The "you cannot prove a negative" argument

AhHa! But what if this elephant is not visible on the normal spectrum? What if it is from another galaxy, or better yet, another dimension, and can't be detected by your visual "sweep" of the room? What then? You still haven't proven that said elephant doesn't exist, right?

P.S. I don't believe this BS anymore than you, but playing devil's advocate is fun, sometimes.

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That's all pretty dumb - and COMPLETELY misses the point. Tell me, are you over 18? From everything I've seen you post here, it sure doesn't sound like it. More like 16 at the most.

 

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Excellent points all around Fraggle.
I guess that, at 39, I'm getting old but, all of this is explicitly obvious to me.


I have to admit, as of late here, I'm beginning to marvel at the complete lack of understanding many people have of science in general, and the scientific method in particular.

Three cases always come to mind:

1. The education system is rapidly declining.
   
   
2. It's a linguistics issue; people don't understand what the terms "proof", "inductive", "reason", "probable", etc. mean.
   
   
   
3. People are becoming much more stupid.

For the love of sanity people, do yourselves a favour and go and read Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and [even better] Henri Poincare's Science and Hypothesis.

 

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Of course. Let me know if some does raise this issue about elephants and I will back you up.

So the claim there is no God, being untestable is not a reasonable assertion.

You can always find evidence of psychological issues if you look for them. And having symptoms without evidence of an illness is evidence of psychological issues. Unfortunately. I mean, I agree with you of course, but it does seem to be a general characteristic of humans, be they theist, non-theist or whatever that they like to have a decision made about things.

Of course.

Why? Agnostics are pretty common. I don't think they feel some heavy burden, at least not the ones I have met. There are many issues I would say I don't know in relation to. Others where I would venture a guess. Others where I would be pretty sure but unwilling to rule out other possibilities. To some degree I think most people manage this except where they have a lot of emotion involved.

Not making specific assertions should be as much a burden as not having certain beliefs.

 

I really didn't understand this. I assume BB means the Big Bang. I am not sure what you mean by material, but I hope you don't mean that literally. Science has evidence for the Big Bang.

 

I did not say evidentiary requirements. I used the phrase burden of proof, meant in its colloquial sense, relating to who needs to support their claim. Whoever makes a claim needs to support it.

We should not think of burden of proof as a competition between people. If two people are making opposing assertions, they may have different weights of burden but each as a burden.

If an agnostic hears an atheist say There is no God, the agnostic does not need to support their questioning how the atheist arrived at this knowledge. The atheist however needs to support their claim to knowledge. The theist can also challenge the atheist. The theist however has his or her own burdens if they make assertions. Even the agnostic person will likely get some burden, because they will, sooner or later, make epistemological justifications for their 'non' position, and these will require support.

The sense that someone else is irrational does not remove our need to support our claims. Though it would be nice. We could all move next door to a raving madman so we could feel justified in making wild assertions all the time.

This is equivocation. Come on Glaucon.
I don't think ballerinas at the barre have the burden of proof either, unless they are asserting something. Third base, now that guy has a burden of proof.

You really poorly misinterpreted what I meant. I think you read the first sentence and had a philosophical seizure. The next sentences make it clear what I meant. I was not assigning degrees of evidence needed. I was stating who had the burden, not the qualities of that burden.

Next.

 

Ah. Very well then. I would have to agree then. I was using the term in its strictest sense.
However, I will say that, there's more to it than what you say. It is not the case that any claim is subject to the 'burden of proof' but rather, that an opposing claim of less favour enjoys the 'burden of proof'.

Actually the thermostat example is a classic one from epistemological considerations of intentionality, and is anything but equivocation.
As for your other comments, I have no idea what you mean.

Perhaps, though, I think you poorly represented what you meant.
I find no clarity whatsoever.
As for who it is that the onus falls upon, it is always the dissenter.

 

I know this is how it is generally thought of, but I think this is incorrect. I think people need to support their claims regardless of the claims of others. We are not under duress, most of us anyway, to take stands on the kind of issues this thread is skirting around. Agnostic, indifferent and 'don't know' positions are available, as is changing the subject.

Ballerinas taking positions - 1 st position, second position. What position do you play? Third base. I can see the issue on an epistemological level and one can certainly test a thermostat - and someone eventually would - that gave questionable readings. It is not capable of reasoning out its justification for the position it takes, but one could find it - a strange microdraft from a mousehole or whatever. On a tangent there's this

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/jul/24/bacteria-computer
(note this is not my usual photosynthesis related article)

where bacteria are being bred to answer complicated mathematical problems. I assume they will not be able to support their positions either, at least not for the near future.

Well, then that would be atheists in most places and theists in Scandanavia.

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I would tell you that what you're describing is obviously not an elephant, it's some multi-dimensional elephant like (in everything but appearance) creature.

Then I would ask you how it can be said even to exist while feeding it peanuts.

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~Raithere

 

Make sure that they are extra-dimensional peanuts - after all what if the chirality was opposite? Poor, poor, hephalumps...

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True enough. However, the problem then becomes, at what point can something be said to be 'granted'? I mean, surely we don't need to "provide support" when the statement 'the earth orbits the sun' is uttered??

.. I still don't get you here....

Ah. Cool stuff.
Yet we're not talking here of being able to 'reason', or, 'justify' anything at all.
We're a step 'below' that. The ability to assume a position, to take a stance, is a behavioural one, not an analytic one.
Now, when confronted with a differing position, then, and only then, does the requirement of justification get involved.

Right.
I totally agree.
The 'burden of proof' lies on any given minority population, contingent upon a specific context.

 

If you are talking to a tribeman with some but insufficient exposure to Western models, sure, you do. He or she would be right to expect it. Context determines that kind of thing. I think it also depends on the way the belief comes up. If you hear someone at a party or even a discussion say they are a ___________ - something involving beliefs considered controversial or silly to scientists, that person does not necessarily need to suddenly defend their beliefs. Again, context. If they are trying to convince others, well, then support seems fair to request, but if they are identifying themselves or clarifying something else that relates, the mere communication of the belief doesn't seem to need justification to me.

You brought up a thermostat with a position. So I was mocking this by bringing up ballerinas - they have a number of (literal) positions they take. Third base, in baseball, is a position one can take. Me equivocating back, essentially. Or thinking is was back, but in any case equivocating.

Yes, going up to the first example, the sun coming up, generally one is not challenged. Honestly, I would say the whole notion of onus or burden of proof seems artificial to me. It is should sliding into is. Sciforums can set up guidelines and individuals can and review boards of scientific journals, and so on, can all set up rules and guidelines for what they expect, but in the end there is no God to say it is wrong to assert something controversial without backing it up, or? Happy to be contradicted here. It is not a phenomenon like the appearance of a low pressure region in a gas that MUST balance out probablistically over time.

It's a rule of thumb. Here's how we will take you seriously. Here's how you can convince me. It's a social guideline.

If we truly HAD to justify assertions in the presence of skepticism, the arrival of a skeptic would be a viable weapon of war. The Chinese could ship over a boatload of scholars trained in skeptical questioning (on college visas) and drain the energy of the whole country - Canadian reticence would be ripped apart by the rule, not that the Chinese would be heading there to use this new form of warfare.

Ah, the poor agnostics. No sanctuary.

 

I am not misdirecting the discourse. But you just did. You took a quote of mine, extracted it from the context and then argued against as if it was a naked assertion, rather than me building on an axiom of Glaucon's that I may not even agree with.
glaucon said

and I responded

Some of my responses to Glaucon are very serious and I expect them to lead to fairly deep intellectual challenges, hopefully for both of us. Here I was making a more playful response, but also curious to see what it would lead to. He made a general, blanket comment about untestable claims. I think it is fair to say that we cannot test the claim that there is no God. I can therefore conclude from his statement that this claim is outside the bounds of reasonable assertion. I think that is a fair probe. He may be able to qualify his assertion or perhaps even explain how it can NOT lead to the conclusion, but it was a reasonable probe. He may also accept my conclusion - drawn from his assertion - most agostics would. An agnostic in the original sense would agree at least. Glaucon's assertion is, essentially, a global agnosticism: iow one in relation not simply to the existence of God but any entity or potential truth that is not testable.

This was the context in any case.

After first eliminating the context of my quote, which is building on glaucon's rule to see if he wants to amend it, you then go on and present the following argument, which does not refer back to Glaucon's assertion which I was responding to, and so it is irrevelent in context.

Then you manage to get in some ad homs and essentially take the opportunity to go off on a tangent and complain about a pet peeve argument
I DID NOT MAKE. Actually a few arguments I did not make.

Please look before you leap next time, especially if you are going to be condescending.

I see your response as a perfect example of what you are arguing against. You thought you saw a pattern. But actually you saw what you wanted to see and acted as if it was real. I hope you can see the irony in that. I do in any case.

Then you misdirected the discourse with a bunch of straw women.

 

Sounds like blaming footballers for not making the offside rule easy just so the layperson can understand it.

Why should Science pander linguistically to the layperson?

Ah, yes, the joys of stereotyping.

First, it is a matter of debate whether String theory is a valid scientific theory or not. Is it falsifiable? I have read reports that suggest it is, just not with existing technology.
So again - why should science pander to the laymen when we use specific terms such as "theory"?
Secondly, you raise the case of the "less educated religionists"... yet seem to want to put the onus for change/clarification on science rather than the "less educated religionist"?

No we don't - but "less educated religionists" might.

Sure - the claim of the existence of God is "extraordinary" - as you say, more so (to me, at least) than the claim of the non-existence of God.
But neither, to me, are testable - there is nothing we can do to test either. They are outside the realm of science.

That said, I am an agnostic atheist... while I think that claims of God are unknowable, untestable etc (hence agnosticism), I consider the default stance of any claim of existence/non-existence to be one non-existence until demonstrated otherwise.
God can not, in my view, be shown to be existent or non-existent, but I would say that it is logically consistent with something that does not exist.

And surely, until logically and rationally necessary to exist, non-existence should be the default position we take on any matter?


As to how this relates to the OP - is "God does not exist" a positive claim of non-existance, or a negative claim of existence?

Anyhoo - I've been rambling. :/

 

I think we're all getting a bit off track here; as such discussions will.

The point is, as both Fraggle and I have pointed out, "proof" strictly and specifically only applies to closed systems. Given this, it seems to me that the topic at hand has been dealt with.

I admittedly avoided responding to the introduction of the theist/atheist angle because it is offtopic. This question is undecidable.

However, if we wish to go beyond the particular scope of the topic at hand, and move into non-proof amenable domains, then that's an entirely different matter. We then would be discussing, not what can be proven, but what can be rationally asserted. Fraggle has addressed this; in this domain, objects may be granted probabilistic degrees of assertion. While we may not definitively assert a denial of 'god', we may, in great confidence, assert such.
Again, outside of the scope of closed systems, there is neither "proof" nor "certainty".

 

Well, that's an entirely different topic [albeit an interesting one in and of itself].

Where does the responsibility lie: with those who make use of the jargon, or with those who do not understand it?

Surely, as I indicated previously, you are correct.
It is only rational to deny existence, given a complete lack of evidence.

As I've pointed out, the introduction of 'god' herein, doesn't relate to teh topic at hand.

You do however, bring up an interesting linguistic issue.
[Though, technically, the issue is indeed logically clear. The confusion arises with (mis-)interpretation....

 

This seems to be the crux of this whole debate.

How should unproven phenomena be dealt with? I've identified 3 positions on this issue:

1. All things not yet proven are assumed not to exist (this seems to be the most popular position here at these forums)

2. All things not yet proven are assumed to exist (John Lennon apparently held this position)

3. Don't assume either way and reserve judgement until more evidence is available (this is the agnostic position)

___________________

Which one of these positions is the most rational? Assumptions seem to be a purely subjective phenomenon and so the stance without them seems to be the most objective - this is why I take position 3, the agnostic position.

 

However, all of this is an entirely different matter, beyond the scope of the OP.

Feel free to start a new thread.
Note however, that this topic then, strictly speaking, is more relevant to the GS&T forum....

 

I edited it to take out the "scientific" slant. I can see how this is a bit different than the OP so I'll go ahead and make a new thread for it.