Why "Immaterial Pink Unicorns" are not a logical argument

I'm unsurprisingly unconvinced.The IPU/FSM and Russell's Teapot are examples of unfalsifiable entities. It is an argument against not just believing in something which it is either impossible to verify or impossible to discount - but also it stands as an argument against those people that think unbelievers have committed some kind of error by doubting the existence of said entity.To quote Bertrand Russell:

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If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.

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The IPU can also be used to argue that a person might well have come to have faith in the IPU if only they had been brought up in a culture where it was ubiquitously held to be true - and that this demonstrates a certain arbitrariness to holding their own faith.

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If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

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We know that life exists on one planet. We know that it almost certainly arose naturally. We know there are other planets. Lots of them. It seems reasonable to me to suggests that there stands a good chance that life exists on one of those planets having naturally arose there too.One might even go as far as saying "I believe alien life exists", and it would still be a world away from saying "I believe God exists" or "I believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster/IPU exists". However, if a believer in alien life were to suggest that those that did not believe in alien life were unreasonable, or being illogical in some fashion...that would be a different prospect. It's a good job they have evidence for it then, isn't it?

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The IPU/FSM and their kith and kin are used primarily to argue this:the onus probandi rests on the believer

I'm not arguing whether atheism is a logically valid position. I was simply pointing out what the function of the 'unfalsifiable entity' argument was from the very pen of one of its most famous proponents. Are you trying to say it is off-topic in a thread about about the logical argument behind IPUs to describe their origination and logical reasoning? You might even choose to argue that this supports your position if you think other people have used it in a way that is significantly different from this purpose.As bluegenes pointed out, quite rightly, the IPU serves an additional purpose of showing the absurdity of giving an entity certain contradictory properties (is both invisible and pink).The FSM is designed to show the absurdity of the 'equal time' argument in classrooms.The Teapot is designed was to show the problem of 'if you can't disprove it is unreasonable to disbelieve it'And so on and so forth. Their centralised theme is, as I said:the onus probandi rests on the believer and not the other way around. Yes, that's what I said. There is a strong reasoned argument that takes evidence and logic, that concludes, alien life forms could very well exist. Of course, if a person believed it without a suitable level of tentativity, they'd open themselves up to the charge of unreasonable degree of certainty or somesuch. Well, they certainly had evidence that something existed that had the effects of something with mass - you even told us what that evidence was in the OP. That 'something' was clearly not shiny like stars. So there was evidence of either one of two positions:1. Most of astrophysics is massively wrong.
2. There exists a crap load of entities with mass that don't give off light.Since we have evidence that the latter can actually exist, it was reasonable to think it could be true - especially given the amount of evidence the former was not true. After all - the only reason we hadn't previously thought they existed was because we don't see them, them not giving off enough light to be seen and all.It certainly was a little odd, and I certainly would have no problem with cosmologists who were sceptical (could be a measurement or mathematical problem, after all). Then again, it being a falsifiable and verifiable claim, they went ahead and accrued further evidence for it.That being the difference between belief that god exists and a belief that dark matter exists - one can be verified and/or falsified. Even the aliens hypothesis could be falsified in principle (it turns out that there are no such things as galaxies and stars, they are just paint on a black cloth etc etc). The similarity between the belief that 'god exists' and the belief that 'the IPU exists' is that (depending on our wording) neither can.Without further argumentation on behalf of the believer, the IPU and god are no different as far as believability. And that's the argument. Is there some actual reason one might believe in god and not the IPU (other than the known provenance of the IPU's made up status?) If the IPU being made up interferes with your thinking about it, choose an entity that is 'silly' that has been believed in like the Leszi or something.

But the counter argument is that this is not related to the Invisible Pink Unicorn argument. I did this by trying to explain what the actual Invisible Pink Unicorn argument was meant to be about, what some of the related arguments were about and what the general argument behind them all were.Since nobody is claiming that the Invisible Pink Unicorn is God - I have no idea what you think this logical construct has to do with your own topic.If your only point was this logic statement here is flawed - nobody would bother arguing with you. However, your argument in the OP is the topic, and it is to that I am arguing against and I am doing so by pointing out that you have not shown a correlation between what lies behind the actual IPU argument and your logically flawed syllogism. More like(G)od is an example of an unfalsifiable/unverifiable entity
(I)nvisible Pink Unicorn being an unfalsifiable/unverifiable entityTherefore G belongs to set A (the set of all unfalsifiable/unverifiable entities)
I belongs to set AFinally:
(D)ark matter is an example of a falsifiable and verifiable entity which has some verification supporting its existence and no falsification.D belongs to set B (the set of all falsifiable and verifiable entities that have not been falsified and have had some verification.You can tell the difference between them all based on what set they belong to and we tell what set they belong to by examining their properties.G belongs to A
I belongs to A
D belongs to BWithout further argumentation on behalf of the believer, the IPU and god are no different as far as believability. If you can explain why a subset of A exists whose members should be more believable, then you have made some progress in tackling the actual argument. I fear however, that you think the actual argument is off topic - in which case this thread is just a pointless echo chamber.

Nicely put. Since a picture is said to be worth a thousand words, let me add some words of my own and a picture (together we have written approx. 1400 words)In set A we have a set of entities that may or may not exist. We have established a set of rules for discriminating between those entities that we think do exist (X) and those we think don't exist (Y). The methods for doing this can and do vary, but most people agree that the most successful method is something akin to the scientific one. We gather independent lines of evidence and we apply reason to judge in which direction they point (to existence or non existence). For this reason, entities in set A must be verifiable and falsifiable.Sometimes there will be debate over whether something in set A belongs in subset X or subset Y. RAZD puts this down to 'world view', but I disagree. A world view is a large beast to tackle when really all we are talking about here is epistemology, a subset of 'world views'. We are trying to determine what is true and what is false, what we know from what we do not.What separates someone who is confident in the strength of their argument as to why their epistemological framework is defensible is that they will try and defend it. Those that do not have confidence in their epistemological framework will tend to get post-modern or reliativistic and talk about the subjectivity of worldviews, imply that knowledge is little more than opinion etc. More intelligent people may even try and throw in a pile of Latin terms to dismiss close scrutiny of their epistemology.So let us look at set β - this set is composed of those things which are unfalsifiable and/or unverifiable. We have the subsets φ (the things we think exist) and θ (the things we don't think exist).On what grounds to we put an entity into one set or another? One could develop criteria - but it becomes really difficult to do it without clearly getting involved in special pleading. I'm not suggesting it is impossible, but the IPU and its kin do show to the world whether or not a person really has any idea why they have put some entities into φ but not others. Those that don't really know might get defensive or accuse their opponents of ridiculing them and missing the point and so on.Many come to the conclusion that the really is no arguable and consistent way to discriminate between the two subsets and that one has to shrug one's shoulders and say 'Faith is special pleading[/i].' Others try and come up with criteria to do the discrimination.We could get into an interesting discussion about scientific realism versus constructivism and that might well be an interesting debate, but when there are such stumbling blocks as straightforward as the IPU between here and there - that doesn't seem likely. Well that's not true - Straggler's The Axioms Of Scientific Investigation is a good step in that direction, I should probably get back to that at some point.

Ignoring any disputes about what is or isn't reasonable or non-reasonable. irrational etc (which would devolve into definitional issues I'd wager), you are essentially conceding the entire point of the IPU argument right here. The point being to show in a stark and obvious as a way as possible, to people who are often having cognitive dissonance issues, that they are engaging in special pleading when they pick and choose entity x to believe in whilst disbelieving in entities a-w inclusive.And that's fine - I don't care, special plead away, as long as you do so knowing that is what you are doing and knowing the associated problems then I have no problem with that. Most of the known world engages in this particular branch of special pleading, it might be said to be an empirical fact that it is, broadly speaking, part of the human condition to do it.Now - wouldn't it be interesting to have some kind of thread where we can have philosophical duke out between Fideism and Evidentialism, so that all these kinds of issues can be laid bear and be indisputably on topic?Fideism:

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Alvin Plantinga defines "fideism" as "the exclusive or basic reliance upon faith alone, accompanied by a consequent disparagement of reason and utilized especially in the pursuit of philosophical or religious truth." The fideist therefore "urges reliance on faith rather than reason, in matters philosophical and religious," and therefore may go on to disparage the claims of reason. The fideist seeks truth, above all: and affirms that reason cannot achieve certain kinds of truth, which must instead be accepted only by faith. Plantinga's definition might be revised to say that what the fideist objects to is not so much "reason" per se it seems excessive to call Blaise Pascal anti-rational but evidentialism: the notion that no belief should be held unless it is supported by evidence.

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Hopefully not forgetting the critical difference between them being that the IPU is inherently unfalsifiable and unverifiable. Incidentally, why do you think the IPU is not necessarily representative? What would be a representative example of an unfalsifiable and unverifiable entity? I would have thought there were an infinite number of such things (proof: An IPU with 1 leg, an IPU with 2 legs...an IPU with n legs) - how can one be any more representative of such things than any other?Indeed - the lack of such discriminatory criteria and the need to use faith to accept one over the other, is precisely the point being raised. Obviously what I consider sufficient or convincing is subjective - the clue is in the personal pronoun. The interesting thing is the why I find it convincing. To quote the wiki article on Special Pleading: "In philosophy, it is assumed that wherever a distinction is claimed, a relevant basis for the distinction should exist and be substantiated. Special pleading is a subversion of this assumption.".I provide what I consider a relevant basis for the distinction. The faith argument, so the IPU argument attempts to demonstrate, subverts this process of providing a relevant basis. You might disagree with the basis for my distinctions (my criteria, my methodology etc), but by having such bases, I am not special pleading. If we were to explore my epistemological foundations in more depth we would no doubt find the occasional problems and unfounded positions; I would be very surprised to learn that there was no special pleading at all. After all, I have already said that special pleading seems to haunt the human condition.Of course, doing so here, as you so explicitly laid out in your OP, is not on topic. I said earlier that there was inevitably going to be debate when trying to decide whether a verifiable entity has enough (or any qualifying) verifying information to conclude its existence. I said that various arguments and criteria and methodology might be employed to argue the case one way or another. The point of the IPU argument is to show that no such criteria or methodology seems forthcoming for placing the IPU into the 'Does not exist' category, and god or leszi or angels or whatever into 'Does exist' category. Now - some people believe there are some criteria (the prevalence of belief in creator deities, the argument from design etc etc), having such criteria would suggest not faith, but reason was employed (or perhaps both)...and thus the IPU argument is no longer being used as an argument against faith, and thus it is no longer on topic for this thread."I believe that leszi exist and the creator god doesn't because I have faith that is the case."
"I believe that a creator god exists and leszi do not because I have faith that is the case."versus"Alien life rests on the premise that life coming into existence is not incredibally rare. Since we don't know how likely or unlikely this is, we should reserve judgement until we can get more information: sometimes unique events do happen and life might be one of them.""We know life exists here, and it arrived pretty early in earth's history. It seems no sooner had the earth finished cooling off and solidifying etc when life appeared. This is in itself evidence that life might be ubiquitous. Further - the astonishing number of planets that must exist is further evidence. I think we can tentatively conclude that extra terrestrial life probably exists."You see how the alien life case is built upon an argument, with appeals to evidence? Whether one accepts one or another is of course dependent upon your epistemological position, as well as the exact details of what evidence has been presented to you and what arguments you have been exposed to, but choosing one position over the other is not necessarily special pleading. Making a judgement call based upon arguments calling upon different criteria and epistemology is not special pleading. Making a judgement call based upon no such criteria (or arbitrary or irrelevant or whatever) is.So no, the alien life example has not demosntrated a logical fallacy in the IPU argument. Now: if you want to, you can try and use the IPU argument to argue that those that accept alien life existing are also special pleading if you want (and I think you will automatically fail given the falsifiable and verifiable nature of alien life as well as the argument by induction which cannot be used for the IPU either): but that doesn't mean the IPU example is fallacious - it just means it applies to more things than people might have thought. Oh, sorry, I thought your position was that reason is unnecessary and inappropriate for the exercise and justification of religious belief. I know that Deists generally suggest that they arrived at their belief through reason, but I rather got the impression that you and Percy both do not share this view. I have no desire for 'theism bashing' any more than I have for shooting fish in a barrel (deliberately self-contradictory statement placed here for comic effect). I simply thought you might like to have a philosophical argument about whether evidence/reason is unnecessary and inappropriate for the justification of certain, generally religious, beliefs given its off topic status in this thread.

If RAZD was arguing that there was evidence for such a position and that is why the IPU doesn't apply to him - then so be it. It might be better to argue the FSM instead (which does have evidence for it -> see the decline of piracy as it relates to global temperatures).Instead, RAZD is talking about faith and faith as RAZD says is

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...based on belief without evidence, pro or con, it is non-reasonable\rational, neither reasonable\rational nor unreasonable\irrational. Faith is non-reasonable\rational: it is belief without evidence. Faith does not make conclusions based on evidence, it makes conclusions about evidence based on faith.

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Which I think means that the IPU is fair game.

It might be useful if you could spell out what evidence + reasoning you think there is that leads to the conclusion that the IPU tentatively exists and likewise, what evidence + reasoning that leads to the conclusion that it doesn't; perhaps some discussion as to why you might err in one direction or the other on this subject might be useful.That might help me understand why you think that the IPU is in the same category as alien life.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Really? Astrobiologists disagree with you. They point out that in order have uninterrupted evolution for as long as we have had there would need to be several fortunate events such as the existence of something like Jupiter and our Moon to protect life from constant catastrophe. From our single sample of one solar system, we know that most bodies aren't in the fortunate position that Earth is, and plenty of them aren't even solid.They would point out that complex life would need to live somewhere temperate - so Io might have simple life forms on it, but it is unlikely to ever develop anything more interesting that extremophiles etc etc.It's always good to look at as much evidence as possible when we try and think about these kinds of things otherwise we end up sounding like creationists, "We're looking at the same evidence and just drawing different conclusions...", when that is often not the case. Yes, there is evidence of alien piloted spacecraft visits. Its not very good evidence, especially given that most cases there is no evidence that the object is a craft that is capable of extra-atmospheric travel and in not a single case to date is there any evidence that they are piloted by non terrestrial beings.When we weigh up other evidence such as the huge amounts of times that witnesses get things wrong - when objects have later been identified as clouds, venus, the moon, street lamps, helicopters, planes flying in formation, etc, we have to make a judgement of probabilities:Which is more likely, that UFO is something mundane (literally 'of this world') or that it is piloted by intelligent aliens capable of travelling long distances just to take a look but not to overtly interfere with affairs on this planet and just such a time as we happen to be around to periodically notice them?This makes it different than the IPU, unless you can tell me about the evidence and reasoning for and against the IPU's existence along similar lines as the above?

My apologies if I somehow managed to convince you that I didn't understand your argument so that you felt the need to repeat it. I guess I'll just repeat my counter argument and assure you that I understand what you are saying.Astrobiologists disagree with you. They point out that in order have uninterrupted evolution for as long as we have had there would need to be several fortunate events such as the existence of something like Jupiter and our Moon to protect life from constant catastrophe. From our single sample of one solar system, we know that most bodies aren't in the fortunate position that Earth is, and plenty of them aren't even solid.They would point out that complex life would need to live somewhere temperate - so Io might have simple life forms on it, but it is unlikely to ever develop anything more interesting that extremophiles etc etc.Now - if you would like, you can try and argue that complex life will always develop from simple life regardless of the selection pressures acting against that happening. Good luck with that, but please don't repeat your argument that we can calculate the probabilities of complex life arising using the simplistic method you outlined.Are you really going to ask me to do the web search for you on this one?Let us say that by divine fiat we learn that there is life on Pluto. We don't know what kind of life. Without knowing much more about Pluto than that, other than its extreme distance from the Sun and it being much smaller than Earth and its location in the Kuiper belt...are you suggesting that we should believe it is equally probable that the life there is
1) extremophilic type life
2) complex tool making intelligent beings with organs, large brains, hair, two eyes, a skeleton etc., etc.Really? No - I think there is also poor, likely to be erroneous and possibly hallucination type evidence for the existence of the IPU. The difference is that as far as I can tell, any given 'sighting' of the IPU (say by equine revelation), is unverifiable and unfalsifiable whereas we can in principle falsify or verify many UFO sightings as being terrestrial or otherwise.That is what separates them as far as our discussion is concerned. I don't know, how could we? There may be people who have genuinely believed in the IPU. However, alien life and cryptozoology are generally in the realm of 'verifiable and falsifiable'. The IPU is of course cryptozoology, but deliberately constructed so as to be unverifiable and unfalsifiable. Right - because it is inherently unverifiable. Whatever evidence anybody presents for it, can be easily dismissed as not being very convincing and a long way off from being verification of its existence. And no matter what evidence is presented, nothing will ever demonstrate it doesn't...even in principle.Alien life existing on other planets can be falsified in principle if it were to be shown that there are no other planets...

Well, we're reaching the 'halfway' point.I think all parties can agree that it would be incorrect to bring up the IPU in relation to a belief in entities that it is not comparable to.RAZD thinks the IPU equally applies to alien life and nobody else seems to think that is the case. Let's skip past the alien life question and see if we can reach agreement in another sphere entirely. I think there are some entities that the IPU is comparable to, stop me if you think I'm wrong:1. The Flying Spaghetti Monster
2. The intangible face raping squid
3. Russell's Teapot
4. Carl Sagan's Garage DragonIf someone proposed that they believed any of the above were entities that definitely did exist, we might say..."Why?""Faith.", may come the answer."Why do you have faith in the Garage Dragon, and not the IPU?", comes the response."Because the IPU is an absurd made up entity - your comparison is thus illogical. You believe that life might have originated naturally even without having seen direct evidence that it did; we all have different world views and where evidence is lacking we make a subjective leap based on those worldviews.""I think you might have missed the point.""I don't think so.""Can you explain why you believe the Garage Dragon exists, is there anything that makes it different to the IPU?""Faith in the Garage Dragon is not rational.""Is faith in the IPU rational?""No.""Is there any reason to pick one over the other?""But you believe that life originated naturally...and poster X doesn't, so it must have something or other to do with worldviews. Faith isn't about reason.""So let's get back to that whole 'Faith isn't rational/isn't about reason thing.'""OK""Welcome to the point.""I never disagreed with that point.""Then what's the problem?""The IPU argument is illogical because it doesn't apply to some other example!""But it does apply to the Garage Dragon, the thing we were originally talking about?""That's off topic.""Oh."

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No actual poster's positions were harmed during the making of this silly halfway point post. If you look carefully however, a few points of my own might be inferred from the text.

Straggler,
I think I might have used the word 'definitely' in my previous post, this is probably an unfair characterization of RAZD's position, though I don't think it changes my point.Inference to the best explanationThis is what RAZD seems to be skipping for some reason, at least in my opinion. He brings up the possibility of UFOs containing aliens^†. Let's take an example, here is a real drawing of a UFO eyewitness:So what's the inference we should come to here? Is it more reasonable to conclude that we were visited by aliens in a familiar looking interstellar craft, given the fact that aliens could exist, space travel is technically possible etc? Or is it better to conclude that it was a helicopter, given that helicopters do exist and are seen regularly?And to paraphrase Hume's reasoning for a moment:

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No testimony is sufficient to establish the existence of an entity unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish....

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The problem is, in my opinion, how do we infer to the best explanation between the Garage-Dragon and the IPU? There doesn't seem to be a way, so picking one seems arbitrary and defending that choice could rely on special pleading.However, if an argument was put forward defending the Garage-Dragon, that wouldn't necessarily be special pleading. There might actually be reasons for preferring one to the other (Maybe we prefer Carl Sagan to some random internet guy, this wouldn't be special pleading for Garage-Dragons but it would be an erroneous argument from authority at the very least).If you construct a reasonable argument as to why 'entity/argument x' is different to 'entity/argument y' then preferring one over the other is not necessarily special pleading, even if there is a problem in the argument elsewhere. It might be however, that upon deconstructing the argument we find that special pleading is still involve.And that is one of the points of the IPU argument isn't it? To show how believing in the Garage-Dragon (or G-D^*) over the IPU might be special pleading. If only someone would come and tell us why G-D is different enough from the IPU so that special pleading doesn't enter into it -- this would constitute defence against the IPU argument.Here's the killer: IF alien life was comparable to the IPU in the same way that G-D is THEN the IPU argument does still apply. So RAZD's position would still not be made for him. He'd just show that we were special pleading for alien life and not that the IPU argument fails in some way (if anything, he'd just show us that she is a more powerful and flexible beast than we realized!). If the last hundred-odd posts show us anything, there is at least a lot of argument possible as to why the two are different. Now we just need to see if any of the G-D supporters can provide similar quality of argument.

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^† I appreciate the UFOs were brought up for reasons other than what I am discussing here, but I thought it raised an interesting enough point to be worth raising this from a different angle. The 'logic train' argument I think, has been successfully dealt with elsewhere.
^* You see what I did there?Edited by Modulous, : adding UFO disclaimer

Oh, and to more directly answer the question, there isn't an answer.It's philosophy all the way down from here to metaphysics. Why choose one philosophy over another? Do we even choose philosophies, or if the determinists are right, are we simply compelled by certain sound/light waves to believe certain propositions are 'better' than others?Still - I'm going with the pragmatists. One method builds computers, the other builds arguments that sound good (or not).

Yes, I think all parties agree that the IPU and alien life are not equivalent. So continuing to use alien life as an example of a failed application of the IPU seems a bit...daft, yes? It's not really an issue at all, if we all agree on it. But you seem to think that bringing the alien life issue up is relevant to the argument somehow. That's right I did. You see what you did was take an argument that nobody was making, and attempt to show that it didn't work. We agreed that it didn't work, and we gave reasons as to why the IPU and the existence of alien life are different. You seem to enjoy repeating your position at me.Just answer this: Can you give me a reason to prefer believing in the IPU over the Garage Dragon? Edited by Modulous, : clarifying my opening paragraph

Hello again RAZD,
If we work together, maybe we can find our way to a solution on this, eh? Given the fact that the IPU is used to show issues with believing in certain classes of entity, given that frequently when somebody brings up the entity it is commonly brought up with regards to the IPU you make some comment about it being off topic or similar, I think it is highly relevant to bring up other entities. If you want to rule them off topic too - then you are going to be guilty of a hasty generalisation (see below for why).You see, if we're going to see if the IPU is ever applicable we need to start from the bottom and work our way to up. So we start with certain made up entities (with properties that might be close enough to the IPU to render the argument applicable), then we move onto entities people have actually believed it (which may or may not also have been made up), and at that time we can start to decide what properties all those entities might have in common. You seemed reticent to start with other entities people have actually believed in, so I thought we'd start where we most likely can reach an agreement.Or would you rather repeat the same argument over and over again, never advancing the debate in any constructive direction? If so, let me know and I'll not bother.If you do want to try this crazy experiment in moving the debate forward, please go with me on this.Now, if you don't mind I'm going to take your answer and extrapolate slightly - I hope you don't disagree. You said "I've never seen any reason to actually believe in the IPU", and I am assuming the same goes for Garage Dragon? So, the next question is: If somebody proclaimed belief in the Garage Dragon - would you agree that it would be a valid argument to point out that there is no reason to prefer Garage Dragon to the IPU and vice versa? Would it be valid to therefore point out that choosing to believe one or the other is somewhat arbitrary, that it might be somewhat special pleading?If so, can we conclude that the IPU argument can be successfully employed in the case of the Garage Dragon? If so, can we also then conclude that there are a certain class of entities for which the IPU argument is applicable (even if it later turns out that all those entities are made up and 'silly')? That's right, they are both things for which there is no conclusive evidence pro or con. Would you agree that if the IPU argument was meant to show the problems with holding a belief things for which there was no conclusive evidence then the IPU would be applicable here and that since we all seem to agree that it isn't applicable here that might actually be an indication that 'lack of conclusive evidence' might not be the relevant property?I think all participants have agreed that invoking the IPU when we are talking about believing that propositions are tentatively held to be true with only a smattering of supporting evidence alluding to it, is a poor or outright misuse of the IPU argument. I think we likewise agree that the IPU and the Garage Dragon are definitely not propositions that have a smattering of supporting evidence alluding to their existence (and if we want to argue they do have such evidence, we can at least agree that the nature of the evidence is significantly different from the alien life case).Now - just because you have identified one class of objects (those without conclusive evidence that definitively demonstrates their existence) that doesn't mean that the IPU is innappropriate to apply to all classes of objects does it? To conclude that would be...a hasty generalization.