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Why the Burden of Proof is a Bad Argument
- Thread starter Falvlun
- Start date
Thief
Rogue Theologian
Nay!....and never.
God is the Source of mind and heart.
A heart without bridle is fickle.
So when you find yourself alone after the zombie apocalypse, with no one around to validate your personal experience, is nothing reliable?
McBell
Admiral Obvious
So then, if the cause and effect is not dropped with god, what caused god?
it's cause *and* effect, not cause *or* effect.
Without someone else around to ask "did you see that too?", the possibility that something I witnessed is just my mind playing tricks on me (or is an outright hallucination) would go up dramatically, yes.
I would also think that whatever the effects of the psychological trauma of a zombie apocalypse combined with the effects of lack of socialization, they probably wouldn't make my judgement *more* reliable.
I didn't say every objection; I said all reasonable objections. That's what you objected to, so I wonder why you think that the burden of proof can be met if we only respond to some reasonable objections to our arguments.
BTW: how do you determine how many objections make up a "sufficient number"? For instance, say you have a reasonable objection to some argument I'm making. How many objections from other people do I have to address before I can properly claim to have met the burden of proof without ever having addressed your objection?
Yes. When the burden of proof has been met, the implication is that the argument - and its conclusion - ought to be accepted. If we accept contradictory arguments simultaneously, then there's a problem. Therefore, at the very least, the burden of proof has to be high enough that it won't let through mutually exclusive ideas - i.e. ideas that can't both possibly be true at the same time.
This is lower limit of rationality. Above this level, we can have reasonable discussion about how high the bar ought to be set, but below this level, the bar is set demonstrably too low.
I'm not sure what you mean. I thought that by "personal experience", you were talking about witnessing individual events or individual experiences. As they say, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". That's the point I was trying to get at: an eyewitness account of something nobody else saw or a religious vision is inherently less reliable than a study where the methodology has been designed to eliminate as many sources of error as possible, and to minimize and measure the ones that can't be completely eliminated, especially when it's repeated.
Just having more observations/experiences doesn't necessarily create certainty on its own, because there are two kinds of error:
- random error: this is the one that is reduced with larger sample sizes.
- systematic error: this one doesn't get reduced by sample size. It gets addressed by "drilling down" into the methodology and ensuring that it's correct.
To get to a point of certainty, we need to get both random and systematic error down to reasonable levels. In and of themselves, no number of observations or experiences will do anything to address systematic error. It can only be addressed by being careful and rigorous.
Depends on the context and the claim, IMO. Like burden of proof, I think there are probably a range of reasonable views, but there's also a point where certain views are unreasonable.
For instance, if the conclusion is "this building is structurally sound", I'll probably have a different idea of how reliable it needs to be depending whether I'm going to be living in it or if it will just sit vacant. But regardless of where we set the bar, if the conclusion "this building is about to collapse" also meets it, then the conclusion that the building is structurally sound is unreliable.
In that case, both conclusions are unreliable, so if we want to figure out what's really going on with that building, we have more work to do. And no matter how much work it takes to demonstrate that the building is safe - not even if it's completely beyond our abilities - we're never justified in saying "well, I know that I haven't refuted that 'imminent collapse' possibility, but I've done as much structural analysis as I know how to do, so we'll just assume it's safe. Go on in."
Does this make sense to you?
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emoneyshonuff
Member
If every argument is based on personal experiences, then every single one fails to provide sufficient evidence.
Sir Doom
Cooler than most of you
I'd be willing to bet you believe a few things based on nothing more than personal experience.
I'm just saying this to me seems arbitrary to the individual involved. If you don't address my objection then you're not likely to get acceptance of your claim from me. Still you may get a majority of acceptance. I don't think you can expect more then that.
Any case I don't look for consensus. I look for whether I understand the logic and evidence. If I do then I'm likely to accept the statement. If I've no vested interest then I neither accept or reject the claim. I just leave it in the realm of possible. To reject a claim it needs to go against something fundamentally I've accepted as true.
It's all about me. Not in an egotistical way, just I have to be smart enough to accept or reject a claim or I'm not smart enough so leave it alone.
This sounds reasonable but I don't see this being the way most people think. I think most people set their own bar. Like me. Not so reasonable. Don't you find most people are stubborn in their thinking? Not reasonable. Unless you hang around people who all think like you. Then maybe you see a lot of people who to you seem reasonable in their thinking.
A number of people I've conversed with have had similar experiences to my own. I also accept many haven't. I don't really have the resources to do this in a methodical way.
Great if one actually has the resources to do this.
Sure reasonable/unreasonable to you, some of which I may even agree with. I just don't think everyone happens to be so like minded. However, whereas my reasonable/unreasonable bar I'm willing to question, you seem less willing to.
I'm more, "It's fine until is collapses". Not that I doubt your structural theory. More that I trust my ability to deal with the collapse. If it doesn't collapse I got lucky. I get lucky a lot. We, I suspect have different experiences. I jump in the middle of situations I have no knowledge about and most often deal with them successfully. This works for me. Gets me through life. So what is reasonable for me may not be reasonable for you. In the case I fail, I figure out a way to deal with it more successfully next time.
Yes, but it is not how I go about life. I also never assume how I go about life is the same as someone else would. I try to accept people how they are, not how I think they should be.
There are people who go about life as I do which are likely to find your thinking unreasonable (for themselves). They don't need to think like you and will get through life just fine. So what does it matter if they find the way you think or I think unreasonable? Or we find the way they think unreasonable?
You find the burden of proof a useful tool. Probably works great among like minded individuals. People who think differently, I don't see why they'd need any necessary consideration of this burden you'd expect them to accept.
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Thief
Rogue Theologian
McBell
Admiral Obvious
And yet you do have one with out the other....
If God is pressed into the chain, God has both effect and cause. If God is intended to be exempt of the chain, then it has no cause and no effect.
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
Exactly.
For there to be a "First Cause" the whole cause-and-effect framework must be in place. So if there is a First Cause to the framework, it means the framework must exist before it comes into being, which is just another way of saying, it created itself. The alternative is to admit that cause-and-effect framework is something that is eternal, but that would have to remove the "First" in First Cause. God can be the cause, but not the first one, since there is no first in eternal causality. Another alternative is that we just don't have the minds of understanding cause-and-effect fully, and there might even be backwards causality that we don't know about yet, i.e. our "future" is causing things in our "past". It all ends up with... we can't say for sure. We don't know. So to argue "God's existence" based on all these "we don't know" is futile. It's ultimately useless. The explanation to God and definition of God has to come from somewhere else than reductionistic theology/philosophy.
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I think you're now talking about something different from your original point. This isn't about consensus.
Any reasonable objection to an argument has the potential to uncover some sort of fatal flaw. How many fatal flaws are you willing to tolerate in your arguments? I'm not willing to tolerate any, so I say that the burden of proof hasn't been met until all reasonable objections have been addressed.
OTOH, you've said that we don't need to address all reasonable objections to an argument to meet its burden of proof, which applies that we should tolerate some potential fatal flaws in our arguments.
What I'd like to know is how many fatal flaws are acceptable and how you came to this conclusion.
So what? Your objection is irrelevant to my point.
Sure, and I realize that we often don't. But the proper response in that situation isn't to accept the conclusion with unfounded certainty.
I'm fine with questioning this to a point, but I'm not willing to set it so low that we get irrational results.
If you're okay with irrationality, that's fine, but I'd ask why.
You're not really responding to my point again.
Again, I think you're missing the point. When we talk about the burden of proof, we're necessarily talking about something shared between people. The burden of proof only comes into play where one person thinks another person ought to accept some idea.
If you don't care about the burden of proof, that's your prerogative, but that doesn't change what it is.
None, but the problem would be in getting a person to agree it was a fatal flaw.
Not everyone one is going to accept there are contradictory arguments involved. So arbitrarily they may not see your point as reasonable.
Not suggesting otherwise, however someone may disagree with your claim of their certainty being unfounded.
I doubt anyone sees their own thinking as irrational. You may see it as irrational but why would they accept this without proof?
I'm trying to point out that your assumption of there being rational common ground between arbitrary individuals is not true. Such common ground is only reached through agreement which is also arbitrary.
Ok, I think the issue is the assumption of this being the case. If you agree where this is not the case, using the burden of proof "is" a bad argument, then we are on the same page.
Sure, it is what it is. It works with agreement and when finding common rational ground between individuals. Where there is no such agreement or common ground to be found, then it's a bad argument.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
Are we to assume? ....Spirit.....must obey physical law prior to the creation of the physical reality.
Do we believe....? in cause-and-effect?
Thief
Rogue Theologian
God would have a cause to create.
Kinda hard to say I AM without evidence!
But to know the Formation of Spirit.....
seems to be a bit of info withheld by heaven.
If we knew the forming of spirit....Frankenstein's monster could then be real.
So we don't know what gave God reason to create you. If we don't know, then is it enough to say there is an unknown beginning? Or have we taken it perhaps one step too many in considering a God with a reason?
It's nice to think there must be a reason for everything. But must there be a reason for "I am" that stands apart from "I am?" Must we put that much faith in the authority of an ontological cause-and-effect model? (That's not evidence.)
In Zen, the answer is 'no.'