Abstract

In the argument from silence ("I have no evidence of "p"; if p were true, I would have evidence of "p"; therefore "p" is false"), the critical issue is whether the conditional is secure. In historical studies, silence must be understood as silence in relation to a particular evidentiary set. An inference "e silentio" becomes unsafe when the evidentiary set is known to be defective; and when the kind of data of which "p" is an instance is not the kind of evidence has survived. In neither case is an inference "e silentio" safe.