From Evidence to Judgment

This working paper proposes Evidence-Claim Spacetime, a conceptual framework for evaluating reasoning as a trajectory rather than only as a final answer. It examines how claims form and change as evidence accumulates, how strongly different evidence should move different claim types, and whether reasoning remains within the limits of what the evidence can support. The framework distinguishes evidence source and status, claim axis, strength of support, and trajectory. It introduces evidence jurisdiction, the principle that evidence may strongly support one claim while providing little or no support for another, and inquiry draw, the directional pressure created by how a question is framed. The paper describes recurrent failure patterns including overread, underread, misread, axis bleed, premature collapse, user-frame ratification, caution-to-passivity drift, and evidence-boundary drift. This version is a provisional concept paper and developing rubric, not a validated scientific metric. It is published to invite criticism, identify relevant prior work, and guide development of a future Trajectory Fidelity Profile.