Is it possible to prove something does NOT exist?

[Bunyip]

1) What are homo sapiens (sapiens)? Do they differ from humans? Is Barrack Obama the president because of some property or because enough people consider him to be so?
2) Every "real physical entity" is composed of parts that are not that entity. It is only by abstraction that we are able to group any sensory input. This is so fundamental that it is researched in multiple fields because computers cannot do this5. They are only capable of syntactical processing, not conceptual. Thus to get computers to e.g., perform facial recognition we require sophisticated algorithms that reduce the visual information into (or onto) a new space where we may have extracted features using PCA or distance functions or multi-dimensional scaling. Humans do not have to use such computational approaches to classify facial features as a) some face & b) a face belonging to a particular person.
3) We can speak meaningfully of concepts apart from their subjective existence (unique and internal to all) as collections of Ausdrücke (per Husserl) or langue (per Saussure). However, even when referring to things which have physical instantiations (rocks, trees, etc.) the concept is always an abstraction that refers to a collection or set. When I use the word "tree", I need not list every object in the universe that I would apply this word to. The concept is the set of all such object. If I say trees exist, I don't have to point out each and every thing I would label tree and each and every thing I would not. "Tree" already is that collection.



No, this just happens to be central to my field and perhaps I'm not used to having to explain the basics of the philosophy of language, cognitive science, neuroscience, logic, etc., to whatever it is you claim to be (I forget what your last claim to expertise was after the "expert in espionage" claim).

I love how you never actually seem to understand what you are 'explaining'. You are indeed, yet again 'explaining' the basics to me - apparently under the delusion that what you are posting somehow relates to the topic.

The capacity to form concepts without language is extremely limited. Concepts are categories. The concept "computer" is an abstraction that does not refer to any specific computer yet refers to all computers. Perceptual experience cannot allow for the creation of such an abstraction. In general, there is still much debate over what aspects/properties/components of various objects of various types are more central to classification of some instantiation of some object as belonging to category x vs. y. A saw is an abstract concept. There are many different kinds of saws that come in different sizes and are used in different ways (e.g., a chainsaw vs. the saw one would find in a swiss army knife). What is it about saws that make us classify them as saws, yet not do so for objects with similar features (such as serrations on a bread knife or combat dagger/double-edged tactical knife)? Concepts are categories with vague boundaries and usually with more than one prototypical exemplar.


It is extremely difficult for cognitive systems (from computational intelligence programs to canines) to categorize and impossible for any cognitive system without a brain to process concepts. Without language to describe the functions, similarities, and features that make up the various instantiations of "computer" to be conceptualized as "computer" rather than TV, calculator, or even window? What is it that a pre-linguistic understands that allows distinct perceptual experiences to be classified as instances of the concept "computer" yet not others?





You are (were) sitting under a collection of atoms. You perceive it to be a tree because you classify it as such according to a conceptual network in which the abstract notion "tree" corresponds to what you were sitting under.

Wow Legion. What an incredibly long and utterly pointless comment.

 

[Bunyip]

I don't agree with you. Your following post demonstrates this quite clearly, as do the others. A central problem (other than that you are not familiar with any formal system but insist upon using terms like "proof" and making ill-defined claims concerning ill-defined concepts) is that while I am quite used to understanding the ways in which that which we think of as trivially & obviously "real" are actually conceptual abstractions based upon particular perceptual classifications of sensory input, you are not.

You are not familiar with the ways in which logical/mathematical abstractions relate to the conceptual/perceptual networks that language tries to express (a category are unfamiliar with), and the ways in which linguistic representations of the conceptual abstractions, instantiated differently via different lexemes or constructions in various languages, relate to physical "reality".

You are thus limited in both directions. On the one hand, you lack the necessary familiarity with any formal system wherein you could prove anything (or make sense of "proof"). On the other, you lack the familiarity with the ways that our terms for "entities" are abstractions, such as the abstract concept of "tree" that allowed you to categorize (and classify as a "unit") the tree you sat under.

For god's sake Legion, you ramble like a true master.

 

[Bunyip]

Legion

I said:"WOW! There are most definitely actual real trees Legion. I am sitting under one right now"

You reply: "You are (were) sitting under a collection of atoms. You perceive it to be a tree because you classify it as such according to a conceptual network in which the abstract notion "tree" corresponds to what you were sitting under."

It is still a real tree, it still exists Legion. If this is your field of expertise it is a shame you write such gibberish. Perhaps you imagine yourself to be brilliantly lecturing the membership on solipsism - thinking that only you are privy to such mysteries.

I know what solipsism is Legion, we are not talking about solipsism.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

Exactly my point. It only works in hypothetical logical arguments, where the characteristics are known. That is all I was arguing. That was my contention.

No. It can be applied to real situations in life. The basis is the abstract hypothetical but if we find anything that has conflicting situations in real life we can make those leaps. God specifically you cannot. I can find a lot of logical reason why there probably isn't a god and I can come very close to proving that any "particular" god doesn't exist.

 

[Etritonakin]

It is not simply complexity, but order, direction and purpose which suggest a creator -or at least creative influence.

I have heard it said that we can know something is designed because it differs from that which is found in nature, but that blindly assumes that nature was not designed.
Design must have characteristics of itself which distinguishes it from non-design.

Just some thoughts....

If we assume that everything in the universe came from the same source (the big bang), and that as far as we can see, our galaxy is very similar to many others -though some may be newer and some older....
and we assume that there was no creative influence at least after the big bang -then why would we conclude that the emergence of life on earth would be unique in the universe?
Would it not, rather, be fairly safe to assume that whatever produced us is likely to happen -or have happened - more than one time (seeing as pretty much everything else in the universe is happening again and again and again)? Perhaps even once -at the very least?
As we are intelligent designers, could it not be safely assumed that there are -or will eventually be -other intelligent designers throughout the universe?
Even if there are none now, we may yet produce some ourselves.

The emergence of life on other planets was once thought to be extremely improbable -but new discoveries are challenging that idea.

As we have reached the threshold of designing life ourselves, and, in turn, eventually life that could itself design life, we cannot assume that man is the first intelligent designer, or that life on earth was not designed.
The only real questions would be whether or not there were intelligent designers before the big bang -and which designer may or not be responsible for what after the big bang.

If there was no creative influence after the big bang, then all that has been was the inevitable result of the big bang -including the emergence of life and intelligent designers.
Therefore, the big bang would be, by its nature, a producer of life, intelligent designers, places for life and intelligent designers to inhabit and materials with which to bring designs to fruition -even if we are the only or first intelligent designers.

I think it is important to consider life and non-life rather than simply "nature".
Life is an arrangement of non-life.... animate composed of inanimate.
The big bang produced an arrangement of non-life from which could be arranged/produced life.

Some evolutionists/scientists see the emergence of intelligent life as a "fortunate accident" -but that "accident" would have been inevitable -not a random accident at all.
There is nothing truly random about the physical universe -only extremely complex and unpredictable to us given our present ability. Otherwise, we would have to admit that some things are unknowable -utterly mysterious -and that's not very scientific. The closest thing to randomness and unpredictability is decision (and more so when the decision does not make sense ).

This inevitability is one of the things that suggests that the cast is very much like to the mold -that an intelligence reproduced intelligence.

(Like I said -just some thoughts)

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I said:"WOW! There are most definitely actual real trees Legion. I am sitting under one right now"

You reply: "You are (were) sitting under a collection of atoms. You perceive it to be a tree because you classify it as such according to a conceptual network in which the abstract notion "tree" corresponds to what you were sitting under."

"Our experience of the world around us is not an accurate reflection of its physical features. Instead, we often group sensory stimuli according to their category membership or behavioral meaning. This process of dividing stimuli into classes according to their functional relevance is a critical stage of both perceptual and cognitive processing because it provides meaning to our sensory experiences. For example, recognizing that a new item is a ‘‘television’’ instantaneously imparts a great deal of information about its features and functions. The ability to group stimuli into categories is one of the foundations of complex behavior...Of course, we are not born with a built in library of higher level, more abstract, categories like cars, computers, and cameras."
Freedman, D. J., & Miller, E. K. (2008). Neural mechanisms of visual categorization: insights from neurophysiology. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 32(2), 311-329.

"When we recognize something, we see it as a kind of thing (or an individual) that we have seen before. And it is a small step from recognizing a thing as a kind or an individual to giving it a name. Seeing requires sensorimotor equipment, but recognizing requires more. It requires the capacity to abstract. To abstract is to single out some subset of the sensory input, and ignore the rest."
Harnad, S. (2005). To cognize is to categorize: Cognition is categorization. Handbook of categorization in cognitive science, 20-45.

It is still a real tree, it still exists Legion.

There are two related, important ways in which this wrong. The studies cited above are an infinitesimal representation of several decades of research in multiple fields which are concerned (at least in part) with how humans (and other animals) are able to create concepts which are abstracted from any particular instantiation but which are used to categorize and classify perceptual input. They are, however, more about categorization itself and its mechanisms. So while they and those like them show that "tree" is an abstract category, there is another related way to do so that is perhaps more intuitive.

Would it be impossible for certain people, because of their language (and its relation to cognition) to refer to themselves or conceive of themselves as sitting under a tree the way you did? The answer is "yes". The simplest way to show this is to look only at a few words.


For example, in Hittite we have GIŠ meaning "trees or things made (at least partly) out of wood", but also tāru (or ta-a-ru) meaning "tree, wood". The same is true of eto in Creek (i.e., it means tree or wood and there isn't any word for "tree"; in fact, specific trees use -vpe as in svtvpe "apple tree"). Greek here is (as usual) a nightmare. First, probably the most basic word closest to our concept "tree" is δένδρεον (and variant spellings). However, it can mean plants or even a stick and more importantly among the several other words e.g., ξύλον) that we can translate as tree is set in direct contrast to δένδρεον: ὕλη ("forest-trees"), as in e.g., "τὰ δένδρα καὶ ὕλη" ("fruit-bearing trees and forest/timber-trees"). Of the three "signs" which can mean (or in one case consists of a kind of) tree in Middle Egyptian, that closest to the English "tree" is ḫt or "wood, stick, tree".

Thus in some languages the conflation of "tree" with the uses and/or entity "wood" would make it impossible for speakers to conceive of you sitting under something they have no concept of, while for others your conceptualization of being under one instance of the abstract category "tree" would be far too narrow (is it a timber/lumber/"forest-tree" or does it bear fruit, as these are as distinct as your conceptions of "tree" vs. e.g., "bush").

If this is your field of expertise it is a shame you write such gibberish.

Here are the first two chapters to the ground-breaking work Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by Lakoff. This classic may be somewhat outdated, but it is less technical and will perhaps allow you to grasp the basics. From another perspective and by another founding figure see Rosch, E. (1999). Principles of categorization. Concepts: core readings, 189-206.

Perhaps you imagine yourself to be brilliantly lecturing the membership on solipsism

Nothing of the sort.

I know what solipsism is Legion, we are not talking about solipsism.

I'm certainly not, because I'm talking about the ways in which entities exist as abstract categories. I've provided you with some sources, but would be happy to offer more.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Is it possible to prove something does NOT exist?

If not, why not?

Logically if the subject under consideration is deemed to be "something", then it is not deemed to be"nothing", and since only "nothing" is logically deemed to not exist, any "something" is logically deemed to exist. Iow, "something" and 'nothing" are considered to be complementary opposite concepts and thus something can not be in the state of non-existence, ie. nothing.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I love how you never actually seem to understand what you are 'explaining'.

Certainly, I'm failing to explain what I wish to. After all, you somehow arrived at the conclusion that I was saying anything remotely related to solipsism when I was addressing your claim about this:

Anyhow you are confusing the abstract world of logic with the real world....You can not prove the non-existence of unicorns for example, but you can prove the non-existence of a square circle. The first is a creature, the second is a hypothetical logical abstract. Your argument only works for the latter.

You are mistaking abstract concepts for particular instantiations of these, such as your “tree”:

There are most definitely actual real trees Legion.

I’m not arguing that there aren’t “actual real” things that we’d both call trees. I’m saying that
1) The reason we are able to identify a tree we’ve never seen before and distinguish it from e.g., a bush is because we “group” or “assemble” perceptual input according to conceptual categories.
2) The distinction between “physical reality” and what we actually “see” is quite profound, because perceptual input is organized & categorized via abstract concepts which are as abstract as the concept “square” or “unicorn”. How could the image below be an optical illusion to someone who had never seen or heard of a vase?

Spoiler: #3 can be skipped for those only interested in that directly relevant to the argument

3) So important is the relationship between sensory-perceptual experience and the concepts we have that cognition is actually embodied. We use more “physical”-like concepts to form more abstract ones: the word(s) “I see” in English and Ancient Greek also can mean “I know”, we identify directions with moods and states (e.g., “things are really looking up!”, “why so down?”), and concept like get/grasp/hold/have form the basis (cross-linguistically) for far more complex constructions or connotations: “I have to have that” (i.e., “I need that”), “I’ll hold him in my heart”, “By George, I think he got it!”, “You can’t even grasp the basics”, etc.

apparently under the delusion that what you are posting somehow relates to the topic.

You wish to distinguish between “abstractions” that one can prove don’t exist vs. something like a “unicorn” which is a “creature”. A problem you have is that all concepts are abstractions. Suppose I made a religious claim about a religious/spiritual notion which you do not believe to be true, but rather than in English I wrote "οὐκ ἄδηλον ὡς ἀθάνατος ἡμῶν ἡ ψυχὴ." Are we to say that you don't actually believe me wrong because the concept I refer to and what I say about it I do in a way you can't understand rather than that I am making an abstract claim about an abstract concept you would readily deny were I to translate the statement?

Entailed in your claim that one can't prove the "universal absence" of an entity is the claim that we can't prove that e.g., glass doesn't exist. What if I asked you to prove it did exist? Would you show me that one entity which is "glass"? If you showed me a pane of glass, have you done anything more than demonstrate that this particular object you hold (and not glass) exists? Is there anything you could do to demonstrate to me that "glass" exists rather than various different objects that are members of the abstract (conceptual) category "glass"?

Or consider claims about the historical Jesus or historical Socrates. When an agnostic like Bart Ehrman or a Rabbi like Neusner claims that Jesus existed, they are most certainly not claiming the same thing that WL Craig or N. T. Wright are claiming when they say that Jesus existed. Likewise, if I claim to believe in ghosts, that doesn't mean I believe in anything represented in the move Ghostbusters. I actual knew someone who didn't believe dinosaurs ever really existed. How does what she is denying relate to what e.g., a paleontologist whose expertise is dinosaurs considers dinosaurs to be? What about entities like "tress" or "unicorns" makes them non-abstract and in a way distinct from circles or squares?

 

[Robert.Evans]

"ta", British for "thanks"? I've always wondered whether that word as used today is derived from "ta" in Gaelic, meaning (more or less) "yes" or in general affirmation.



Matrices are simply mathematical notations, but as for the use of terms like "god" in physics this is intended to be no more real than Maxwell's Demon or Laplace's "Intellect" (capable of calculating the entirety of the dynamics of the cosmos based on full knowledge of all initial conditions at a given point in time).



I'm actually an agnostic, but regardless my response would be the same: why do complexities entail (or suggest) a creator?

I do not think all these posts are coming up on 'alert'.

Without mind, you have to have processes that come about by luck. Won't do. (ta ta, can also mean goodbye)

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

(ta ta, can also mean goodbye

Of course. But that's true in American English, while "ta" is limited to Britain (and perhaps other parts of the UK, I'm not sure). .It's trivial nonsense- just an etymological curiosity I've had for some time.