If it can be, how can the "Absence of Evidence" be "Evidence of Absence?".

I agree that there is a logical fallacy in what you're talking about here.But, if asked, I think bluegenes would agree that even known human inventions have a (minute) possibility of being a part of reality. This is what he said: He uses words like "infer" and "high degree of confidence."He's not talking about absolutes.It's more of a:Of all the ones we know about (we are able to test their objective observations), there are no exceptions from them being human inventions (or at least they are not required aspects for reality to function)... Therefore, it is inferred with a high degree of confidence that the ones we do not know about (have no objective observations at all) will behave in a similar fashion.That seems logical to me.There isn't any claim that a human invention must not be a part of reality, just that it's likely that the current non-objective (known) supernatural concepts will be similar to the current objective supernatural concepts as time and testing progresses. If so, then it seems logical to tentatively infer that the non-objective supernatural concepts are as likely to be a part of reality as other human inventions are... that possibility exists, it's just miniscule.I think bluegenes is saying that if we have an infinite number of unknown supernatural concepts... we cannot make any inferences at all. But, after we test 10 of them, and see that they are all human inventions, then test 100 of them, and see that they are still all human inventions, then test 1000 of them, and they are all still human inventions... it is then logical to tentatively conclude until shown otherwise that all of them are human inventions.I don't see another rational conclusion for future progress.I don't see bluegenes (or anyone else) claiming that human-invention = absolutely, 100%, not a part of reality.I see people claiming that human-invention = likely not a part of reality (high confidence level) since out of all human invention, only a small portion have been shown to have semblance in reality.There are 2 steps here:1. We have high confidence that human invention is generally not a part of reality. But this is not an absolute, 100% concept.2. We have data to rationally, logically (and tentatively) infer that unknown supernatural concepts are human invention (just like all as-of-yet known supernatural concepts have turned out to be).Out of those two ideas, do you agree with either? Or do both of them give you pause?

That would be a total absence of evidence.However, lets say we divided the desk up into sections and that there is no pen in section A1. How would we know that the pen isn't in that section? Wouldn't it be by the absence of evidence for a pen in that section? That we lacked any indication of the pen being there?When you search for a pen and don't find it, is that an absence of evidence for the pen there? Or is it the empty portion of the desk that shows there is no pen there? What is that positive evidence against the pen being there? The presence of an empty desk? Do we get that from the absence of evidence for the pen?I'm not sure.

What is the logical formula for the absence of evidence evidencing an absence?That might be a good place to start to get this topic on track.

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[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

How about Occam's Razor?

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Okay. Occam's Razor is not really a formula, but simply a preference to choosing the explanation which assumes the least, that is, which has proportionally more evidence in its favor. As an example of a formula, consider a simple one for evidence of something:Iff P=1, then E=1
so that
If E=1, then P=1where:
E is evidence of P
P is phenomenon considered
0/1 refer to false/true respectivelyLet's find the formula used for absense of evidence evidencing an absence.Jon

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[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

If P then E
If not E then not P

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What is the logical formula for the absence of evidence evidencing an absence?

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As I tried to explain in Message 223, strictly speaking, "absence of evidence" is never "evidence of absence." "Absence of evidence" is a neutral concept. You can get this by closing your eyes. We often use the term "absence of evidence" incorrectly when what we really mean is that a partial search was performed and nothing was found. This is, strictly speaking, more than just an "absence of evidence;" it is "evidence of absence" over the parameter space which was searched.

quote:

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As I tried to explain in Message 223, strictly speaking, "absence of evidence" is never "evidence of absence." "Absence of evidence" is a neutral concept. You can get this by closing your eyes. We often use the term "absence of evidence" incorrectly when what we really mean is that a partial search was performed and nothing was found. This is, strictly speaking, more than just an "absence of evidence;" it is "evidence of absence" over the parameter space which was searched.

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This is good.I believe the original legal statement about absence of evidence means something like'If there is no evidence E for X, X may still be true'It's really a specialization of that statement where X is limited to cover the presence of something somewhere, but logically I believe it's the same kind of statement.So in formula terms it could be expressed as(E implies X) does not imply (not E implies not X).This is logically correct and I think that's all the original legal principle is saying.A complication arises when the evidence E is expected to exist if X is true. We now believe that X implies E, ie that in this case we need to reverse the implication direction.In this case, we CAN use the absence of evidence E to disprove X as we can use the standard logical expression :-(X implies E) implies (not E implies not X).So for example, if a specific location is scanned by a cctv camera, and we are happy that a continuous record has been stored, then finding no evidence for the presence of an indvidual on the recording is evidence that they were not present.Edited by Peepul, : No reason given.

Indeed, it is neutral. I am going to refer folk to Message 138, where I laid out some logic on the possibilities for absent evidence to be evidence.

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[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

Hi Stile, thanks. Yet it is still a logical fallacy, and it seems the only purpose for embracing it is to be able to make a decision, and make one when a decision is not necessarily needed.The other side of the problem, as framed by bluegenes, is that what you are talking about are concepts of god/s and not god/s themselves. In that sense they are all necessarily human inventions from the start, and the construction of the question is begging the issue - because you start with human inventions, limit it to human inventions and then conclude that you end up with human inventions. This has no bearing on whether any one of the concepts is representative of any god/s or not, and thus does not address the issue of whether or not god/s exist. The map is not the mountain, and maps can have highly variable accuracy and still have some representation of truth. Some may show a mountain as a cartoon on the map, a little pictograph with a snow-capped peak, but that does not mean that the actual mountain looks like that. On (1): We assume we have a high degree of correlation between what we observe as reality is in fact representative of reality. In reality we don't know, it could all be illusion (aka Buddhism) or it could be 99.9% true. Our confidence is raised by scientific testing, yet this is done only for a very small portion of our everyday lives. Our confidence is also raised by sharing common experiences with other people experiencing the same reality, however this is similar to voting on reality rather than scientific testing, and in this regard our common mundane experiences are generally accepted as true to reality as long as yours matches mine.When we use the principles of the scientific method to test reality, we eliminate concepts that are falsified by contrary evidence, and thus end up with an approximation of reality that (hopefully) gets closer to the real thing over time.When we use popular agreement to test reality, we only consider concepts that are shared as potentially true, and question the ones that are not shared, particularly if there is a large numerical difference between one group experiencing something and and another group not (ghosts, aliens, yeti, etc). Thus this too is an approximation, but there is no 'fine-tuning' of the approximation over time, no elimination of falsified concepts, only rejection of concepts that are not accepted, where the rejection is due to opinion rather than evidence.On (2): this is still begging the question and does not logically lead one to conclude that god/s do not exist. What we can say, is that we are dealing with ideas of reality and whether the concepts in question can be a valid representation of a god/s, ie we can test the maps for accuracy in their portrayal of the mountain and discard the ones that are likely to be inaccurate. In this sense all we can do is eliminate poor maps of the mountain, and not the existence of the mountain. In this sense the concept of god/s is being refined over time as false ideas\maps are being discarded.Enjoy.

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Indeed, it is neutral. I am going to refer folk to Message 138, where I laid out some logic on the possibilities for absent evidence to be evidence.

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It is difficult to figure out what you are trying to say in this message. It appears to be logic mixed with strange semantics (e.g. "no-god"). Can you re-phrase it in normal English, without inventing terms such as "no-god"?

The supernatural explanatory model has failed. Failed repeatedly and spectacularly. If it were not for personal conviction it would have been abandoned long ago. Any rational person will consider the entirety of human history and knowledge demonstrating this immense and unmitigated failure as being entirely relevant to assessing the potential validity of any further claims of the supernatural.Apparently you don't. Apparently the entirety of human history and knowledge doesn't exist or has no relevance as far as you are concerned. Apparently all you see is an "absence of evidence". Incredible. No such evidence exists for irrefutable Santa concepts. Or the Easter Bunny. Or the Tooth fairy. Why do you persist in this "you can't prove my god doesn't exist nah nah nah nah" nonsense? All we can ever do is demonstrate that magical ethereal inherently irrefutable beings are in all probability human inventions. Exactly as you did with Santa. I have said this about ten times now. Which part of this simple fact are you still having trouble with? How can it possibly be false? Are you denying that concepts relating to "unknowable" magical beings originate and evolve in the context of human history, culture and psychology? Are you saying that these areas of knowledge have absolutely no relevance when assessing the validity of deistic claims? Are you saying that these areas of knowledge are not objectively evidenced? Your relentless need to insist that atheism must equate to "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" is starting to border on the seriously deranged. No human claim operates in a vacuum of all objective evidence. How possibly can it?Why not just concede that there is relevant objective evidence to consider and move on with the discussion? Why is that so hard for you to admit?

No it isn't. He is not making a statement of logical certitude. He is making a tentative evidence based argument of likelihood.Why do you continually need to conflate the two?

Not specifically, no; but I can try to explain it in a slightly different way.When we say we have the absence of evidence (E) of X, what that looks like is this:NL-E OF YES-XWhen we say we have the evidence (E) of absence of X, it looks like this:YES-E OF NL-XTo show that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, we must show the latter to be logically derivable from the former. In other words, we must create a logical proof for:(NL-E OF YES-X) = (YES-E OF NL-X)Now I am all ready to be convinced... but I gotta see the proof. Is it possible to swap values of E and X? Can we define OF?__________
NL = 'neutral', or 'absent', which is different from NO

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[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

Hi Straggler, it must be frustrating to only be able to rely on logical fallacies for what you consider a "rational" conclusion. Which explains the current status of beliefs ... oops. I guess that asserting something does not make it so eh? Argument from consequences, another logical fallacy, plus non-sequitur conflation and begging the question. Argument from incredulity plus non-sequitur and straw man. I see an absolute absence of any presentation of evidence, and thus it is extremely difficult to analyze the information in the non-existent evidence. Asserting that it exists does not show that it does. You might just as well claim:Mushrooms grow in the forest at night when it rains.
Therefore god/s do not exist.Both may be true, but there is no rational, logical, connection from one to the other, and the conclusion does not follow from the premise: it is a logically invalid construction. No such evidence exists because no such evidence exists. Anything else is evidence of something else and not for the actual absence of god/s. People making things up does not necessarily mean that all concepts of god/s are made up, that is the common "all A is B, B, therefore A" logical fallacy. Where I showed that the santa example was one of a combination of things by the process of urban mythology, including known fictions, some previous myth\legend\folklore, and some actual factual basis, and curiously nothing there showed that supernatural abilities could not occur.I also noted that you could use this as an example of how to deal with other such situations, a task you have failed to take up. Presumably, you do not have the objective empirical evidence for the precursors of these other beliefs as is available for the santa conglomeration. Um, the lack of empirical objective evidence part? The fact that one demonstrated urban myth does not mean that all other concepts are similarly derived, the fact that your conclusion that it does is another logical fallacy of the "all A is B, B, therefore A" logical fallacy. By the simple fact that it is demonstrated to be false, as you admit, in some cases. You can't argue both claims are true, therefore at least one is false.Your opinion is not fact. Your interpretation of reality is not fact. In other words, he is giving his opinion rather than a logical conclusion - an opinion that is based on the logical fallacy of begging the question, and hence questionable at best.Opinion is not a fact, not a known true premise for a logical conclusion. You cannot conflate the two.Enjoy.

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