seebs

I don't think that rule works as well as mine. Mine is "whoever wants to change someone's mind goes first". If no one wants to change anyone's mind, no one has anything to argue in the first place. If two people are planning to argue, saying "you first" doesn't really solve anything; you might as well flip a coin.

True. However, the "negative position" model is subject to all sorts of linguistic nonsense, and really, seems to me to be a bad generalization based on real-world observations.

I had a beautiful example which I forgot to type. Imagine that I make the claim that my car is invisible. I think you would expect me to provide evidence *for* my claim, because it is *not normal* for cars to be invisible.

Given a physical object, a claim of invisibility is a rather unusual one; the "negative claim" becomes a positive one - "visibility".

In other words, the default is "what we would have assumed", whether that's positive or negative.

In most of the cases where we care much, though, there are disputes about whether or not the observed evidence is "enough" - thus the pragmatic observation that the only standard being used is "does this convince me?".

I think this is an oversimplification. If someone says "Bob Hope died", no one who isn't a Kibologist is going to bat an eye. (We know he's immortal.) He's old; old people normally die.

I think the "positive/negative" wording broke down in this case, and it's more *useful* to work in terms of "convincing people to change their positions".

I posit that there is an object somewhere in space which no one has yet detected, but which is subject to gravity.

I do not believe that anyone can offer a shred of positive evidence for this, but only a fool would dispute it.

"Things are about the way we'd expect them to be" is not a negative claim, but gets no burden of proof; I'm allowed to just say "well, don't you think so?".

You could argue that there's a great chain of "evidence" for this hypothetical object, in that we know that there's lots of junk in space, most of which we can't easily detect at range, and that we've never seen objects not affected by gravity...

I just think that the rules for "negative claims" are uninformative; in practice, I can't find a circumstance where they are *useful* in any way that the simpler "default claim" system isn't.

Sure it does! There's a common game (less common here than with some of the newbies I've seen at CF) of demanding that people stop believing something unless they can prove it to *your* satisfaction, on the grounds that they have a "burden of proof".

This game has negative utility, and is a direct consequence of the model that suggests some objective standard of a "negative claim". If we adopt the pragmatic burden of proof model, the game disappears, and we furthermore gain resistance to the "but the evidence is right here!!!" tactic so popular with newbie apologists; they need to convince you, not themselves.

The creation thing strikes me as purely untestable, at least for now. (I'm not a YEC.) As to the other effects, this runs into the problem that has so crippled psychology: A lot of the scientific method becomes much harder once the subject can react to the experimentation.

So, in the end, I have evidence enough to convince me, but not to convince you. In my model, this means we're fine - we both have opinions based on our interpretations of the evidence, and that's okay. Some people would argue that there's some meaningful objective level of proof "required" to form this belief - but I don't see why. Working hypotheses are a powerful tool.

My answer would be "any claimant that wants me to come to agree with him needs to support his claim". I mean, really; if there's two opposing claims, each should present the best case it can.

The key, here, is that we're welcome to use informal guesswork or whatever to arrive at initial positions. It seems likely to me that you do not believe in the famous baseball-sized piece of chocolate cake orbiting Mars. So... if I want to convince you, I have to support my claim. If someone wants to convince you there isn't one, he just has to say "gosh, I don't think there would be", and you'll be convinced.

If you find only good arguments persuasive, you are the most impressive AI I've ever seen. Humans find atrocious arguments very persuasive, empirically. Especially on moral or philosophical questions.

My point is a little more general; indeed, you personally may demand logical rigor. Someone else may demand an emotionally persuasive argument. Any attempt to define burden of proof must recognize the pragmatic reality - convincing both of you of a proposition will require two very different arguments.

Hmm. As an example, imagine someone who argues that we are wrong to assume that the external world we perceive is real, because, after all, we have no senses of it that can be used without begging the question. This is unequivocally a negative claim - I say something exists, he says it doesn't. I cannot make any arguments against his case that are not patently circular. And yet, I suspect most people here would agree that he's the one with a case to make.

Occasionally, burden of proof is misused as a club. Linguistic quirks can make the argument over burden of proof replace a more substantive discussion.

And all of this for no benefit I have yet been convinced of. I don't see any benefit to this "who goes first" thing. In practice, if someone wants to convince me of something, he goes first, and if I want to convince someone of something, I go first. Easy.

If you kept a dirtier house, and dropped some cheese, you could do this kind of research. Where's your committment to science?

I agree that "competing positive claims" is a useful model. I just extend it slightly further, to "competing claims of any sort". I consider one more claim positive than you do, see.

As a side-effect, I carefully distinguish between "no opinion" and "negative opinion" on most issues.

Oh, I think there's lots of competing positive claims.

Actually, that's one of the problems we run into in EoG debates; there's so much room for wiggle that it becomes very hard to make much progress. I will go as far as "my experiences make me think there is a thing with which I interact which has characteristics which make me think it's something very much like the Christian God". The rest is much fuzzier, and still a subject of some contemplation.

Flavor

This is in response to seebs' previous post, you may notice it's a short one (I'm lazy and tired). Look at it this way. If someone wants to make an assertion, they need to back it up. First there was... "Oh look, we live on Earth." Then there was, "Well someone must've created it, and us." This is of course simplified, but... the next question is, "Why?". We directly observed our own existence; someone presented a claim that we were created, so on and so forth; they need to back that claim up. The end.

Flavor

Oh and, Sir Shadowy, who could argue with that reasoning?
Better yet... the moon could both exist and not exist at the same time... because... oh nevermind.

seebs

I don't entirely agree that assertions must be backed up. I think they must be backed up if you wish to convince anyone of them. If you can live with just holding an opinion, I don't see that anyone has any authority to require you to "back it up". If you want them to believe, well, you have to convince them, and if you can't, then tough.

GunnerJ

For what purpose? Your rule is simple common sense. No one disputes this. The principle of the burden of proof is not about who's right. It's about who has to support their claims. Usually BP is used simply to defend the use of a claim in support of a greater argument. Seebs, I don't see how continually saying "you have to give me some reason to change my mind" is going to help anything. It's not the priciple of BP, it's just common sense.

Actually, this is completely untrue. We'll see why in a bit.

Seebs, you're making a lot of claims here, but I don't see any support. If you're interested in "changing my mind" would you mind backing up your assertions?

What, you tell me I can't see your car? Unless it's sitting right in front of me, it's a negative claim requiring no support. If you're claiming that it's impossible for me to see your car, you're claiming that there exists some mechanism that prevents light from refracting off it. This is a positive claim.

The actual standard of proof necessary is irrelevent to the question of where the burden of proof lies. This is not the first time I've had to point this out to you. It grows tedious.

You're welcome to your opinion.

Only because scientific inquiry takes as axiomatic the uniformality of physical laws.

Once again, I will point out that once a positive claim is supported the BP falls to the negative claimant. "Things are about the way we'd expect them to be" is an appeal to common experience about the way the world works. Thus it is a positive claim with support, and thus the BP is placed on the negative claimant who says that things are different from our usual expectations.

And what, exaclty, is wrong with this?

A trial? A decision on what should be included in a school's science cirriculum?

Then they are misusing the concept. I will not defend their misunderstanding of the principle of BP.

It's OK with me too. There's nothing in "my model" (although I really don't have one) that disputes this logic.

And you wouldn't be?

Just curious, are you claiming the existence fo an objective standard of "good" and "bad" arguments?

Actually, it doesn't. For (hopefully) the last time, the standard of proof necessary is irrelevent to the question of where the burden of proof lies.

What is this fellow really saying when he states that we're wrong to assume the existence of an external reality? I mean, sure, he can say that apeals to our senses are circular, but he has to contend with the existence fo these senses. If they don't come from reality, then from where? Thus, he is implicitly stating that we are being deceived, which implies a deceiver. I would say that we're better off not assuming that someone is decieving us, a negative claim.

In this case, he is disputing a positive claim with support: the simplicity that our senses actually detect soemthing. His claim that this is circular is unimpressive given that his only explaination for the usefulness of senses is some sort of decpetion without any support.

So?

Not really helpful if you're having a discussion with someone who insists that X is true because of an object or a phenomenon Y, and demands that anyone who disputes the existence of Y prove it wrong. In such a case, it is VERY useful to simply remind him that he's shifting the burden of proof.

This is differnet from someone who claims that X is true because of the lack of a phenomenon or an object Y. If you're going to say that we can't assume the nonexistence of Y then you should be prepared to defend the nonexistence of A, B, C, D, J, S, Q ,W E, etc.

seebs

My point is, once we grant this piece of common sense, I don't think the BP is useful anymore.

But I am open to being convinced otherwise; can you elaborate on "used to defend the use of a claim in support of a greater argument"?

Consider cases like "alive" or "dead". I don't believe that there is a coherent rule for which claims are "negative" that is useful without including, by inference, the body of human knowledge about the structure of the world.

Alternatively, my model is equivalent to saying "a negative claim shall be defined as the claim that what you believe now is correct", and saying that it's purely subjective.

There are a lot of easy cases in which you can say "oh, this is clearly the negative claim" - conveniently, in almost all of them, my "pragmatic" model produces exactly the same results.

Or I'm saying there's no mechanism permitting light to interact with my car. And you're stuck arguing that there *should* be.

The idea of "negative" claims is fuzzy in cases like this. It seems to me that it always really means "claims that are supported by usual inferences from my world model".

Hmm. Okay, fair enough. I am complaining about a usage I have seen; I'm willing to grant that it may be an incorrect usage.

See? My system is working here. :P

Shouldn't there be a burden of proof there?

Interesting! Okay, I can see how that works - but if we do that, I'm starting to think my model is isomorphic to yours. In which case, I'm not convinced that we need to give any thought to the question of which claims are negative.

Now that you ask, nothing. Point granted.

In the case of a trial, we have a formal standard for proof that is unrelated to logical argument. The burden of proof falls on both prosecution and defense - but we have a special rule that you must be very sure that the prosecution's case is made before agreeing with them.

Note that crimes of omission can require the prosecution to support a "negative" claim, but we still have them go first. E.g., "negligence". Negligence is clearly a negative claim; we are claiming that someone *didn't* do something he *should* have.

As to what should be taught, I think a similar rule solves it; a science class should teach things that are scientific in nature.

Cool.

Hmm. I had assumed they were being used as shorthand for "sound" and "unsound", but in retrospect, I have no idea why I assumed this.

This, my friend, strikes me as sophistry. Our friend is making no claims about what produces our senses, only that he is not convinced of the external world. Your argument here is suspiciously similar to the arguments many creationists give about where the universe came from, asserting that, if science cannot tell you *why* there was a big bang, science has failed.

I don't believe the guy's theory is *required* to explain where senses come from, just to say "we have no information about this that comes from a source we can trust without begging the question".

Calling this a positive claim is, IMHO, sophistry.

I don't know that there *is* a solid response. My personal response is "I will continue interacting with the world my senses depict until new data come along". This is hardly logically persuasive, but it's good enough for me.

But he isn't obliged to explain them! If we want him to accept our positive claim that there are objects which create sensory impressions, it's our job to support that claim.

At this point, though, I think you err, at least on certain classes of claims (philosophical, moral, religious), because the existance claims are fuzzy.

I would say that "there cannot be souls, because there is no God to create them" would be a clear abuse of burden of proof. The neutral position (we have no reason to believe this) is not the same as an affirmed negative.

I grant that it is often *useful* to say that someone is shifting the burden of proof, but I'm not sure it always leads to the most useful possible discourse; in some cases, it is more informative to consider a whole worldview as one thing, rather than trying to take individual chunks of it, and test them against different premises.

GunnerJ

Nonsense. Later in your reply, you showed that you understood the concept of how the burden of proof can move to a negative claim from a positive one. Saying that there is "no mechanism permitting light to interact with my car" is arguing against the positive claim that cars can interact with light, specifically through reflection and refraction, which is supported by every observation of a car to date and our knowledge of light dynamics.

Hence the term "axiomatic." It is an assumption upon which all our knowldege of science rests. You may see this as a cop out, but unless you are willing to never argue a single point again, formally or informally, you will have to admit that before any discourse or discovery can occur, certain assumptions must be made upon which to build out knowledge. In math, this can mean the assumption that the laws of logic actually mean something, or that the symbol "6" corresponds to a certain quantity of real-world items.

I'm not inconsistant in my application of this idea either. If you wish to argue about a hypothetical theist who simply holds as axiomatic that a god exists (a presuppositionalist) then go ahead. There are such people, and I do not discuss issues of theism with them, as not discussion can be possible without an agreement on what to presuppose.

I had been pondering the idea that our different views are really just differing expression of the smae principle as well. Whereas you view your "model" as a replacement for my "model," the way I see it, your principle is the end result of mine: the idea that you have to convice someone to change their minds is the basic common sense that everyone understands, and idea such as the burden of proof and Occam's razor, for example, are the logical technicalities behind this principle.

The only place we really disagree on is the default assumption. To answer your question of why we give thought to negative claims, the answer is that we usually don't: we naturally assume that something isn't so until we see that it is. Think about it: the next time you leave your house, understand that it is POSSIBLE that a mechanism has been installed in your front doorway that will kill you if you try to leave your house. However, you don't default to having no opinion on the issue if you can niether prove or disprove its existence, and wait in your house until someone can come along and disprove this barrier: you default to assuming it isn't there, because nothing suggests it is there, or if you're really paranoid, you look for signs that such a device has been installed, and if you can find none, you proceed.

To me, it is simply logical to assume that something isn't so until you have a reason to assume it does, simply because there are too many things which could be, and which might have a very real effect on your life if they do, for you to disprove them all before moving forward in life and in knowledge.

A vailiant effort, but completely wrong. We say that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, and the jury must assume this. This concept is a judicial restatement of the principle of BP: the prosecution claims that the defendant has broken the law (a positive claim), while the defense claims she hasn't broken the law (a negative claim).

It's not even enough to point to countries operating under Code Nepolean, where the accused must prove her innocence. In such countries the assumption is that a person would not be on trial without being first arrested, and would not have been arrested without some evidence to support the claim that she broke the law. Essentially, once a charge goes to trial, it is assumed that the claim that she did break a law is a positive claim wiht support, and that the defendant must agrue against this. In America, the support for the claim of guilt must be re-stated as a formality in trial.

Actually, the claim of the prosecution is always that a crime has been commited. Whether this was a crime of commission or omission is irrelevent.

Caertainly, but what is scientific in nature? If the ID movement claims that ID is scientific, the schools must come to a decision on whether to include it. But if the IDists are claiming that it is scientific, shouldn't they be the ones to have to support their claims? Under your model, the school would have to hold off with "no opinion" on whether ID is or isn't scietific and acceptable to be taught, until one or the other "side" prove their case, but in practice, they have to decide. Until ID can support its claims, shouldn't they decide to not include ID?

Fair enough.

Actually, he is obliged to explain the sense data. The fact that I see a red ball on the floor seems to suggest that a ball is there; when I kick a rock, and it causes pain, this seems to suggest an actual rock. These inputs support the claim that there is an external reality that corresponds to our senses. For him to claim that there isn't an external reality that corresponds to our senses is to challenge a positive claim with support. He has to deal with the senses themselves by coming up with an alternate explanation. When you claim that something I can sense is not really there, you claim that either what I sense is an illusion, an imperfect understanding of a greater reality; or a decpetion, and that there is a deceiver and a motive for its decpetion.

In short, if he isn't making a claim about where the sense data comes from if not an external reality, he ought to be.

After I wrote my last reply, I wondered if you might try to draw a parralel to the cosmological arguement for God. The difference here is that there isn't anything about the beggining of the Universe that suggests a God. At most, the Universe's beginning suggests a first cause, or even baser, a cause outside itself. Because there are too many possibilities about what the Universe's origin, we can retreat to a position of admitted ignorance. However, when I kick a rock and stub my toe, the simplest assuption is that there's a rock there, not that someone/thing is making me think there's a rock there, or that I have contacted an imperfect representation of an idealized rock that is not meant to be kicked.

And me as well. You are essentially saying that you will stick with a positive claim that has support until a negative claim can overturn it.

I'll put aside the larger abuse of logic here in that it assumes that soul must have a divine creator, and state that I think an "affirmed negative" is a contradiction in terms. Assuming the negative claim comes from not having a reason to believe the positive claim, and saying "there is no..." is just an expression of this.

Could you elaborate?

Just for continuity's sake, my example at the end of my last reply is an elaboration on this.

I've left this for last simply beause you said you understood, after writing this, the concept of how the burden of proof can move from one claimant to another depending on the support the positive claim has. Can you see how, after claiming to understand my views on this, your assumptions err from my perspective?

Robert G. Ingersoll

Rimstalker and Seebs:

I have this EXACT same debate with this guy on the fadetoblack BB every once in a while. Neither of us will EVER convince the other - just like you two. Such is life.

Nevertheless, here's the deal as I see it (in short, Rimstalker is right):

Obviously, everyone has the right to hold whatever opinion they wish. Someone believes the moon is made of Havarti cheeze. Great, fine with me. As long as this belief, insane as it sounds to me, does not cause the person so believing to committ unlawful acts like murder or running naked through rush hour traffic, then what's the problem?

This person has no burden of proof to convince me of his belief. I have no burden of proof to convince him that he is wrong. We don't have to talk to one another at all, ever.

However, once he and I AGREE to start a debate on the subject, it will start BECAUSE he makes the positive claim. I can't start until he speaks, logically, because until informed of what he is avering as true, I don't know what to question.

In formal debate, the person making the positive claim must speak first. Sorry, seebs, but them's the rules. ONCE THE POSITIVE CLAIM IS MADE, I or someone else can say "I doubt it to the point of disbelief. Prove it".

If the positive claimant now leaves the room, end of problem. If he stays and defends his positive assertion, HE must assume the burden of proof. THEM'S THE RULES.

THIS is how to approach the subject of B. of P. Starting with the idea that "the one who wishes to convince the other of the true of his claim, be it negative or positive, takes on the burden of proof", is off the mark entirely.

EVERYONE wishes to convince others that his/her opinion is correct and those who disagree are wrong. THAT is human nature.

But the subject is not how people are wont to act. The subject of defining B. of P. is to understand what the rules of formal debate ARE. One may not like this or other rules of debate. Tough. You are not going to argue them away. The well-establsihed, long-standing rules of debate are what they are. In formal debate, the burden of proof is ALWAYS on the one making the positive claim. :boohoo: