4 ms·
I think the article dances around what people really mean when they say "you can't prove a negative". The writer touches on it but somehow skirts the real issue
by wfo 11y ago
I think the article dances around what people really mean when they say "you can't prove a negative". The writer touches on it but somehow skirts the real issue. When we say "you can't prove a negative" you're really saying that in order to prove a statement of the form "not exists x P(x)", it's equivalent to proving "for all x not P(x)" and so you're really making a statement about EVERYTHING that has or does or could ever exist somehow. These proofs are either analytic and trivial (i.e. there doesn't exist a rectangular circle) or not proofs.
He suggests you get around this by providing an argument about unicorns and then goes on to talk about how premises don't always need to be justified, but the problem is proving the nonexistence of a thing -- and he provides a formal deductive example of a proof of nonexistence of a thing by instead substituting as a premise nonexistence of another thing (evidence). Sure, if you can prove no evidence for unicorns exists and that for unicorns to exist they MUST have left evidence you can prove they don't exist. But the first one is a reduction to the original problem -- in order to show something doesn't exist (be it unicorns or evidence for unicorns) you need complete and total knowledge about existence, which no human up to this point has had enough hubris to claim, and the second requires a level of certainty that doesn't really exist.
If we're discussing the existence of a thing that doesn't leave evidence (god) especially it's very fair to say you can't prove a negative and I think his attack on this tactic is a non-starter.
There has never been even the tiniest bit of evidence against the existence of god. There is certainly evidence against a god with specific qualities; a benevolent god, a god that wants this to happen, etc. But if you don't require god to have any specific qualities there isn't a shred.
- Kenji 11y agoAbout the part with god, there's a specific expression for that: God of the gaps. As our (scientific) understanding increases, a proposed god people want to believe in has to lose one characteristic after another because they would not hold up against reason and evidence.
- cristianpascu 11y agoTrue, my father told me that the day science came up with the tunneling effect, he stoped believing in a loving God. How can one believe in God when we have computers so powerful that we can post pictures of cats on the internet?
- shkkmo 11y agoDo you have an example of one such characteristic that has been disproved? I would posit the opposite: As the capability of our language to describe characteristics of god expands, it becomes harder to disprove god because the number of possible descriptions increases.
- amlgsmsn 11y agoLightning? Aurora borealis? Eclipses? Earth being center of universe?
- shkkmo 11y agoI wasn't aware that any of those were ever viewed as characteristics of god. If I believe John knocked the book off the table, but then I learn it was the wind, that doesn't change the characteristics of John.
- Kenji 11y agoIt does if you believed that John knocked the book off the table to punish you. You nitpicker :D
- shkkmo 11y ago> You nitpicker :D Most certainly, guilty as charged. > It does if you believed that John knocked the book off the table to punish you. I don't see how my belief about the reason John took that action makes whether John took that action (or not) a defining characteristic of John.
- cristianpascu 11y agoI think the problem of proving the (non) existence of something is as simple as understanding that (most of the time) it can not be deductive. I'd say that when it comes to existence, it is always inductive. What kind of proof can anyone give me that she/he exists? Or the rest of the world? There is no such thing. Even in mathematics, if one doubts basic entities as numbers and their properties, the whole establishment of mathematics starts to crack, at least for that particualr one human being. All of our reasoning about the world is inference based, hence probabilistic. That's in the nature of science, religion and everything else in between. There is strong evidence for the existence of God, but it's inherently inductive. Not to mention various conceputal complication which follow from in different kind of reasoning about God (in whatever view).
- shkkmo 11y agoYou can, in fact, prove non-existence deductively through proof by contradiction. Proofs can be valid even if their premises (assumptions) are not true. Mathematics does not rest on the truth of it's assumptions, but on the validity of it's proofs. If you can create an interesting system of proofs off of an a different sent of premises, then that can also be very useful (see non-euclidean geometry). If you can't create an interesting system, then those premises have no value. I also disagree that all our reasoning about the world is probabilistic. By saying that all reasoning is inductive, you make you earlier assertion that "I'd say that when it comes to existence, it is always inductive." empty because you are claiming that all reasoning is inductive.
- Dylan16807 11y ago> Even in mathematics, if one doubts basic entities as numbers and their properties, the whole establishment of mathematics starts to crack, at least for that particualr one human being. That's not how it works. Numbers are their properties. You are free to use any properties you want when you commit mathematics, and you will get different sorts of behavior from your numbers depending on your choices. There is nothing to doubt about a set of properties being itself. No 'establishment' tells you how numbers work. Use whatever you like.
- 11y ago