Question Evolution!

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I would add, what is evidence? Logically speaking?
It is the consequent in a modus ponen. The antecedant is represented as the theory or postulation. The falsification evidence is the modus tollens rejection of the consequent.

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In fact the evidence would be the antecedent (The consequent is the conclusion, as the word suggests)

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An induction of confirmation evidence is inductive reasoning because unless you own 100% of the evidence, epistemologically and logically speaking, you can not know or deduce respectively, you can only proceed via abductive inference. According to your JTB, justified-true belief, you can justifiably believe evolution happened, depending upon how compelling your evidence is.

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Sure you can retreat to the fact that science doesn't provide absolute certainty. But so what ? It's hardly a rational position.

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But to discuss the actual evidence is something as a creationist, I can no longer do.

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I tried, several times, to explain what evidence is, and how complicated the logical variables are, I can't be a punch-bag for evolutionists forever.

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Mikey, a lot of the problem is in your own confusion. Mixing up the antecedent and the consequent is just one example.Edited by Admin, : Fix dBCodes by replacing backslashes with slashes.

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The antecedant, "If theory Y" then evidence P, (consequent).

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No, Mikey. The actual argument would be:If evidence P then theory Q (conditional)
we find evidence P (antecedent)
therefore Q (consequent)Which is an actual modus ponens argument, with all the parts correctly labelled.

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So if I have a theory that all balls in existence are red, then a red ball would be evidence.

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That doesn't fit into modus ponens, though. Because it doesn't have the correct form.
In fact it would be better described as a failed attempt at refutation by modus tollens, and repeated weight of such failures (and no successes!) adding up to an inductive argument.

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The evidence is presented as the consequent BECAUSE of the non sequitur; "there are red balls, therefore red ball theory is true".

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Mikey, you are just proving that you are confused. That is not a reason to treat the evidence as the conclusion (it MUST be a premise in any sound argument using it as evidence !). It is a good reason to say that it is not a sound deductive argument, but we know that.

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So if an idiot says that only red balls exist, if he finds a red ball and says, "see, my theory is true", you can say, "no it isn't, plonker, you have just affirmed the consequent".

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But the consequent - according to you - is that he found a red ball. Which is true. So it isn't an error to affirm it. (In fact to formally classify his error you would need a better grasp of his reasoning. It could be that he is simply assuming that all balls must have the same colour - which is stupid but he could use it to make a logically valid but unsound argument).

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This way, the tollens can also disprove the idiot quite succinctly, so that if you show him one yellow ball, his theory is thwarted.

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Which comes back to my point above....

Which only reiterates my point that you can't correctly identify fallacies without understanding the argument being made.The reasoning you describe, for instance, is rational because the evidence is extremely unlikely UNLESS the theory is untrue. So, we have a good probabilistic argument rather than a worthless deductive argument.

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Your above syllogism does not follow logically.

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Mikes, that IS modus ponens of course it follows logically.

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You can't state that if there is evidence P therefore theory X, that proposal does not follow, so it can't be used as a framework. We are making an apparatus by which we can proceed completely logically by inserting ANY theory.

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There's no logical problem in inserting ANY theory. And if you want to restrict science to strict logical deduction you are being very silly. Science has to go beyond that because strict logical deduction is too restrictive.

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The reason why the antecedant is used as the theory is obvious, because if you found a thousand red balls (induction), you could still not infer , "therefore red ball theory is true".

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Actually it isn't obvious why anyone would use an invalid argument. I believe that your assertion is something of a strawman - the real argument is not pure logical deduction.For instance, looking at a thousand balls is different from looking at only one, and if we were fairly sampling the balls finding a thousand red balls and none of any other colour would make us very confident that your "red ball theory" was true or very close to the truth. We would not think that with only one observation.And that is why we don't have to "eternally confirm" a theory. With good enough evidence we can leave it and move on, unless and until a reason to question the theory comes up.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Mikey, so far as I can tell YOU don't understand what you're getting at...

Mike, either you are making a trivial point badly (science has to go beyond the limits of deductive logic, in principle scientific conclusions could always be overturned) or you are making a bad mistake in going beyond it (e.g. not realising that we CAN have a very high degree of certainty in many scientific conclusions or thinking that we can never say that there is no longer a need to keep on actively testing a theory)

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It is a misunderstanding of what I am saying. The whole point of the conditional implication is not to set up rules for what science says, or say anything about limits. It is simply to provide a simple way of putting the burden of proof upon the person's theory.

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None of that contradicts my impression in the slightest.

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I said it before, if I state that theory P should show evidence X and you confirm this, from a logical point of view, you are forcing the theorist, you are disarming him, he has no way to infer, VALIDLY, that this evidence would make his theory true. (your syllogism allowed the affirmation of the consequent, simply because it was not a relevant form of syllogism)

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Which ignores the fact that scientific argument is NOT restricted to false logic (and ignores the fact that in my syllogism, there is no error because the evidence implies the truth of the theory - in the strict logical sense of implication)

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Now obviously a simple modus ponen leaves us to make the terminology fairly vague, but as I said before, it is just a neat way of showing that confirmation evidence is tentative, because to affirm the antecedant is not necessarily a big deal.

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Thanks for confirming that I had it right. That's exactly the trivial point that I referred to.

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Personally I value logic more than an induction of confirmation evidence because no matter how impressive the picture of evidence is, technically it CAN, logically be NOT true, (the theory).

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No logical conclusion is more certain than it's premises. Which can't be established by logic. Even deductive arguments can only deliver real certainty in specialised cases. And personally I'm not impressed by the low, low standard of logical possibility. A good inductive argument is far better.