I Ain't Superstitious, leastways no more than Howlin' Wolf, but two twin black tuxedo cats just crossed my path. All dressed up with nowhere to go. Nine lives and dressed to the nines. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Superstition. Guitar solo starts at 3:03. And of course you've heard the story about Niels Bohr and the horseshoe over the door:
A friend was visiting in the home of Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr, the famous atom scientist.
As they were talking, the friend kept glancing at a horseshoe hanging over the door. Finally, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he demanded:
“Niels, it can’t possibly be that you, a brilliant scientist, believe that foolish horseshoe superstition! ? !”
“Of course not,” replied the scientist. “But I understand it’s lucky whether you believe in it or not.”
Firearms instructors sometimes say that every gun is loaded. That is plainly false as it stands, but a wise saying nonetheless if interpreted to mean: every gun is to be presumed loaded until proven unloaded. Presumptions are procedural rules. To presume every gun to be loaded is to adopt a procedural rule to treat every gun as if it is loaded regardless of how antecedently likely it is that it is loaded. Suppose the likelihood is near zero: I examined the gun carefully an hour ago and I found it to be unloaded. Nevertheless, the presumption that it is loaded remains in force. I continue to behave as if it is loaded. For example, I don't point the gun at anything unless I want to destroy it.
I conclude that to presume that p is not to assert that p is true, nor to assert that p is probably true, nor to assume that p is true, but to decide to act as if p is true. A presumption, then, is not a proposition, although it embeds one. A presumption is something like a decision. More precisely, a presumption is the accusative of an act of presuming, an accusative that is not itself a proposition, but embeds one.
A presumption is not like a belief in the following important respect. To presume that a gun is loaded or that a man is innocent is not to believe that it is or that he is. To believe that p is to believe that p is true. But to presume that p is not to presume that p is true; it is to act as if p is true without either accepting or rejecting p. To presume that Jones is innocent until proven guilty is not to believe that he is innocent until proven guilty; it is to suspend judgment as to guilt or innocence until sufficient evidence is presented by the prosecution to warrant a verdict one way or the other. When I presume that p, I take no stand as to the truth-value of p — I neither accept nor reject p — what I do is decide to act as if p is true.
Presumptions must be defeasible. (I suspect that an indefeasible presumption is no presumption at all.) The presumption of being loaded is defeated in a particular case by carefully examining the gun and showing that it is unloaded. So while a presumption is not a proposition, it embeds a proposition that can be shown to be false. Defeasible presumption and burden-of-proof are correlative notions. (They are like rights and duties in this respect but also in that both are normative notions.) In a court of law, for example, if the accused enjoys a presumption of innocence, as he does in the Anglosphere, then the accuser bears a burden of proof, a burden which, if properly discharged, defeats the presumption.
Appeal to Ignorance?
So if person A claims to person B that a certain gun is unloaded, the burden of proof is on A to show that it is unloaded; person B does not bear the burden of proving that it is loaded. It is not just that he bears a lesser burden'; he bears no burden. Indeed it seems that B would be within his epistemic rights were he to claim that his ignorance of whether or not the gun is loaded is good evidence of its being loaded. But this is an appeal to ignorance. It has not been shown that the gun is unloaded; ergo, the gun is loaded.
It has not been shown that ~p; therefore p gives us the form of the ad ignorantiam 'fallacy.' Construed as a deductive argument, it is clearly invalid. Construed as an inductive argument, it will be in many cases weak. For example, suppose the gun is straight from the manufacturer and right out of the box. Then the probability of its being loaded is very low, and the argument: This gun out of the box has not been shown to be unloaded; ergo, this gun is loaded is very weak.
Nevertheless, safety considerations dictate a defeasible presumption in favor of every gun's being loaded, whether out of the box or not, a presumption that places the onus probandi on the one who maintains the opposite. So one might conclude that the appeal to ignorance in this case is reasonable even though the argument is deductively invalid and inductively weak.
The situation is similar to that in a court of law. The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, so the burden of proof rests on either the state in a criminal proceeding, or on the plaintiff in a civil trial. In a criminal case the probative bar is set very high: the accused has to be shown guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Here too there seems to be a legitimate appeal to ignorance: if it has not been shown that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the conclusion to be drawn is that he is not guilty.
We will have to examine this more carefully in a separate post.
Safety Considerations
There are 'safety' considerations in both the gun example and the law example. It is because we want to be on the safe side — and not get shot — that we presume every gun to be loaded. "Better that a hundred guns be unnecessarily examined than that one sentient being be accidentally shot."
And it is because we want to be on the safe side — and not sentence an innocent person — that we presume the accused to be innocent until proven guilty. "Better that a hundred guilty people go free than that one innocent person be wrongly convicted."
But now what about God? Don't safety considerations apply here as well? If God exists, then our ultimate happiness depends on getting into right relation with him. So why can't one make a legitimate appeal to ignorance here? Now of course from the fact that no one has proven that God does not exist, it does not follow that God exists. That is an invalid deductive argument. That would be a truly fallacious instance of ad ignorantiam. But it is also invalid to infer than a gun is loaded because it hasn't been proven to be unloaded, or that a man is innocent because he hasn't been proven to be guilty. It just doesn't follow in any of these cases. And yet we reasonably consider the gun loaded and we reasonably find the accused to be innocent. And so why can't we reasonably presume God to exist on the basis of the fact that he hasn't been shown not to exist? If the burden of proof rests on the one who claims that gun is unloaded, why doesn't the burden of proof rest on the one who claims that God is nonexistent? We don't want to get shot, but we also don't want to lose our ultimate beatitude — if ultimate beatitude there be.
You can't say that that the burden of proof rests on the theist because he is making a positive claim; for there are positive claims that need no proof. And you can't say that the burden of proof rests on the theist because he is making an existential claim; for there are existential claims that need no proof. If you claim that extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist, then the burden is on you. But if you claim that there are Saguaro cacti in Arizona, then the burden of proof is not on you but on the one who denies it. Nor can you say that the burden rests on the theist because he is controverting the widely-accepted; the consensus gentium is that God exists.
Earlier I argued that we shouldn't bring BOP considerations into the God discussion at all. But if we do, why doesn't the BOP rest on the atheist?
Pigliucci's Confusion
Massimo Pigliucci thinks that if one understands who bears the burden of proof in a trial, then one ought to see right away that the burden of proof rests on the theist. For, "the burden of proof is always on the party making a positive claim, not on the one making a negative one." This strikes me as confused. It is true that the party making a complaint or bringing a charge is making a positive claim, but this is not the reason why the BOP rests on the accuser. It rests on the accuser because of the presumption of innocence that the accused enjoys. The BOP rests on the accuser not because his claim is positive but because of the procedural rule enshrined in our system of law according to which one is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
It is not true that the BOP is always on the one who makes a positive claim. 'That hillside is studded with Saguaro cacti' said to my hiking companion needs no proof. I shoulder no probative burden when I make a commonplace observation such as that. Therefore, the following is an unsound argument:
Everyone who make a positive claim bears a BOP. The theist makes a positive claim. ergo The theist bears the BOP in his debate with the atheist.
I argued above that if BOP considerations are relevant to the God debate, then the BOP is on the atheist. To appreciate the argument I gave, you have to realize that the God question is not merely theoretical. It is a practical question. In that respect it is like the gun safety and court room cases. My interest in whether or not a particular firearm is loaded or unloaded is not merely theoretical, or I should say, not at all theoretical. It is a practical interest in maintaining the health and physical integrity of myself and the people around me. Similarly with the law. If you are accused of homicide you are in deep trouble and face the loss of your liberty or your life. Arguably, the God question is in the same boat.
So I invite you to accept one or the other of the following conclusions. The BOP is borne by the atheist. BOP considerations should be kept out of the theist-atheist debate altogether.
. . . and we say farewell once again to Jack Kerouac, cat man and mama's boy, as he prepares to "leave all San Francisco behind and go back home across autumn America" proving once again to his romantic predecessor Thomas Wolfe that one can go back home again where "it'll all be like it was in the beginning — Simple golden eternity blessing all . . . My mother'll be waiting for me glad — the corner of the yard where Tyke is buried will be a new and fragrant shrine making my home more homelike somehow — On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars — Something good will come out of all things yet — And it will be golden and eternal just like that – There's no need to say another word." (Big Sur, 1962, last lines, last page.)
It's a good last word: something good will come of it all: of all of the wandering, all of the searching, all of the pain, and misery, and drunken folly, and lonely nights, and broken dreams. The vanity will give way to vision. The beat will taste beatitude. The road will end and the restless will rest.
It doesn't merit a lot of attention, but I will mention two stupid moves that Jerry Coyne makes. Or if not stupid, then intellectually dishonest.
First, Coyne states that "We know now that the universe could have originated from 'nothing' through purely physical processes, if you see 'nothing' as the 'quantum vacuum' of empty space." By the same token, we now know that Jerry Coyne is a fool if you see 'fool' as equivalent in meaning to 'one who thinks that a substantive question can be answered by a semantic trick.'
Second, Coyne maintains that the belief that human beings have souls "flies in the face of science." In other words, the belief in question is logically inconsistent with natural science. Why? Because, "We have no evidence for souls, as biologists see our species as simply the product of naturalistic evolution from earlier species." The reasoning is this:
1. Biologists qua biologists see the human biological species as simply the product of evolution.
Therefore
2. Biology uncovers no evidence of souls.
Therefore
3. Biology rules out the existence of souls.
(1) is true. (2) is a very unsurprising logical consequence of (1). For biology, as a natural science, is confined to the study of the empirically accessible features of living things, including human animals. It is therefore no surprise at all that biology turns up no evidence of souls, or of consciousness or self-consciousness for that matter. By the same token, cosmology and quantum mechanics uncover no evidence that anything is alive.
The move from (2) to (3), however, is a howling non sequitur. (In plain English, (3) does not logically follow from (2), and it is obvious that it doesn't.) Biology is simply in no position to uncover any evidence of souls that there might be, and it shows a failure to grasp what it is that biology studies to think that such evidence would be accessible to biology.
To argue from (2) to (3) would be like arguing from
5. Mathematics rules out the existence of anything in nature that can be studied using complex (imaginary) numbers.
That too is a howling non sequitur: we know that alternating current theory makes essential use of complex numbers.
At the root of Coyne's foolishness is scientism, the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge. Scientism is the epistemology of naturalism, the view that reality is exhausted by the space-time system. Both are philosophical views; neither is scientific. There are powerful arguments against both.
Enough beating up of a cripple for one day. And that reminds me: Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols refers to Kant as a concept-cripple (Begriffskrueppel). What would that make Coyne? A stillborn concept-cripple?
More critique of Coyne here. The man should stick to biology. And the same goes for Dawkins.
Time is a goddess of healing — for a time. She heals the wounds that come inevitably to those who must march to her beat. She brings us ill and makes us well again until such time as she does us in for good.
An engine can be used for braking, even though an engine is not a brake, but a motor. Similarly with doubt. The main use of it is as an engine of inquiry, not as a brake on belief.
A: The law of noncontradiction (LNC) is a law of thought merely.
B: I dispute your claim. LNC is not a law of thought merely; it is also a law of extramental reality.
In this example, B disputes what A says by making a counter-claim, a counter-assertion. Both are asserting. It strikes me as foolish to ask who has the burden of proof (BOP). How decide such a question? I assume that in a dialectical situation like the above, if BOP considerations are relevant at all, then the BOP is on one side or the other, but not on both, and not on neither. But there is no non-arbitrary way to place the onus probandi on one side or the other. Therefore, BOP considerations are a useless detour. Why not go straight to the question and evaluate the arguments pro et contra?
Suppose you say that the BOP rests on the one who opposes the received or traditional view. Then the BOP would be on A. But if you say that the BOP rests on the one who makes the stronger claim, the more committal claim, then the BOP would be on B. I don't see how there could be a non-arbitrary assignment of BOP in a dialectical situation like this. Correlatively, I don't see how it could be non-arbitrarily claimed that there is a defeasible presumption (DP) in favor of A's assertion or of B's. So I suggest we drop the BOP talk!
Concerning your dialogue: In my opinion, both A and B bear a burden of proof here. For that reason, it is an unlucky start of a dispute – because it is in fact the start of two disputes at once, and a dialectical confusion is likely to arise. In order that the dialogue be fruitful, B should not have put forward a negation of A's claim as his own claim, but simply refuse to accept A's claim until proved (this is the meaning of the rule Necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui dicit non ei qui negat – "negare" here has the technical meaning of "to refuse to concede until proved", according to the rules of disputation). If A failed to produce a proof, his case would fail. If he produced one, his case would succeed unless and until B attacked that proof, thus prompting another argument to "restore" the former one. And so on, until one of the parties failed to do their duty. Only if A was the one who so failed, would it be in place for B to state his opposite meaning as a claim, if he wishes, with the burden of proof incumbent on him
There are three, not two possible dialectical states of a proposition: (i) proved (ii) disproved (iii) neither. The "burden of proof" just means that the default state is (iii).
Perhaps our difference boils down to this: you think that a dispute is about truth or falsity of a proposition, whereas I think that it is about validity or invalidity of rational support of a proposition. Whereas from the former point of view the dialectical situation comes out as symmetric, in the latter view it is inherently asymmetric.
Reply to Novak
Part of our difference here may be due to a different understanding of 'dispute.' I think Lukas may be using it is a technical way similarly as he uses negare in a technical way. And perhaps these technical meanings are the same. When I used 'dispute' in the little dialog above I was using it to mean 'disagree with.' Lukas seems to be using it to mean 'refuse to concede until argument is provided.'
Lukas seems just to be assuming that the BOP rests on A who must "produce a proof" otherwise his "case would fail." I take that to mean that A is obliged to give an argument for the claim he has made. (In my book, an argument is not the same as a proof, although every proof is an argument.) But, by my lights, if so, then the same goes for B: he too must give an argument for his counterclaim. B cannot just cross his arms across his chest and say, "I don't have to give an argument for my assertion; it suffices for me to poke holes in your argument. The BOP is on you, not on me." This is precisely what I reject. Otherwise, there would be a presumption in favor of B's claim. But there isn't. And to insist that there is, is to beg a philosophical question.
I think Lukas is right when he says that, for me, the dialectical situation is symmetric, at least in the example given above, while for him it is asymmetric.
Lukas is also right when he says that, for me, the dispute (disagreement) is about the truth-value of a proposition: Is it true or is it false that LNC is a law of thought merely? He says that, for him, the disagreement is "about validity or invalidity of rational support of a proposition."
But this needs explaining. Validity and invalidity are technical concepts from formal logic. Our present topic, however, is not formal logic, but dialectics. Lukas seems to think that there are certain procedural rules that govern the conduct of a discussion, and that these rules induce certain rights and duties in the interlocutors. Thus, he who makes an assertion puts himself under a dialectical obligation to support his assertion with one or more arguments, while the one to whom the assertion is made is under no obligation to support the negation of the asserted proposition: he has the right to do no more than find fault with the arguments for the asserted proposition.
I am skeptical of this entire adversarial model which has its provenience in the court-room situation and makes perfect sense there, but seems to me not appropriate in philosophy which, by my lights, is not a matter of debate or disputation but one of dialogue in which the interlocutors are not out to prove propositions they antecedently accept and do not question, but who aim at arriving at the truth together, a truth that they do not claim to possess, but are seeking.
Robert Paul Wollf here replies with wit and lefty snark to a charming request by one Pamela N., a personal assistant, who wants to know who Immanuel Kant is referring to when he writes, "Caius is a man; man is mortal; therefore, Caius is mortal." Pamela confesses,
I will admit, I have not read Kant's works. I have, however, spent the last couple of hours combing through post after post after post about this particular quote from the book and cannot find a single soul who would say who they think Caius is.
In reading these many posts, I have come to the conclusion that Kant is probably referring to Pope Caius as he has been venerated by the Catholic Church as a Saint. Given that title, and the fact that Saint's [sic] are given to [sic] a quasi-immortal status [sic], I have ascertained that this is who Kant is most likely referring to. My question for you is, do you think that my assumption is correct? or do you have a deeper insight into who he is referring to?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 204, Notebook K, Aph. #84:
To call a proposition into question all that is needed is very often merely to fail to understand it. Certain gentlemen have been all too ready to reverse this maxim, and to assert that we fail to understand their propositions if we call them into question.
