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==External links== |
==External links== |
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* [http://linglogic.wikia.com/wiki/Appeal_to_ignorance LingLogic" Appeal to ignorance] |
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*[http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html Fallacy Files article on Appeal to Ignorance] |
*[http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html Fallacy Files article on Appeal to Ignorance] |
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Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or appeal to ignorance, is an informal logical fallacy; it asserts that a proposition is necessarily true because it has not been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option: there is insufficient data and the proposition has not yet been proven to be either true or false. [1] In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof.
General forms of the argument:
Carl Sagan famously criticized the practice by referring to it as "impatience with ambiguity", pointing out that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". This should not, however, be taken to mean that one can never possess evidence that something does not exist (one can possess such evidence). Instead, Sagan's famous quote is a reminder that inferences must be made carefully, and that science makes no claims to absolute certainty, only high probability.
Arguments that appeal to ignorance rely merely on the fact that the veracity of the proposition is not known, or is undetected, to arrive at a definite conclusion. These arguments fail to appreciate that the limits of one's understanding or certainty do not change what is true. This fallacy can be very convincing and is considered by some to be a special case of a false dilemma or false dichotomy in that they both fail to consider perfectly valid alternatives. A false dilemma may take the form:
To reiterate, these arguments ignore the fact, and difficulty, that some true things may never be proven, and some false things may never be disproved with absolute certainty.
This fallacy is sometimes confused , and or combined, with logically valid contrapositive arguments. Contrapositives rightly utilize the transposition rule of inference in classical logic to conclude that: To the extent that C implies E then Not-E MUST ALSO imply Not-C. In other words, if a cause always leads to an effect, then absence of the expected effect is evidence of absence of the cause. For example, if we assume the causal proposition that If it's raining outside then the streets will be wet, then we can reason that if the streets are not wet then it is not raining outside. The inference that it cannot be raining outside because the streets are not getting wet is exactly as true, or perhaps exactly as untrue, as the original proposition. The statements are logically equivalent.
The phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" can be used as a short hand rebuttal to the second form of the ignorance fallacy (i.e. P has never been absolutely proven and is therefore certainly false!). Most often it is directed at any conclusion derived from null results in an experiment or from the non-detection of something.
From: The Demon-Haunted World: (Chapter 12 - The Fine Art of Baloney Detection.)
In this regard Irving Marmer Copi writes:
Therefore, absence of evidence that it rained (i.e. water is the evidence) may be considered as positive evidence that it did not rain. Again, in science, such inferences are always made to some limited (sometimes extremely high) degree of probability.
Contraposition is a logically valid rule of inference that allows the creation of a new proposition from the negation and reordering of an existing one. The method applies to any proposition of the type If A then B and says that if you negate all the variables and switch them back to front you will get a new proposition i.e. If Not-B then Not-A that is just as true as the one you started out with and that the 1st implies the 2nd and the 2nd implies the 1st.
Transposition is exactly the same thing described in a different language.
Absence of evidence is the absence, or lack of, any kind of evidence that may show, indicate, suggest, or be used to infer or deduce a fact.
Evidence of absence is evidence of any kind that shows, indicates, suggests, or can be used to infer or deduce the non-existence or non-presence of something. In some sense "absence of evidence is sometimes evidence of absence". For instance, absence of evidence that there are malignant cells is evidence of absence that there is cancer.
Negative evidence is sometimes used as an alternative to Absence of evidence and is often meant to be synonymous with it. On the other hand, the term may also refer to evidence with a negative value, or null result equivalent to evidence of absence. It may even refer to positive evidence about something of an unpleasant nature.
Null Result is a term often used in the field of science to indicate evidence of absence. Keeping with the example above, a search for water on the ground may yield a null result (the ground is dry), therefore it probably did not rain.
Arguments from incredulity take the form:
These arguments are similar to arguments from ignorance in that they too ignore and do not properly eliminate the possibility that something can be both incredible and still be true, or obvious and yet still be false.
Arguments from self-knowing take the form:
In practice these arguments are often fallacious and rely on the veracity of the supporting premise. For example the argument that If I had just sat on a wild porcupine then I would know it, in fact I do not know it, therefore I did not just sit on a wild porcupine is probably not a fallacy and depends entirely on the veracity of the leading proposition that supports it. (See Contraposition and Transposition in the Related terms section in this article)
Absence of Evidence is a condition where no valid conclusion can be inferred from the mere absence of detection, normally due to doubt in the detection method. Evidence of absence is the successful variation: a conclusion that relies on specific knowledge in conjunction with negative detection to deduce the absence of something. An example of evidence of absence is checking your pockets for spare change and finding nothing but being confident that the search would have found it if it was there.
By determining that a given experiment or method of detection is sensitive and reliable enough to detect the presence of X (when X is present) one can confidently exclude the possibility that X may be both un-detected and present. This allows us to deduce that X cannot be present if we receive a null result.
Thus there are only two possibilities, given a null result:
To the extent that option 2 can be eliminated one can deduce, that if X is not detected then X is not present and therefore the null result is evidence of absence.
(These examples should contain or represent missing information.)
(These examples should contain definite evidence that can be used to show, indicate, suggest, infer or deduce the non-existence or non-presence of something.)
(Draws a conclusion based on lack of knowledge or evidence without accounting for all possibilities)
From "Fallacies: classical and contemporary readings By Hans V. Hansen, Robert C. Pinto"
Tesseract2 (
talk |
contribs) |
Nomdecrayon (
talk |
contribs)
m Added external link: http://linglogic.wikia.com/wiki/Appeal_to_ignorance |
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==External links== |
==External links== |
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* [http://linglogic.wikia.com/wiki/Appeal_to_ignorance LingLogic" Appeal to ignorance] |
|||
*[http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html Fallacy Files article on Appeal to Ignorance] |
*[http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html Fallacy Files article on Appeal to Ignorance] |
||
Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or appeal to ignorance, is an informal logical fallacy; it asserts that a proposition is necessarily true because it has not been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option: there is insufficient data and the proposition has not yet been proven to be either true or false. [1] In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof.
General forms of the argument:
Carl Sagan famously criticized the practice by referring to it as "impatience with ambiguity", pointing out that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". This should not, however, be taken to mean that one can never possess evidence that something does not exist (one can possess such evidence). Instead, Sagan's famous quote is a reminder that inferences must be made carefully, and that science makes no claims to absolute certainty, only high probability.
Arguments that appeal to ignorance rely merely on the fact that the veracity of the proposition is not known, or is undetected, to arrive at a definite conclusion. These arguments fail to appreciate that the limits of one's understanding or certainty do not change what is true. This fallacy can be very convincing and is considered by some to be a special case of a false dilemma or false dichotomy in that they both fail to consider perfectly valid alternatives. A false dilemma may take the form:
To reiterate, these arguments ignore the fact, and difficulty, that some true things may never be proven, and some false things may never be disproved with absolute certainty.
This fallacy is sometimes confused , and or combined, with logically valid contrapositive arguments. Contrapositives rightly utilize the transposition rule of inference in classical logic to conclude that: To the extent that C implies E then Not-E MUST ALSO imply Not-C. In other words, if a cause always leads to an effect, then absence of the expected effect is evidence of absence of the cause. For example, if we assume the causal proposition that If it's raining outside then the streets will be wet, then we can reason that if the streets are not wet then it is not raining outside. The inference that it cannot be raining outside because the streets are not getting wet is exactly as true, or perhaps exactly as untrue, as the original proposition. The statements are logically equivalent.
The phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" can be used as a short hand rebuttal to the second form of the ignorance fallacy (i.e. P has never been absolutely proven and is therefore certainly false!). Most often it is directed at any conclusion derived from null results in an experiment or from the non-detection of something.
From: The Demon-Haunted World: (Chapter 12 - The Fine Art of Baloney Detection.)
In this regard Irving Marmer Copi writes:
Therefore, absence of evidence that it rained (i.e. water is the evidence) may be considered as positive evidence that it did not rain. Again, in science, such inferences are always made to some limited (sometimes extremely high) degree of probability.
Contraposition is a logically valid rule of inference that allows the creation of a new proposition from the negation and reordering of an existing one. The method applies to any proposition of the type If A then B and says that if you negate all the variables and switch them back to front you will get a new proposition i.e. If Not-B then Not-A that is just as true as the one you started out with and that the 1st implies the 2nd and the 2nd implies the 1st.
Transposition is exactly the same thing described in a different language.
Absence of evidence is the absence, or lack of, any kind of evidence that may show, indicate, suggest, or be used to infer or deduce a fact.
Evidence of absence is evidence of any kind that shows, indicates, suggests, or can be used to infer or deduce the non-existence or non-presence of something. In some sense "absence of evidence is sometimes evidence of absence". For instance, absence of evidence that there are malignant cells is evidence of absence that there is cancer.
Negative evidence is sometimes used as an alternative to Absence of evidence and is often meant to be synonymous with it. On the other hand, the term may also refer to evidence with a negative value, or null result equivalent to evidence of absence. It may even refer to positive evidence about something of an unpleasant nature.
Null Result is a term often used in the field of science to indicate evidence of absence. Keeping with the example above, a search for water on the ground may yield a null result (the ground is dry), therefore it probably did not rain.
Arguments from incredulity take the form:
These arguments are similar to arguments from ignorance in that they too ignore and do not properly eliminate the possibility that something can be both incredible and still be true, or obvious and yet still be false.
Arguments from self-knowing take the form:
In practice these arguments are often fallacious and rely on the veracity of the supporting premise. For example the argument that If I had just sat on a wild porcupine then I would know it, in fact I do not know it, therefore I did not just sit on a wild porcupine is probably not a fallacy and depends entirely on the veracity of the leading proposition that supports it. (See Contraposition and Transposition in the Related terms section in this article)
Absence of Evidence is a condition where no valid conclusion can be inferred from the mere absence of detection, normally due to doubt in the detection method. Evidence of absence is the successful variation: a conclusion that relies on specific knowledge in conjunction with negative detection to deduce the absence of something. An example of evidence of absence is checking your pockets for spare change and finding nothing but being confident that the search would have found it if it was there.
By determining that a given experiment or method of detection is sensitive and reliable enough to detect the presence of X (when X is present) one can confidently exclude the possibility that X may be both un-detected and present. This allows us to deduce that X cannot be present if we receive a null result.
Thus there are only two possibilities, given a null result:
To the extent that option 2 can be eliminated one can deduce, that if X is not detected then X is not present and therefore the null result is evidence of absence.
(These examples should contain or represent missing information.)
(These examples should contain definite evidence that can be used to show, indicate, suggest, infer or deduce the non-existence or non-presence of something.)
(Draws a conclusion based on lack of knowledge or evidence without accounting for all possibilities)
From "Fallacies: classical and contemporary readings By Hans V. Hansen, Robert C. Pinto"