What evidence is there for evidence?

Classic SRH question.

Lets start with a simper one. What evidence is there for frogs?

Well there is a frog. Just noting this is a slightly disingenuous example, because why would there be a word for frogs if we didn't know what they are. Perhaps a better example:

What evidence is there for Unicorns?

 

However these became attributed to Narwhals. Anyway the solid evidence runs to nothing other than mention in ancient stories.

Now what is the Evidence for Evidence?

Well it appears we can just take the frog and the unicorn examples and show that the presence of frogs is an example of evidence.

However is this actually evidence of evidence?

The problem we are going to run into, like with frogs, is that we must already know what evidence is before we are presented with it!

If we don't already know what evidence is then how would we know evidence when we see it.

This is quite Kantian. Evidence must be a priori, in some way it must be hard wired into our brains in a way; this is not learned but something upon which we then construct our world.

Now is this evidence for SRH? That things cannot be their own foundations and where something is built upon itself e.g. looking for evidence of evidence then we know automatically it will fail.

Lets just check that. Is there a contradiction in looking for evidence of evidence?

The problem is that with contrary evidence we reject something. So to reject evidence we would need to find something that contradicts evidence. But the problem is that we have already accepted evidence as a thing before we even find evidence.

Suppose we found evidence that there is evidence that does not support truth. That is impossible, which then means that finding evidence for evidence is a tautology and meaningless. After all the whole point of evidence is to support belief. If evidence itself was not already a solid belief then what use would evidence be!

Looking at the previous post and Richard Dawkins his reliance on Science looks even more precarious! He looks like nothing more than a bigot with his own religion. For anyone who does not already think truth requires evidence, there is nothing Dawkins can do to convince them! Likewise it appears for anyone who thinks all truth must require evidence there is no amount of faith and belief that can sway Dawkins. Altho he is on the weaker ground here, since only he is denying the a priori, while everyone is relying on it!