Font Size: a A A

Research On Legal Philosophy Of Evidence Attribute

Posted on:2005-06-01Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:F GuoFull Text:PDF
GTID:2156360152956930Subject:Law
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The tendency that scholars of law are inclined to study attribute of evidence comes from the thinking habit of exploring hypostasis of everything. In order to study the substantial attribute of evidence, we should see about its basis of epistemology. In addition, as a juridical tool, evidence must be related with the value of people. Therefore, this thesis tries to reconstruct the frame of evidence attribute through analysis of epistemology and social value, in order to found a philosophical and rational starting point for evidence studies and legislation. The concept of evidence is an agonistic question among scholars. The Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates: "all the facts that can prove the real instance of the case are evidences." This interpretation enlarges human being's capacity of cognition, and does not accord the rules of epistemology. It is difficult to define evidence. We can only describe it through many different angles to approach its core meaning. Evidence can be generally described as: in narrow sense, within the range of legal proceedings, it is material that that confirms or disconfirms people with litigant's claim or defendant's conduct and also that its being put forward or taken out must accord legal proceedings; in broad sense, it is all the information that can confirm or disconfirm people with the possible occurrence.According to the point of epistemology and request of social value, we see about attribute of evidence from three aspects: hypostasis, form and value.Hypostatic attribute of evidenceHypostatic attribute resolves a question that what is the material of evidence. Scholars in china believe that evidence is objective and is objective reflection of occurred fact. The judgment above comes from misunderstanding of epistemology of materialism of Marxism and "hypostatic truth" in system of civil law. Cognition of evidence has its own characteristic. It is the description of phenomenon occurred in the past time. Proving activities through evidence are mainly a process of cognition. In the history of epistemology, philosopher in ancient Greece began doubting about the cognition with sense organ of human. Plato believed that we could not cognize things only through sensing organ, since we could not know whether things are in existence only through sensing organ. In the philosophy of recent time, it is doubtful or impossible that we can cognize the world of material, according to the theory of Descartes' "pure reason", or empirical philosophy hold by Locke and Hume, or Kant's dualism. Philosopher of phenomenology in modern philosophy considers that our experience of living world could not have objective quality whose contents expressed by certain universal proposition, and our living world could only be subjective experience. From the point of modern science, we believe that evidence is objective because we have the sense of real world outside, but that sense is more or less modified. Evidences on legal proceedings are integration of objectivity and subjectivity. Therefore, the information carried by evidences can only be relative true. Since the information to prove the occurring of facts in legal case could be affected by collection, carrier and handling, it can only be relative description of situation in the case, and it can never be objective reflection of past fact. According to the request of pragmatism, I describe the hypostatic attribute of evidence as reliability. Reliability means that the information taken as evidence is quite sufficiently reliable to the society.Formal attribute of evidenceSome people believe that evidences are absolutely relevant. Is that so? In ancient India, scholars doubted that there were cause and effect relation between facts. Hume put forward that universal certain cause and effect relation could not be cognized. Kant considered that material object or matter itself could not be cognized. Handling of cause and effect relation will certainly take observer's subjective characteri...
Keywords/Search Tags:Philosophy
PDF Full Text Request
Related items