Page 59 - Contribution To Phenomenology

52 RICHARD M ZANER

sound judgment and reach right decisions requires a concerted effort to
know just how matters actually stand. The matters at hand, if you will,
"matter*' enormously to both.
"To come to know" something is to take it to be "thus and so," to
take up some modal position {Positionalimt) ([14], pp. 223-250) toward
it. For instance, one may think one knows something "fairly well," "sort
of," "surely," "not at all well," or some other modaUty. To take a
position is in effect to make a claim leading directly and ineluctably to
the practical "outcomes," which appeal to some evidence that is supposed
to ground or account for the position taken—the more vital the issue, the
more crucial becomes the need for solid evidence to ground the decisions
that must be made.
So far as decisions rest on claims that in turn appeal to evidence,
relevant experiences are essential. As Husserl insists, evidence is, "in an
extremely broad sense, an 'experiencing of something that is, and is thus
. . . " ([11], p. 12). Evidence is not a sort of rare and special *datum,'
a magical wand or a conferral from on high having special privilege or
guarantee ([12], pp. 161, 177, 180, 289). To the contrary, evidence is a
matter of relevant experience and is essentially contextual; it is relative to
whatever it may be that best serves as the grounds for what is claimed,
relative to the specific types of experience through which the affairs in
question are encountered or by means of which one is at all aware of
them: evidence about fetal hydrocephaly cannot be the same as evidence
for anger.
Furthermore, even if there seems to be good evidence for believing
that something is this or that, the possibility of error or deception is not
precluded. The possibility of deception is inherent in the evidence of
experience, in Husserl's broad sense, "and does not annul either its
fundamental character or its effect . . . " ([12], p. 156). No genuine
evidence can provide "an absolute security against deceptions" or errors
([12], pp. 157, 284-289). Thus, in ethics and especially clinical ethics, there
is a clear demand for addressing uncertainty, error, deception, and
ambiguity—and therefore a need for the physician to have specific plans
in place in the event of error or mistake.
As "experience" in the generic sense (Erfahrung), evidence refers to
the particular ways in which some affair ("anger," "hydrocephaly," etc.)
is experienced (is given or otherwise presented), or through which one
is able to become aware of or to encounter that affair—and on that
basis, come to know it, make claims about it, and reach appropriate