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anil dahar | |
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Author | Topic: Peanut Gallery | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
CS, the entirety of your "argument" rests on semantic gymnastics. You are drawing a disctinction between "observing the entire surface of a desk unblocked by a pen" and "failing to observe a pen when searching a desk." These two statements mean the same thing. You are drawing a distinction without a difference so that you can play word games and maintain your pre-established position that an absence of evidence can never be evidence of absence, even when the evidence is specific and expected, and the area in question is limited and easily searched. Or I'm right, and you're the one playing semantic games so that you can claim that the absence of evidence can be evidence of absence. But really, is there any use in speculating one another's motives rather than arguing the positions like we're s'posed to? I don't really care about the semantic argument, but if someone asked me if there was a pen on the desk, the desk tells me the answer, not the non-evidence of a pen.
You do this because you want to be able to cling to a tired and misused maxim, that an absence of evidence can never be evidence of absence, even though it is childishly easy to demonstrate scenarios where that maxim is false. Seems you would've went ahead an demonstrated you're correct rather than attacking my character...
How does it feel to have such strong cognitive dissonance? I don't know. What's it feel like to be such a douche?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
...except that I showed very clearly and accurately that your doublespeak is the equivalent of my own claim rearranged such that it appears to support the opposite. Which doesn't show that yours is the correct one. If you want to call it "slowing down" and I want to call it "negetive acceleration", then you showing how they're the same doesn't mean that one is better than the other. And to then speculate about my motives and feeling about calling it the way I do is just pathetic.
I am arguing the position. Just because being wrong makes you feel like an idiot or pointing out your cognitive dissonance makes you feel uncomfortable Speculating on my motives and feelings is not arguing the position. And there's good reasons why its against the rules.
I did. You then tried to claim that I'm just as guilty of semantic gymnastics as you are. The difference is that I fully described and illustrated why your version is just a misleading restatement of my own words, that you've drawn a distinction where there is no difference. If there's no difference in describing it as an absence of evidence or describing it as evidence of an absence, then neither one of us is wrong. But whatever, if you'd rather be a jerk than explain yourself then I'll just stop responding to you.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Isn't this just another way to say: "we have desk" and "we have no evidence of pen"? Perhaps. But why phrase it so it looks like an absence of evidence other than to make that argument?
By combining it all into a single statement, 'evidence of the desk unblocked by a pen', you're just secretly slipping in an 'absence of evidence' claim. But it does become evidence of absence. Its not an absence of evidence. There's more to it than the lack of evidence for a pen. A lack of evidence for a pen doesn't really allow us to conclude that there's no pen. We need to have the whole desk having been searched and showing signs of no pen. I don't see a good reason to twist it up into an absence of evidence, other than to make the argument.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Classic converse error...
If he talks about deities, then he talks about subjective evidence.He is talking about subjective evidence. Therefore he is talking about deities.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Actually I think you will find it is the continual references to subjective evidence in threads debating the existence of deities that is the clue here. Huh? What does that have to do with the value of subjective evidence thread not pertaining to deities?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
To support this, you say that my own claim that an absence of expected evidence of a pen on a desk is not really what provides evidence that there is no pen on the desk. Rather, you say, it is the positive evidence of the desk unblocked by an image of a pen. Right. You don't conclude that there's no pen on the desk just simply from not seeing one. You conclude it from seeing that the desk if free of pens.
You are saying this: "That old adage is actually true. A is not evidence of B. Instead, A is evidence of B." Do you see yet? No, I don't see that. I see: "A is not evidence of B. Instead, C is evidence of B." You're saying there's no differece between A and C. A is 'not seeing a pen on the desk' and C is 'seeing a penless desk'. A is non-evidence, C is evidence.
You are drawing a distinction without a difference, and claiming that the distinction shows that an absence of evidence really isn;t evidence of absence, and that I am wrong. If all you were doing was restating my position in a different way, we would not be having an argument. Are they different or not?
You;re using a semantic difference, framing an absence of evidence as actually somehow positive evidence (an absurdity in its own right) You are the one saying non-evidence is evidence, not me.
I demonstrated a scenario that falsifies the adage. As I origianlly said, I think there's more to it than your scenario provides. And you haven't really addressed that. You'd rather assume your right and I'm crazy, and argue about my motivations. Troll on, troll.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Not necessarily.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Um, I realize there's no smiley, but he shopped the picture so the guy is blowing the calf....
Another confirmation of Poe's Law!
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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What did Bluegenes measure and where is his data? What, exactly, would he publish?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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You have to read upthread from that to get to the source of this where Catholic Scientist hilariously declares his undying agnosticism towards the existence of cheese (this continues to make me chuckle to this day). How is it undying if the moment you revealed what the concept was I immediately dropped the agnosticism? And I still don't see how I could possibly know if something exists or not without knowing what it is we're considering...
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Are the concepts the beings? Aren't all concepts from human imagination? How else do you get a concept?
How about this super awesome theory:
All scientific concepts are figments of the human imagination. Agree?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Sure, whatever. I was busy the last week or so and not reading much here. I got some shit to do, and I suppose I could catch up a bit, so I'll get back to you in that thread later this afternoon, Concept-Y willing.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Okay, so the original theory, that the beings themselves have been shown to be imagined has been abandoned.
The concepts of those beings, like any concept, must come from the human imagination. So you agree that all scientific concepts are figments of the human imaginations, right? That a tree can be demonstrated and a god cannot, and the problems that arrise from that, doesn't really have anything to do with the concepts of those things necesssarily being imagined, does it?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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In Message 31, Subbie writes:
Curiously, I have no need to prove or disprove your claim: you made it not me.
Amusingly, it turns out that you aren't actually making any claim at all about gods, so there's really nothing to prove or disprove. I thought that was RAZD's point, to not make a claim about gods, and that Subbie agreed that he would support the position that they don't exist
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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CS writes:
Support the position that what doesn't exist? I thought that was RAZD's point, to not make a claim about gods, and that Subbie agreed that he would support the position that they don't exist. Whatever he had in mind when he claimed that he could support that it doesn't exist.
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