearing on whether it will rain. You can look up past weather records for your region. More recently we have detailed models informing forecasts that you can access through the internet to inform you about the weather tomorrow. All of these are evidence.
There is also lots of observations you can make that are for all you know uncorrelated with whether it will rain tomorrow. Like the outcome of a dice throw you do. These do not constitute evidence toward your question or at least not very informative evidence.
I struggle with comprehending this sentence:
To say it abstractly: For an event to be evidence about a target of inquiry, it has to happen differently in a way that’s entangled with the different possible states of the target.
That means if I want to show evidence that waters changes its solid form by melting (target of inquiry), there must be evidence that I can freeze water (different possible state)? And on top of that there must be evidence that gas can condense to a fluid and the fluid can vapourware into gas?
Is my rewritten interpretation correct?
I’m very sorry I have a hard time wrapping my head around this concept.
It seems to me you confused by overlap in meaning of word “state”.
In this context, it is “state of target of inquiry”—water either changes its solid form by melting or not. So state refers to difference between “yes, waters changes its solid form by melting” and “no, waters does not change its solid form by melting”. Those are your 2 possible states, and water itself having unrelated set of states(solid/liquid/gas) to be in is just coincidence.
Thank you, your explanation of state made it easier for me to understand the meaning.
Your example seems still confused to me. Maybe try something simpler like “Will it rain tomorrow? ” because you want to pack for a trip. There’s lots things you can inquire to figure out if this is likely. For example if it’s cloudy now that probably has some bearing on whether it will rain. You can look up past weather records for your region. More recently we have detailed models informing forecasts that you can access through the internet to inform you about the weather tomorrow. All of these are evidence.
There is also lots of observations you can make that are for all you know uncorrelated with whether it will rain tomorrow. Like the outcome of a dice throw you do. These do not constitute evidence toward your question or at least not very informative evidence.
Thank you for your reply it helped me a lot.