Ah well. Can the original source of any supernatural being story of historical significance by determined? 10% of them? 40%?
I have no idea on percentages - but evidence that they are human invention is still possible even if it cannot be demonstrated to the degree of facthood. Mutual exclusivity indicates at least large portions of many of them must be invention, for example. And we can also learn about the psychology of humans...if it turns out we have a propensity to detect design, agency and patterns and the propensity to confabulate stories about these perceived agents and how they achieved the pattern and why...then we have further evidence that these concepts are created in the imagination of human beings.
When a supernatural being is called forth to explain something humans experience then the evidence suggests that this is human invention. This is because whenever those phenomena are investigated we don't find elfs, nymphs, demons, goblins, unicorns, ghosts, vampires, domovoi, leszi, djinn, thunder gods... but are still able to explain those phenomena because we find something else (static electricity, sudden infant death syndrome etc) that does the job.
Whether or not any of these is of 'historical significance' is your call I guess.
First - several accounts that are a bit similar have cropped up from time to time, but it really spread as an idea after a hoax article in a newspaper. There have been various accounts of witnesses to magic shows confabulating tricks that are orders of magnitude more impressive than the magician actually performed, and with the Indian Rope Trick we have a fairly solid case this has happened. The actual trick as it is actually performed is much shorter and less impressive. There are other tricks that are performed separately than may well have been combined by witnesses to create an impossible trick.
So there is a supernatural being (a magical fakir) that has been shown to be almost certainly a product of human invention. Obviously the fakir wasn't invented, but that he was a magical fakir that can defy nature clearly is.
I can guess that RAZD was assuming any of the commonly known supernatural entities out of the past historical record. Like the Thor out of the old Norse religion system, not like the Thor out of the Marvel Comic book world.
We've flown above the clouds during a thunderstorm, and never seen a deity rolling across them in a chariot. Indeed, we've established that the noise of thunder is not the sound of chariot wheels banging against the firmament.
Speaking of firmament, Marduk killed Tiamat and:
quote:He split her up like a flat fish into two halves; One half of her he stablished as a covering for heaven. He fixed a bolt, he stationed a watchman, And bade them not to let her waters come forth.
We've not seen any primordial chaos monsters draped over the sky holding back an ocean when we've got up there. I think it's safe to say this was invented by storytellers.
Likewise, all barn fires where we have found the source of them has turned out to be caused by things such as 'poor fire discipline', rather than displeased spirits as various pagan religions have proposed.
Let's face it, supernatural beings, when they are genuinely believed in, are folktheories. They explain why things act the way they do or something like that. They are theories with no evidence, and are either subsequently falsified or modified by people like RAZD so as to be unfalsifiable.
He also recorded that the land mass was in one place in time past.
That is two pieces of information that was not available 3500 years ago.
I don't think we need turn to the supernatural to explain how men that never saw other physical continents went on to describe the world in terms of there being only one.
Nor do we need a deity to explain how a people that crafted pots by shaping clay might have come up with the notion of their own creation stemming from a similar process. Just like with Khnum, Prometheus, Obatala, Nwa and so on.
Since the author of Genesis was raised and educated in Egypt in the house of Pharoah as the son of his daughter why wouldn't he know of different land masses.
Egypt had boats for over 500 years by the time of the writing of Genesis.
The ancient Egpytians didn't know of any other landmasses. Neither did the Greeks thousands of years later with much better boats. Create a new topic if you still think you can defend this claim.
Introduction to Logic, Eighth edition, Carl Cohen and Irving M. Copi, 1990 (Chapter 3, Fallacies) writes:
In some circumstances, of course, the fact that certain evidence or results have not been got, after they have been actively sought in ways to reveal them, may have substantial argumentative force. New drugs tested for safety, for example, are commonly given to mice or other rodents for prolonged periods; the absence of any toxic effect upon the rodents taken to be evidence (although not conclusive evidence) that the drug is probably not toxic to humans. Consumer protection often relies upon evidence of this kind. In circumstances like these we rely not on ignorance but upon our knowledge, or conviction, that if the result we are concerned about were likely to arise, it would have arisen in some of the test cases. This use of the inability to prove something true supposes that investigators are highly skilled, and that they very probably would have uncovered the evidence sought had it been possible to do so. Tragic mistakes are sometimes made in this sphere even so; but if the standard is set too high - if what is required is a conclusive proof of harmlessness that cannot ever be given--consumers will be denied what may prove to be valuable, even lifesaving, medical treatments... ... Not to draw a conclusion, in some cases, is as much a breach of correct reasoning as it would be to draw a mistaken conclusion.
Wikipedia suggests that an earlier edition puts it more succinctly:
Copi, 1953 writes:
In some circumstances it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence.
I continue to be surprised that people will assert the maxim as if it were some absolute truth seemingly just because it has a nice ring to it. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny is cool to say too...
Edited by Modulous, : Ontogeny not ontology. Ontology is what we're talking about....
Properly speaking, the absence of evidence is not by itself (negative) evidence (of absence), rather it is evidence of the absence of (positive) evidence - in the areas where evidence has been sought, and with the methodology\technology used to look for (positive) evidence.
Not properly speaking. It is quite proper to say that the absence of evidence for a thing is evidence for its absence - under the right circumstances. As the noted logician Copi pointed out:
quote:In some circumstances it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence.
Now, as coyote pointed out, 'qualified investigators' when we're looking for a pen on a desk is a pretty low standard.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of the absence of evidence. The absence of evidence is the absence of evidence. It is not evidence for itself.
If you only look in area {A} and do not find positive evidence, that means that positive evidence is currently not available within area {A}
And we're talking about area {A} only. When we look there are two hypothesis
1. The pen is on the desk (evidence: I can see a pen) 2. The pen is not on the desk (evidence: I can not seen a pen on the desk, and I have reason to suppose it is likely that if a pen was present I'd see it).
The absence of the evidence for 1 just happens to be the evidence for 2.
It's really basic logic.
One thinks of the Coelacanth in the days before the modern species were found: the evidence only existed in the fossil record of shallow sea beds until ~60 million years ago. The evidence from trawling the seas of the world, and taking oceanographic samples with the then latest technology, did not show any positive evidence of extant Coelacanths, although there was evidence of other aquatic life from pre-60 million years ago (sharks etc). The actual probability of finding the modern Coelacanth was very small - using crashfrogs outcome space and probability calculations - the area occupied by the current species is a small fraction of a percentage of the available space in the oceans of the world ... and yet the truth was that Coelacanths did exist === the absence of (positive) evidence was not (negative) evidence (of absence). There are many cases where this is found to be the case.
And when the marine biologist looked in his bath and noticed there were no Coelacanths in there - did he consider this absence of evidence of a Coelecanth reasonable enough evidence for its absence so that he could try the non life-saving act of relaxing in the bath without squashing a rare specimen? I suspect so.
We're not talking about hunting elusive species, unfalsifiable supernatural motivations or anything like that. We're talking obvious mundane things and obvious mundane environments that they may or may not be presently found in in a hypothetical example.
You don't need to worry about this undermining all your arguments that have Venn diagrams talking about larger search areas and unknowable search areas. It's nothing to do with that - unfalsifiable escape hatches remain unfalsified; we're just talking about whether or not you could ever support the claim, "There is no pen on the desk.", with evidence. I suggest that absence of any evidence of a pen being on the desk despite twelve competent people independently looking for it is evidence that every rational person and a few irrational ones, would accept without any lives being on the line or having to resort to mere 'opinion'.
Philosophy is primarily an endeavor whose purpose is the destruction of human knowledge.
You could certainly argue that RAZD and to a lesser extent CS are engaged in an asinine argument with the intent of shoring up their theological apologetics with an old solid-sounding aphorism.
It should be noted, the aphorism is credited to a scientist (who I believe was specifically talking about life elsewhere in the universe. rather than proposing a general law of empiricist logic), and I've not seen any philosophers that have argued that is generally true. You might be able to find some, but then again, you can find some people that qualify as scientists that engage in pseudoscience like ID.
I know - you'd prefer to express your disdain for philosophy, despite philosophy having a rigorous answer to this issue (which basically agrees with your own). Of course, to the anti-philsophy types, when philosophers are 'rigorous' they are being reasonable or they are being normal or logicians or even scientists! But when science minded folks make asinine, stubborn or plain stupid arguments that fly in the face of all reason: they are doing philosophy. Anyway, here is another philosopher, who stated the obvious in case the likes of RAZD were in doubt.
Peter van Inwagen writes:
If the present argument appeals to any general epistemological principle, it is this rather obvious one: If a proposition is such that, if it were true, we should have evidence for its truth, and if we are aware that it has this property, and if we have no evidence for its truth, the fact that we have no evidence for its truth, is (conclusive) evidence for its falsity.
The problem isn't all the rigorous ways to do philosophy; the problem is that all the non-rigorous ways to do philosophy are considered just as good. For all the rigorous answers to the problem of the absence of evidence, there are non-rigorous philosophers who strike the exact opposite position.
They aren't considered 'just as good' as demonstrated by your not considering them just as good. A bunch of numptys that come along and start twisting arguments around in torturous semantic gymnastics is not evidence that philosophers are out to destroy knowledge and are unable to answer whether there is a pen on the desk.
It's the lack of insistence upon rigor by philosophers that makes it a field without rigor.
There's plenty of insistence that we should reason correctly and be rigorous by philosophers. But humans are individually quite bad at doing that and there is disagreement over what is the correct way to reason. There are plenty of disputes at the bleeding edge of science in which the same kinds of disagreements arise but this lack of central dictating authority on the correct way to infer conclusions from evidence and logic is no more a problem in science or philosophy.
In other words: ... the absence of evidence is not by itself (negative) evidence (of absence), rather it is evidence of the absence of (positive) evidence
Other than the nonsense where you confused the absence of something with evidence of its absence you are basically correct when you stipulate 'by itself'.
There are cases where the absence of evidence does not give evidence of absence. Such as - when you don't go looking for evidence.
There are cases where the absence of evidence is all the evidence for absence we need. Such as when you look for something you would expect to find if it was there.
The statement 'an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' is not true in all cases. The only option for you here seems to be to argue that the statement is a meaningless tautology (ie., the absence of any evidence whatsoever is by definition not evidence for anything).
No, there's none at all, which is why rigorous philosophy appears in the exact same journals alongside non-rigorous philosophy. The notion of "rigor" is simply optional in philosophy, which is why the field as a whole lacks it.
One can only assume we read vastly different philosophy journals. Maybe you are reading 'crapshoot philosophy monthly'. I'd throw that over there with the Creation Science and ID journals
"A good idea, a little too simple perhaps - but on the right track.", says Pascal Boyer. No, not really. But he did say
The findings emerging from this cognitive evolutionary approach challenge two central tenets of most established religions. First, the notion that their particular creed differs from all other (supposedly misguided) faiths; second, that it is only because of extraordinary events or the actual presence of supernatural agents that religious ideas have taken shape. On the contrary, we now know that all versions of religion are based on very similar tacit assumptions, and that all it takes to imagine supernatural agents are normal human minds processing information in the most natural way.
Knowing, even accepting these conclusions is unlikely to undermine religious commitment. Some form of religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. By contrast, disbelief is generally the result of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive dispositions hardly the easiest ideology to propagate
In this sense, religion is vastly more natural than the sleep of reason argument would suggest. People do not adhere to concepts of invisible ghosts or ancestors or spirits because they suspend ordinary cognitive resources, but rather because they use these cognitive resources in a context for which they were not designed in the first place. However, the tweaking of ordinary cognition that is required to sustain religious thought is so small that one should not be surprised if religious concepts are so widespread and so resistant to argument. To some extent, the situation is similar to domains where science has clearly demonstrated the limits or falsity of our common intuitions. We now know that solid objects are largely made up of empty space, that our minds are only billions of neurons firing in ordered ways, that some physical processes can go backwards in time, that species do not have an eternal essence, that gravitation is a curvature of space-time. Yet even scientists go through their daily lives with an intuitive commitment to solid objects being full of matter, to people having non-physical minds, to time being irreversible, to cats being essentially different from dogs, and to objects falling down because they are heavy.
Or J Anderson Thomson gives a good overview for the hypothesis currently being explored by cognitive scientists, psychiatrists etc. Rather than the simplistic 'human imagination' it is basically that religion acts a super stimulator for our evolved brain (much like soft drinks and big macs are superstimulating versions of protein and sugar which we evolved to pursue). Supernatural agency is part of this this theory. Here is a somewhat informal presentation of the ideas in case you hadn't watched it.
Is this the ballpark you were looking towards? There are lots of papers out there, spread around discussing agency detection, counterintuitive concepts and so on, I can't see much in the way of review material. Still, given we're talking about getting dirty in the brain which is still a complex hard to understand place - I think the work so far is pretty good and generally supportive of bluegenes' theory if we're open enough about 'human imagination'.
Re: the bluegenes Challenge (bluegenes and RAZD only)
Why bluegene will not(so far) produce the strong "hypothesis" he claims to have is a mystery. If it's so strong why not point it out in the very first post?
Because RAZD already included it in the first post:
quote:"All supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination". This is a high level of confidence theory.
quote:When I present a statement like "all supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination" as a scientific theory, which is what I've been very clearly doing, using phrases like "scientific theory", and words like "falsifiable," it should be clear to scientifically informed readers what I mean.
And in his next post:
quote:The theory that all supernatural beings come from the human imagination is built on the observation that the human imagination is the only known source of supernatural beings. Do you know of any source of supernatural beings other than the human imagination?
That's the theory, bluegenes is quite explicit about it. It's a little odd that you made it through 3 pages without noticing it. What did you think bluegenes was saying?
. Yes, proving bluegenes' theory(which we don't even know yet) wrong is like debunking the TOE.
The theory is that all supernatural being concepts are products of the human imagination. Did you miss my post where I pointed this out that you felt the need to repeat the charge? Did you forget that you had already quoted it?
Wow, in the very next sentance after claiming to have a theory(which he still hasn't provided) he now WANTS RAZD to show positive proof of supernatural beings??? WHY, so he can say "SEE RAZD you can't do it" Which WAS NOT the original topic.
Because showing positive proof of a supernatural being is required to falsify the theory. The only legitimate reason for mentioning specific supernatural beings such as the IPU is if they are being presented as falsification of the theory. Otherwise, what is the point of bringing it up?
Man, you guys really just don't get it. When someone (i.e. bluegenes) makes a claim that he does in fact have a "strong" theory that disproves supernatural beings DO NOT exist and someone (RAZD) takes the CHALLENGE to try and DISPROVE what the other person is asserting in his "theory" it is bluegenes job to support the theory with evidence for which HE has stated NOT RAZD's responsibilty to refute straw man arguments.
bluegenes has not made a claim that he has a theory that disproves suparnatural beings exist.
He has made a claim that the only known source of supernatural beings is the human imagination and that by using inductive reasoning this can lead from the specific known cases to the general statement that all supernatural beings have their origins in the human mind.
It is NOT RAZD's responsibility to do anything OTHER than try to disprove bluegenes's (supposed theory/hypothesis).
And RAZD has not provided any evidence to suggest that we know of another source. He has been unable to falsify bluegenes' theory.
This debate was over on page one. RAZD simply offered bluegenes the benefit of the doubt that eventually he would get around to presenting his argument in the way he claimed he would, which hasn't happened.
Are you able to put bluegenes' argument in your own words?
like a creationist, rebutted for the very first time
I don't need to put bluegenes argument into my own words, simply because it isn't an argument he's presenting. It's wishful thinking.
OK, but unless you can put his 'wishful thinking' into your own words I can only suspect that you don't understand it and I am in no position to explain what it is that you have misunderstood. This makes discussion very difficult.
It seems pretty clear that RAZD's is not the one who bears the burden of proof.
I've not suggested otherwise. There is a phenomena that needs explanation, the conception of supernatural beings. There are at least two possibilities. One is that the conception is the source of those beings. Another is that some supernatural being concepts derive from experience with actual supernatural beings.
Bluegenes simply needs to point out that every single time the source has ever been identified, it is the human mind. From this observation an inductive leap can be made from the specific known examples to a general theory of all examples.
In order to show the induction to be false, a single counter-example is all that is required.
bluegenes writes:
All supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination".
That's only of the claims bluegenes made, the rest are briefly:" The human imagination is the only known source of supernatural beings", " this is a strong theory", " A high level of confidence theory".
'All supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination' was not a claim, it was the theory. You seem to be getting confused like RAZD has between a theory and factual claim. The theory is a general principle derived from specific examples. If you wish to assert that there are other known sources of supernatural beings, you need to show evidence that this is true. The only source that I know of is the human mind.
Do you accept that the only known source of supernatural beings is in the human mind? If you do not, what is the other known source?
Im still not sure how it's RAZD's responsibility do anything other than refute this claim made by bluegenes and not try to get into a debate using circular logic, which bluegenes has done so well.
That's right, RAZD needs to refute the evidence which is that the only known source of supernatural beings is the human mind and that the human mind has a promiscuous tendency for creating supernatural creatures. Which he has failed to do. This failure is evidence that the only known source is the human imagination, because if anyone could do it, RAZD could. This means the induction survives.
Straggler, Modulous and PaulK. All three of you are arguining in favor of what you pounce on Creationists for. Basically using the Bible to prove the Bible is true. It's the same logic here. Bluegenes is doing the SAME exact thing that you argue against when it comes to Creationist tactics.
Could you get any more vague?
What is it that bluegenes is doing exactly that is like what creationists are doing? What is it that I have done, that reminds of you of creationists? Which holy book are we using as proof that there are no supernatural beings? Surely RAZD's unfalsifiable 'Hindu Hypothesis' is closer to the argument that creationists use?
You've accused us of circularity. How is it circular to do the following:
All known sources of supernatural beings have turned out to be the human imagination along with its tendency towards creating such minimally counter-intuitive entities coupled with their hyper-active agency detection tendencies. Therefore, by induction, it is an unfalsified theory that all such beings are products of the human mind. IF someone where to produce evidence of such a being the theory is false.
So pony up, lose the vague criticisms and get specific.
Re: like a creationist, rebutted for the very first time
Fine, im just thrown off by the way bluegenes uses to TOE as comparison to his statement.
Well, you don't falsify a theory by postulating unfalsifiable objections. Thus you don't falsify evolution by recourse to omphalism. You don't fallsify imaginationism with recourse to the Hindu Hypothesis.
It completely different.
The theory of evolution states that ALL life changes, that all life is related. Yet it has not tested all life, just a very very very small subset of all life. That it applies to all life is an inductive leap. Just as with the imagination theory.
They are only different in their subject matter, but then all theories differ on their subject matter.
I think they are both using different standards of evidence for some reason when it's not a scientific issue.
I see no reason to consider the standards that different. There is physically observable evidence that humans invent supernatural beings. There is evidence that humas confabulate agent based explanations for phenomena that confuse them.
Further, contradictory accounts mean that some information about supernatural beings must have arrived not via the senses but have been altered, confabulated or downright imagined by the observers.
I agree, it would have been for a better debate if RAZD just played along but bluegenes arrogance seemed to fuel RAZD's quest.
Bluegenes' arrogance? Have you read RAZD's posts? They are literally dripping with a cocksure attitude.
RAZD im sure is aware of all of this. He was simply giving him a hard time.
So RAZD is being deliberately obtuse?
How was that?
We're still vague I'm afraid. You think there are different standards of evidence in play, I've got that much. And you think bluegenes was being arrogant.
I suppose the standards for theorys are different in your opinions, im learning. You can make simple yet profound statements and if you are totally 100% in agreement with those statements you need not to back it up.
The only evidence that can be provided is evidence that supports the theory, but does not guarantee it. So, supporting evidence:
1. Humans do make up supernatural creatures. 2. No supernatural entity has ever been demonstrated to exist. 3. Humans confabulate ideas to fill gaps in their knowledge. 4. As with natural selection, confabulated ideas that have properties which cause them to propagate will increase in frequency (more and more people will accept the confabulation). 5. At least one such property is that they are minimally counter-intuitive. That is they are normal things, with a slight twist. A talking dead ancestor, a wish granting spirit bound to an oil lamp etc.
It has supporting evidence, and no falsifying evidence.
A supernatural being exists outside of my imagination because im finite whereas the supernatural is not.
This is a non sequitur. Just because you claim that the supernatural is infinite does not mean it necessarily exists. If a supernatural being exists, whether it is finite or not, it does so outside of our imagination. Take for example, the horse. Horses exist outside of my imagination.
A Supernatural being is beyond human understanding or imagination therefore doesn't depend on our imagination for it to be true or untrue.
If the supernatural being is beyond human understanding then any properties that humans say they have must be products of human imagination.
Humans have no knowledge of supernatural beings existence, nor it's nature within it's finite mind or imagination excluding the imagination as any sort of verifiable evidence either for or against.
In which case, anybody that claims any properties for the supernatural is necessarily using their imagination.
Just as you cannot clearly say they exist, certainly you cannot say the don't.
Agreed. The theory predicts that all the concepts of supernatural things we humans have are products of the human imagination. Nobody is saying that supernatural things do not exist. This is the error I warned you were making previously.
bluegenes is, in essence ACTING as if he is a supernatural being (hence his "knowing" the imagination is the only known source) by claiming such a thing without considering his finite nature.
Can you name another source of supernatural being concepts which is known?
You don't have to be a superantural being to claim knowledge about the only known source of something.
The only known source for watches is watchmakers. I don't have to be magic to make that claim. And what's more, if I stress that I could be wrong and explained what would falsify my idea I would be conceding the fallible nature of my own knowledge.
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