New Theory On Evidence: Qualitative Research Of The ’Material Theory’Guided By The Philosophy Of Information

The concept of evidence is a controversial and hot issue for decades in law. It istraditionally defined as material in Material Hypothesis in the revised CriminalProcedure Law. This hypothesis, however, has not provided a systematical andtheoretical framework for its proposals that material is the consensus of the content andform of evidence and there are true as well as false evidences, thus appealing doubtsand criticisms. Therefore it is significantly important to deepen the study of materialhypothesis, to develop its theoretical framework, to respond to the doubt so as to guidethe practice better.In an era of information, the Philosophy of Information is regarded as the highestdiscipline in information science, which can provide a wholly new philosophicalparadigm for evidence in terms of the information interpretation. This study follows theresearch pathway of Information Ontology with two aspects. Firstly, the philosophicanalysis of the relationship of evidence and information is discussed. It is found thatevidence can display its stored information of the object to be proved in specific form.This is the intrinsic relationship between them and the fundamental reason for thatevidence can become the proving basis. Secondly, the comprehensive informationinterpretation of ‘material’ is provided. From the perspective of evidence,‘material isnot only the real object in reality but also the information ontology, which is thecombination of content (information), form (mark) and carrier of information. Thesethree attributes are the connotations of ‘material’ in evidence sense. Therefore, thephilosophic essence of evidence is that evidence is the material displaying its storedinformation of the ‘proved object’in specific form. It is the combination of both contentand form.From the perspective of litigation, the object which evidence would prove is the‘fact of the case’, which itself can be divided into ‘fact’ and ‘proposition’. Theinformation of the ‘fact of the case’ can be objective or subjective so there are suchbasic classifications of evidence. They are authentic evidence and factual evidence. Theformer one is the proof material displaying the information of the ‘fact of case’stored initself. It occurs spontaneously when the case happens, so it is static. While the factualevidence is the proof material of information of the ‘fact or proposition to be proved’, itoccurs in every stage of criminal litigation, thus it is dynamic and can be true or false. Both authentic evidence and factual evidence are referred to as litigation evidence inbroad sense, while in narrow sense the litigation evidence only refers to the factualevidence.Accordingly, the attributes and characteristics of these two kinds of evidence aredifferent. For authentic evidence, the attributes are ‘objectivity’(the relative objectivityof the form),‘authenticity’(the real facts and content) and ‘association’(the associationwith the fact). On the other hand, for the factual evidence, the attributes are ‘objectivity’(the relative objectivity of the form),‘association’(the dual association with both thefact and law) and ‘legitimacy’. Furthermore, factual evidence can be regarded as thebasis of the final decision only on the condition that it must be verified. This conditionis also the requirement of the authenticity of the content. That is, the factual evidencealso must be authentic, which is consistent with the authentic evidence. Therefore, theattributes of the evidence as the basis of the final decision are ‘objectivity’, authenticity’,‘association’and ‘legitimacy’.