Peanut Gallery

No. He didn't. He was very precise. No. It couldn't. I was very precise.The IPU is defined to be imperceptible and is thus necessarily made-up regardless of whether (by some miracle of co-incidence) it exists or not.Sasquatch and the Coalacanth are NOT defined to be imperceptible. Thus the same argument I have put forward does not apply to them. It does apply to any other imperceptible entity and thus does apply to quite a number of supernatural concepts. But that is another story. You asked specifically that it be demonstrated that the IPU is made-up. QED.I suggest you stop re-interpreting the precise statements of others and read what is actually written. Bluegenes has provided "plenty of evidence" for his theory. It is you who seems to be confused by what his theory is. Yes he has. Have you read the thread? As bluegenes has discussed the scientific peer reviewed literature pertaining to geology, evolution, cosmology and a whole host of other areas is mutually exclusive to various creation myths and numerous supernatural concepts. Will it help your understanding if he posts links to a variety of papers that support these scientific theories? Or will you still be demanding a scientific peer reviewed paper that concludes that the pink fluffy Easter Bunny doesn’t actually exist?He has also linked to peer reviewed literature pertaining to human psychology. Yet you are still demanding peer reviewed scientific literature that seeks to show the non-existence of Immaterial Pink Unicorns.To legitimately and evidentially conclude that raindrops are formed in clouds do we need to produce scientific peer reviewed literature that refutes the notion that raindrops are caused by pissing angels? If you think bluegene's theory has anything to do with locating a "Bobby Henderson" figure for each and every supernatural concept known to exist then you are an imbecile.And if you think that RAZD accepts that the IPU is an imagined concept then you haven't read his posts. See Message 488When a man of RAZ’s years is unable to denounce the existence of the magically undetectable Easter Bunny as a human fiction something has gone sadly wrong with the world.

Yes. The facts pertaining to the ability and proclivity for humans to invent supernatural concepts. The facts that you are in denial about. Proposition: Gravity will be supernaturally suspended next week.This hasn't been falsified. You don't have any objective empirical evidence of the sort you are demanding that this proposition is false. Nobody has come forwards as the "Bobby Henderson" of this concept in the way that you are now stipulating.I say it is philosophically possible but desperately unlikely to the point of irrelevant that this will happen. But according to all your arguments mine is a pseudoskeptical position.In your much vaunted logic exercise you say that the Strong Atheist position (as defined by you) i.e. the conclusion that the non-occurrance of this is more likely is a "logically invalid position".Put the above proposition through your little "logic" exercise and see for yourself. Yes RAZ you have "logically" demonstrated that it is mere opinion alone that allows us to be confident that gravity will still be operating next week.Go figure.

As near as I can tell - RAZD is arguing that science is logically invalid. Since it builds theories and defines facts based on 'some' that state 'all' and suffers from all the problems of induction that RAZD demands science should actually be silent on.

Modulous says: This is sort of the Ace of Spades in the deck logic. We've drawn countless cards from some huge deck and have never drawn an Ace of Spades, therefore, there is no Ace of Spades event likely enough for me to change the way I behave and I'm behaving as if there were none at all.Actually, in this case, it's more like we've never drawn a card that did not belong in this deck of cards of Naturalistic Explanation. Every card we've drawn has been scientifically verified as a member of this deck of cards. Every card we've seen so far has eventually revealed its Naturalistic Explanation.It might be a fact that every supernatural being investigated in depth by scientifically objective methodology has resulted in the conclusion that the supernatural being is a figment of human imagination. But not every supernatural being appearing in human recorded history has been investigated under the lens of scientific method sufficient enough to be dismissed as human imagination. Frankly, most of them aren't worth the time & effort to do that.bluegenes theorizes that when this is done for every supernatural being we know about, even including new ones as we become aware of them, that all of them will turn out to be products of human (maybe we should modify that to say "intelligent") imagination under the scrutiny of scientific investigation.This is a prediction one easily concludes from the stated theory. Perhaps by "known", bluegenes is implying that the rigors of scientific analysis have been applied already. In that case he has a layout of lots of cards that have been shown to belong to the deck, as in "every card drawn so far has been shown to be part of the deck". So it is partial evidence. In my personal case, which has nothing to do with the issue here, there has already been enough evidence for me to live my life as if I will never encounter a card that does not come from this deck. If I ever do draw such a card, I'll go "Oops!" and fold that into the way I conduct my life.HOWEVER---I take exception to your statement that For me, , together with leads me to no other conclusion. What other conclusion could you make? Actually the first statement is enough, just on its own.Getting back to the original point of grammar, I see that the Debate has moved along from the RAZD's 1st task. And it appears that RAZD is getting mired in other issues. Interestingly, bluegenes introduced an example of rain and clouds. But, to use that example, the analogy of RAZD's 1st Task is to show rain forming in a cloud. It is not to show that rain cannot form elsewhere and falsify the theory.Bluegenes in Message 48: The analogous cloud-RAZD is 1st asking He is not looking for arguments like "there are no other clouds in the area, so it has to come from this cloud" coupled with arguments like "this rain has particularly unique characteristics in it that can only come from inside clouds of this cloud's type". That would be relying on a deck of cards.

Oh, you just don't understand. Yes, you were very precise - about the wrong thing! RAZD was NOT asking anything specific about the IPU itself, like its immaterialness/invisibleness/impossibleness. Just how it was made up. He was not asking about the characteristics of the IPU.Ah, but the Debate has evolved into the other stuff, so we'll never know.Question 1 to bluegenes: No Answer. RAZD 1 bluegenes 0Questions after: Yuckko or cheers. bluegenes maybe now leading 24-9?But RAZD did win the 1st point. The night is young. Winner scores 500 points?I think bluegenes will win on stamina, because RAZD cannot use up the actual energy of life itself on this forum at this moment.

I forgot to deal with the rest of the post. Straggler continues: Of course not. RAZD will undoubtedly go down that course until Percy raises his hands to stop it, if bluegenes should be foolish enough to provide the forensic evidence that the IPU is made up. bluegenes just should have conceded that point. The Great Debate should be a marathon, not a one-off.Imagine having to provide forensic evidence that Jesus was made up. You have clearly misunderstood the level of satirical logic here. This is not something that RAZD is saying he would believe - it's a way of exposing the flaws in the logic. If you will, a Legalized Strawman. That is, a Strawman that is permissible in the context of the statements is is surrounded by. You have in fact missed a lot of those in RAZD's ramblings. A pity.Like your latching on to the Pissing Angels.... If you, for one second, think that RAZD is behaving and conducting his life and his search for his treatments as if any of these things exist, then I have a bridge over Narragansett Bay...Oops - can I make a post-edit to the other reply? Damn - I meant to say the winner is the first person to get to Mornington Crescent!!!!!

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

I thought one of the big points was that science's conclusions aren't being proposed as the truth. Even with the always accepted amount of tentativety, they still don't go so far as to say that they are, in fact, the correct answers.I've always argued that them working is enough. It doesn't matter if they really are real or not.But I would say that them being proclaimed as the truth is, actually, logically invalid. I don't see how whittling this down to being "more likely to be valid" is an escape from this.

Bullocks.Take off that silly hat, man.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

Yet the characteristics of the IPU make it impossible for it to be anything other than made-up. How it was made up? Try this - There is a 16 tentacled ethereal badger sitting in your bathtub. You see how easy that was?I, like most humans, am able to pluck concepts out of my arse regardless of whether they exist or not.Do you and RAZD not have this ability?

Right. So we agree that RAZ is playing debate games and that finding the "Bobby Henderson of the IPU" has no bearing on bluegenes argument. Satirical logic? As far as RAZ is concerned he has provided a logical demonstration that any conclusion regarding the likely existence or non-existence of ANY unfalsified claim is pseudoskeptical. This includes the big fluffy magically undetectable Easter Bunny.See Message 152 and tell me where the "satire" is in the big green logical argument bit.

I think you have hit the nail on the head. Not just with regard to RAZD (although he has most explicitly advocates that line of thinking with his little logic exercise and relentless conflations of evidence based theories with IF THEN statements of logical certitude) but with regard to CS, Bluejay and a whole host of others.The belief that all knowledge is deductively derived from internally consistent axioms and that all mutually exclusive conclusions are equally valid was recently put forwards by Bluejay. He, jar, CS and others seem unable to comprehend that having been falsified is not the sole and single deciding factor when considering the relative worth of different explanations. And in general there seem to be two camps starting from completely different points with regard to what science is, why science is and what the point of evidence and investigation even are.It's like we are talking different languages half the time.

Would you agree that inductive reasoning is an essential part of the scientific method? That Newton didn't examine every single mass interaction that has ever or will ever take place before deriving the laws of motion, gravity etc? That we haven't tested the DNA of all Chimpanzees and all Humans? That it is perfectly fine from a scientific point of view to say "All known Chimp and Human DNA is consistent with the theory that they ALL share recent common ancestry"?This is the "Ace of Spades" logic you speak of. It's right there in science.Would you agree that a theory must make predictions?Would you agree that if those predictions are risky, that makes the theory better (eg, if the prediction fails - the theory is falsified is risky)?Would you agree that a theory should be falsifiable?Would you agree that a theory must be consistent with all the known evidence?If you you agree with all of these - could you please explain what the problem with bluegenes theory as he stated it was?You claim "He screwed up on a technicality" but all you offer as evidence of this is that he stated the wording of his theory, and his claim that all known evidence is consistent with it. This is a technical point, but I fail to see the screw up. Yes, bluegenes has given evidence that humans regularly imagine supernatural beings. So we know that analogous rain does form in analogous clouds. The theory "all rain forms in clouds" is consistent with all the evidence and is not falsified by any. Relying on a deck of cards is intrinsic to science. The very next card we examine may falsify our theory, but that's what it means to be falsifiable. We know the next card may falsify our theory. We're comfortable with that and it doesn't make bluegenes' argument any weaker than any other scientific theory to point this out. Bluegenes has challenged RAZD to pick any card he wants in order to falsify his theory. RAZD has not so far done so.Again you seem to be telling me that RAZD is arguing that science is logically invalid - despite also telling me that this is 'silly'. It is possibly true that science is logically invalid - and has been argued by many before. The difference is, that if RAZD reserves this argument only for hypothesis related to supernatural beliefs and does not bring it up for other theories then this is special pleading, no?

I'm not xongsmith, but I'll try my hand at your questions. No. I agree with that. But what does that have to do with inductive reasoning? No.However, I agree that a theory must be said to "make predictions". But we say that by talking in metaphors. No, though it does seem that it must be said to be falsifiable, even though it isn't actually falsifiable. No. No, it isn't.

quote:

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Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, or educated guess in colloquial English, is a kind of reasoning that draws generalized conclusions from a finite collection of specific observations.

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Newton suggests (not his own words):

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Every body remains in a state of rest or uniform motion (constant velocity) unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced force.

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A body of mass m subject to a force F undergoes an acceleration a that has the same direction as the force and a magnitude that is directly proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the mass,

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The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear.

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Since you agree he is making these general statements based on a specific and limited set of observations - we can conclude inductive reasoning is involved.I raised some other examples too.If you want to argue that this isn't by your philosophical position 'inductive reasoning' (which I suspect you were doing using the minimum number of words possible) then you are making the wrong argument in the wrong place and are just being pedantic on one of your pet subjects.I can negate all of this by appealing the pragmatics of my statements rather than the semantics of my statements:If you want to call 'schminductive reasoning' that Newton engaged in - then that's fine. It was 'schminductive reasoning' I was talking about and 'schminductive reasoning' that bluegenes is employing and 'schminductive reasoning' that RAZD argues should not be done despite the fact that it is.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

No, I do not agree with that. Specifically, I do not agree that Newton was making a generalization based on limited specific observations. I'm saying that the induction story is a ridiculous "Just So" story. It is the philosopher's equivalent of the "Adam and Eve" story, a foundational myth for philosophy of science. But it paints a highly misleading picture of how science is done. If you think I am arguing for the position taken by bluegenes, then you are mistaken. I believe I have already been clear (see Message 288) that I would not consider the "bluegenes theory" to be a scientific theory.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie