Reasons people believe or say they do. Can we list them? (doom, experience)
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It isn't. It's based on axiomatic assumptions, which is what the burden of proof is - a logical axiom.
I see that, but I'm pointing out that mathematical concepts like logical concepts can have solid practical applications and are not just an abstract game of rules.
You still have my argument about intelligent beings just existing for no reason, but you decided to run from that.
Nothing in my post, argument, or anything had to do with intelligent beings or their existence. Why should I be drawn into something off topic?
Nor do I see what X != Y has to do with anything.
The only thing you said that even kind of made sense referred to the base rate fallacy. Perhaps I should simply start there.
We imagine that a person gets a test for a specific disease that only produces false positives 2% of the time. Many people may then assume that they have a 98% chance of having the disease. However, this logic commits the base rate fallacy.
Let's imagine that we knew that only 5 percent of the population had the disease. In that case, our conclusions would be substantially different. By way of illustration, if we took 1,000 people we would expect that 50 of them had the disease.
Therefore, 50 of that 50 would show up positive for the disease whereas 2 percent of the 950 people who do not have the disease would also show up as a false positive (19 people). Accordingly, simply showing positive for the disease would put you into a group of 69 people, 50 of which truly have the disease. This would put your true chance of having the disease at 72.5 percent — a far cry from the 98% that most people assume.
The 98% is the P(E|H), which is not the same as P(H|E).
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Most analyses stop there, but I want to delve into the matter more deeply. How can we know that the test is actually 98% accurate? This is a question that never gets addressed. How accurate the test is can never actually be known because the only way to know that test A is 98 percent accurate is to compare it to the results of some other test (test B) and show that it agrees with the results of that test 98 percent of the time. But how do we know that test B is accurate? Did we compare that to test C, which was verified by test D, which matched up well with test E, which was confirmed by test F?
There is never an end to this line of reasoning. How accurate the test is cannot be known.
This is a absurd as asking for hard scientific proof that 1 and 1 = 2. That is the rules of mathematics and you either do it right or you do it wrong.
The burden of proof is also the rules of Logic and you either use them or you abandon any claim to be arguing logically. Holder of the burden
When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived status quo.[1] This is also stated in Hitchens's razor. Carl Sagan proposed a related criterion, the Sagan standard, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".[2]
While certain kinds of arguments, such as logical syllogisms, require mathematical or strictly logical proofs, the standard for evidence to meet the burden of proof is usually determined by context and community standards and conventions.[3][4]
Philosophical debate can devolve into arguing about who has the burden of proof about a particular claim. This has been described as "burden tennis" or the "onus game".[5][6][7]
Shifting the burden of proof
One way in which one would attempt to shift the burden of proof is by committing a logical fallacy known as the argument from ignorance. It occurs when either a proposition is assumed to be true because it has not yet been proved false or a proposition is assumed to be false because it has not yet been proved true.[8][9]
(Wiki) I tried to get it from Stanford's dictionary of philosophy but it has long articles about the application of the burden of proof, since it takes the 'burden of proof' as a Given.
I rock = 1 rock is a pair of similar items. Label that "2" The basis of the burden of proof is sheer practicality. One cannot in practice accept any claim made by other persons simply because they claim it. The example of cold fusion exemplifies this and why it was ok to doubt powered flight until it was verified. There are sound reasons why the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. And why they should do it rather than demand the other side do the research is obvious.
I have seen before your clumsy ploy of demanding to see scientific proof of logical rules in a peer reviewed journal or they won't be accepted. Your attempt to ask One Unanswerable (which has in fact been adequately answered above) with a 'one shot Win' attached (If you cannot, then don't waste my time with this nonsense any more) is not so new either. As to your wittering about socks and so on - as i recall the first mention of blue socks was yours.
(1) this phone -in on the burden of proof (including an attempt to reverse it to 'disbelief' being a claim which has to be proved) is also worth a watch. In fact Theism trying to get out of having to validate their god -claim or it has no validity is the biggest ongoing battle - bigger than moral or ethical issues, or the evolution debate.
That's a magnificent attempt to shift the goalposts. I cannot know whether you didn't understand the point I was making or whether you just ignored it, but I will correct you regardless.
If we say, "It only makes sense for person A to have the burden of proof" then we are making a LOGICAL argument. By doing so, we are accepting that LOGICAL arguments have validity. One may make a perfectly logical argument that is entirely evidence free.
What you all say goes beyond the claim that the burden of proof lies on the stater. Your claim is:
1. The burden falls on you.
2. Only evidence is acceptable proof.
It is statement 2 that I wish to discuss, not statement 1 as you falsely claim that I am disputing.
What makes you think that only evidence is acceptable proof? You can provide no evidence for said claim. Instead, what we usually get is something like the following:
"But the only way to know whether grass is green is to go out and look at grass. It only makes logical sense."
But this is an appeal to LOGIC not an appeal to EVIDENCE.
So when someone says, "Anything asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" I simply point out that no evidence was presented to justify the assertion, accordingly we can dismiss it out of hand as nonsense.
Quite simply, I refuse to accept the idea that I must provide evidence whereas you need provide no evidence at all. It's special pleading.
One is a practical claim - verifiable (and verified) evidence is always going to beat guesswork and speculation.
The other is the logical rule. That the person making the claim has the burden of proof. If there is a pretty handy disproof of a claim presented without any backup evidence, that's well and good, but it is Not the responsibility of the person being presented the claim to disprove it, let alone prove it. The person making the claim has to substantiate it or accept that it can't be substantiated. I posted extracts, mentioning that the Stanford Encyclopaedia of philosophy took this as so basic they didn't even state it but had articles on how it applied in various situations. The two vids. explained the rationale behind it. Now you may refuse to accept that this is a universally accepted logical rule and there are reasons why it is necessary. But if you do, you will be rejecting logic and will have no business to claim logic.
I, similarly, can refuse to accept that there is any obligation on me to accept any claim you make without supporting evidence, or to provide any disproof. Though if I have any, i will.
Where does that leave you? So far as i can see, proclaiming that your claim must be true because I am unable to disprove it. But then others making conflicting claims without evidence can also say theirs are true unless you can disprove them.
This leaves you in an impossible position and the only way out is the one Theists take with the 'which God?' argument - assert that only their claim is true and all the others are false - without any evidence other than the assertion. That chum is what we call 'special pleading'. And of course the others can say the same of their claims.
Unless you can present some decent evidence - and that also includes logical arguments like kalam, or the probability of alien life - you have nothing to back up your assertion and there is no earthly reason why i should accept it.
Fine — but if the burden of proof is a LOGICAL axiom, then it cannot be paired with a demand for EVIDENCE because evidence is alogical.
Then if you insist - they cannot be paired. It makes no difference to the fact that the burden of proof falls on the claimant because it becomes an impossible situation if it doesn't. That the provision of evidence in a practical way obviates the need for that particular logical rule (of course the assessment of the evidence requires logic, too - you cannot treat them as mutually exclusive) does not alter the validity of the rule of burden of proof.
Nothing in my post, argument, or anything had to do with intelligent beings or their existence. Why should I be drawn into something off topic?
Because you went off topic when you said mathematics was not evidence based, in your attempt to ignore the mathematics you did not like. So I thought I would give you an example of mathematics as evidence, an example which has more relevance to the OP than socks do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zosimus
Nor do I see what X != Y has to do with anything.
It was one of your ridiculous claims turned into notation, where you claimed X = Y when it was not, because Y is true for both X and !X.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zosimus
The only thing you said that even kind of made sense referred to the base rate fallacy. Perhaps I should simply start there.
Please do not start again, eggs should not try and be smarter than the hen. I understand Bayes AND the base rate fallacy. That is why I pointed out your assertion that others were using the base rate fallacy was false. I WAS hoping you would attempt to show I was wrong, but you appear to want to pretend you know what you are talking about by lecturing while ignoring any refutation of your arguments.
But this is an appeal to LOGIC not an appeal to EVIDENCE.
Logic IS evidence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zosimus
So when someone says, "Anything asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" I simply point out that no evidence was presented to justify the assertion, accordingly we can dismiss it out of hand as nonsense.
It is not an assertion, as I demonstrated using mathematics (probability), and which you simply side stepped.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zosimus
Quite simply, I refuse to accept the idea that I must provide evidence whereas you need provide no evidence at all. It's special pleading.
No. If you make the claim, you need to support it, otherwise I have no reason to accept it (especially when it is more improbable). And if you have no evidence for that claim (especially when it is more improbable), then I have every reason not to accept it. So atheism does not need to provide evidence, unless someone is making a claim FOR atheism.
It is not an assertion, as I demonstrated using mathematics (probability), and which you simply side stepped.
No. If you make the claim, you need to support it, otherwise I have no reason to accept it (especially when it is more improbable). And if you have no evidence for that claim (especially when it is more improbable), then I have every reason not to accept it. So atheism does not need to provide evidence, unless someone is making a claim FOR atheism.
Correct, which is why a very common ploy or tactic is to try to force on atheism a denial position rather than the disbelief position which is the logical position atheism actually holds.
I thought that logic was a tool we used to evaluate evidence.
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