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ParaNet BBS/negativ
| File Name: | negativ.txt |
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| Key Words: | ParaNet, UFO, Ufology |
(15163) Sun 18 Apr 93 8:00p
By: James F. Tims
To: All
Re: Proving Negatives And The Paranormal 1/8
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: p00168@psilink.com (James F. Tims)
Date: 18 Apr 93 15:20:33 GMT
Organization: Apothegmatics, Ltd.
Message-ID: <2944232305.1.p00168@psilink.com>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,sci.skeptic
The following is from the _Skeptical Inquirer_, Spring'84.
PROVING NEGATIVES AND THE PARANORMAL
Is it really impossible to prove
a negative, or is that often-heard
statement merely a platitude that
happens to be false?
by Tony Pasquarello
[Part 1 of 8] By the very nature of their intellectual orientation, skeptical
inquirers find themselves more often than not propounding and
defending negative propositions, e.g., those that deny the
existence of certain entities (ancient astronauts, Bigfoot, the
Loch Ness monster) or deny the occurrence or validity of certain
phenomena (dowsing, psychokinesis, telepathy). To those who
level cries of "negativism" against such proponents, no retort is
necessary, for the charge represents a mere emotive
sentimentality, a longing for a bygone world of fairies and
goblins banished from reality by the progress of science and
philosophy. What is peculiar , however, is encountering the
embarrassed, apologetic stance of the skeptics themselves in
advancing negative propositions as though they believed
themselves engaged in a rationally futile enterprise, jousting
with rubber erasers against some eternal logical law carved in
the very marble of the mind. Innumerable articles in
atheist-humanist publications reveal this common sorry spectacle
-- argument after devastating argument against the existence of
God followed by a few patronizing whimpers to the effect that
"...of course, no one can prove a negative." At a recent Oberlin
College debate between Duane Gish and Fred Edwords, edit of
_Creation/Evolution_, I was astonished that, in the midst of
demolishing Gish with a barrage of telling points, Edwords should
suddenly volunteer the concession that "naturally, it's
impossible to prove a negative." Then again, in a piece in the
_Skeptical Inquirer_, Dale Beyerstein renders the traditional
homage to this supposedly inviolable maxim by favorably citing
the "truism that it is impossible to prove the nonexistence of
something..." [1]
***Tony Pasquarello is in the Department of Philosophy, Ohio
***State University, Mansfield Campus.
--- ConfMail V4.00
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(1:30163/150)
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(15164) Sun 18 Apr 93 8:00p
By: James F. Tims
To: All
Re: Proving Negatives And The Paranormal 2/8
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: p00168@psilink.com (James F. Tims)
Date: 18 Apr 93 15:21:39 GMT
Organization: Apothegmatics, Ltd.
Message-ID: <2944232459.2.p00168@psilink.com>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,sci.skeptic
The following is from the _Skeptical Inquirer_, Spring'84.
PROVING NEGATIVES AND THE PARANORMAL
Is it really impossible to prove
a negative, or is that often-heard
statement merely a platitude that
happens to be false?
by Tony Pasquarello
[Part 2 of 8] What's A Negative
One wishes that Beyerstein had included some references
supportive of this "truism." In fact, a check of the indices of
some fifty formal and informal logic texts in my office, under
the headings "nonexistence," "negatives," "proving negatives,"
etc., turned up absolutely nothing. Nor do any of the
Aristotelian treatises on logic and rhetoric mention this
"truism." A brief search of several encyclopedias and casual
inquiries among colleagues -- some of them logic specialists --
likewise produced "negative" results. Gradually, there dawns a
sneaking suspicion that the impossibility of proving a negative
might be one of the universally accepted platitudes that
unfortunately just happens to be false!
Proponents of the anti-negativist thesis (we can't prove a
negative) have seldom been clear on just what is to count as a
negative proposition. Are these only propositions containing
"no" or "not," or also propositions containing "non," or indeed
any term formed with an initial negative particle, such as
"illiterate," "immoral," "irresponsible," etc.? What of the
exclusive ("only") or exceptive ("all but") linguistic structures
whose function is partly negative? What of double or triple
negatives?
Furthermore, is the anti-negativist thesis about _any_ negative
proposition ("Whales are not fishes") or specifically directed at
negative _existential_ propositions ("There are no mermaids")? It
is perfectly plausible to maintain that all classical negative
propositions are negative-_existential_ ones since they all deny
the possibility of finding a specified combination of attributes --
"Whales are not fishes" is equivalent to "There are no whales
that are fishes."
On the traditional characterization of negatives, it might be
worth noting that: (1) Of the fifteen unconditionally valid
syllogistic forms, ten have a negative proposition as the
conclusion. Hence, at least ten are "proofs of a negative."
(2) All categorical propositions, affirmative or negative, have a
logically equivalent but qualitatively opposite obverse form
(e.g., for "All whales are mammals," "No whales are
non-mammals"). Hence, if we can prove an affirmative -- I hope we
can do that! -- we have also proved its negative equivalent.
(3) The explosive development of logic in this century has
rendered the distinction between affirmative and negative
propositions almost wholly insignificant. It makes little
difference whether our systematic apparatus for discussing the
Shroud of Turin contains the term fake or authentic for "fake"
means "not authentic" and "authentic" means "not fake."
--- ConfMail V4.00
* Origin: Paranet(sm) - The world's leading UFO Investigative News Network
(1:30163/150)
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(15165) Sun 18 Apr 93 8:00p
By: James F. Tims
To: All
Re: Proving Negatives And The Paranormal 3/8
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: p00168@psilink.com (James F. Tims)
Date: 18 Apr 93 15:23:30 GMT
Organization: Apothegmatics, Ltd.
Message-ID: <2944232583.3.p00168@psilink.com>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,sci.skeptic
The following is from the _Skeptical Inquirer_, Spring'84.
PROVING NEGATIVES AND THE PARANORMAL
Is it really impossible to prove
a negative, or is that often-heard
statement merely a platitude that
happens to be false?
by Tony Pasquarello
[Part 3 of 8] Proving Nonexistence Simply
The most cursory of glances is sufficient to establish that there
is no elephant in my bedroom and the same glance proves that
there is a bed in the room. Slightly more rigorous inspection
ascertains the nonexistence of a starlet in my bedroom. It might
be quite arduous to show that there are no ants in the room, but
it could be done. Indeed, it might be just as difficult to show
that there _are_ ants in the bedroom; it is possible that neither
the negative nor the affirmative claim may be resolved until
examination of that last cubic inch is complete. These simple
and direct (unproblematic) cases of proving nonexistence contain
some extremely important points.
1. We, in observing my bedroom, we see that there is no elephant
there, we have _proved_, in all the appropriate logical and
epistemological senses of that term, that there exists no
elephant there. Thus, the nonexistence of an elephant in my
bedroom is beyond any reasonable doubt; it is known to be a fact;
it is conclusively verified; it is absolutely certain; it is
automatically believed ball those making the observations; and so
forth. Furthermore, both commonsense practice and ordinary
language usage agree that this is the pertinent way of proving
that there is no elephant in my bedroom; as in most other cases,
we look! (Look here, Aunt Millie. I'll prove to you that there's
no intruder in your bedroom. We just looked in the closet; now
let's look under the bed. See! No one here.) But, if looking
proves the nonexistence of an elephant in my bedroom, it must be
wrong (incorrect) to assert that it is "impossible to prove the
nonexistence of something." Since we do it all the time, it can
be neither technically nor logically impossible to do.
And, as for its being the appropriate mode of proving
nonexistence, consider how ludicrous it would be, in that
context, to provide any laborious, didactic demonstration,
deductive or inductive, of either the existence or nonexistence
of an elephant in my bedroom.
2. "There are ants." "There are no ants." These assertions are
perceived as logically odd precisely because no domain or realm
is specified. Those purported ants produce an almost palpable
itch to inquire, "Where?" In my kitchen? Garden? Bedroom? In
the vast majority of existential claims, such a domain
specification is explicit or implicit, often as an integral part
of the entity characterization. Our grasp of the terms of
characterization usually includes both _where_ to look (the
domain) and _how_ to look (the type of entity). Thus, "No primes
exist between 13 and 17" clearly specifies the domain and the
type of search to be conducted -- mathematical rather than
empirical.
--- ConfMail V4.00
* Origin: Paranet(sm) - The world's leading UFO Investigative News Network
(1:30163/150)
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(15166) Sun 18 Apr 93 8:00p
By: James F. Tims
To: All
Re: Proving Negatives And The Paranormal 4/8
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: p00168@psilink.com (James F. Tims)
Date: 18 Apr 93 15:24:09 GMT
Organization: Apothegmatics, Ltd.
Message-ID: <2944232629.4.p00168@psilink.com>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,sci.skeptic
The following is from the _Skeptical Inquirer_, Spring'84.
PROVING NEGATIVES AND THE PARANORMAL
Is it really impossible to prove
a negative, or is that often-heard
statement merely a platitude that
happens to be false?
by Tony Pasquarello
[Part 4 of 8] Descriptions and Domain
Part of the difficulty in assessing existential claims for
paranormal entities is that in many, though not all, cases such
claims are domain inspecific -- "God exists"; "There are
vampires"; "Spirits are real." And, because we inherit
centuries, even millennia, of confused proliferation regarding
entity descriptions -- descriptions that are themselves massive
accretions of speculation, fantasy, and invention -- considerable
fuzziness over domain is precisely what one would expect.
Without a concrete physical presence providing a healthy check to
fertile imaginations, is it any wonder that paranormal
entity-descriptions just "growed like Topsy"? Everything -- all
proving or disproving, all verification or confirmation, all
evaluation of affirmative or negative claims -- everything
depends on the clarity, completeness, constancy, and consistency
of the entity-description. I cannot maintain that the Sears
Tower is in Mansfield, Ohio, because the Sears Tower itself is
_there_ in Chicago, a spectacular restraint to the brashness of
my thesis. But, were I to claim that mermaids have freckles, my
speculation in as legitimate as any other, consistent with the
defining properties of mermaids. Were my influence to be of
considerable scope, "freckled" could become part of the lore of
mermaids, eventually to be incorporated in the definition, as
much a part of mermaid essence as "alluring" is now.
--- ConfMail V4.00
* Origin: Paranet(sm) - The world's leading UFO Investigative News Network
(1:30163/150)
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(15167) Sun 18 Apr 93 8:00p
By: James F. Tims
To: All
Re: Proving Negatives And The Paranormal 5/8
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: p00168@psilink.com (James F. Tims)
Date: 18 Apr 93 15:24:47 GMT
Organization: Apothegmatics, Ltd.
Message-ID: <2944232659.5.p00168@psilink.com>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,sci.skeptic
The following is from the _Skeptical Inquirer_, Spring'84.
PROVING NEGATIVES AND THE PARANORMAL
Is it really impossible to prove
a negative, or is that often-heard
statement merely a platitude that
happens to be false?
by Tony Pasquarello
[Part 5 of 8] Difficulty and Inconsistency
The notion that we cannot prove nonexistence may really be a
confused version of the thesis that verification of affirmative
existential claims ("There are ants in the kitchen") requires
only one positive instance, while examination of the entire
domain is necessary to prove the negative("There are no ants in
the kitchen"). Perhaps the germ of truth intended is merely that
it is always more difficult to verify negative existential
claims. Yet even this "germ" may turn out to be virulently
misleading.
It is rarely acknowledged, or even noticed, that the
confirmational difference between affirmative and negative
existential propositions is wholly attributable to the fact that
the former are _particular_ while the latter are always universal
with respect to the domain. So it is hardly surprising that one
instance proves the affirmative claim since the claim _is_ only
that there exists at least one entity of the sort described.
Universal propositions can be hard to confirm, whether
affirmative or negative, because they do refer to the entire
universe, either conceived literally as the physical universe or
the planet Earth, or the universe of discourse or context --
e.g., the room, the Loch, etc. In short, the
affirmative-negative distinction is here irrelevant; what
anti-negativism has failed to observe is that its claim is really
about the particular-universal distinction.
In passing, we might note that if the e-d involves an internal
inconsistency (self-contradiction), then nonexistence is de facto
proved. Indeed, this has often been the method of choice for
many of the more infamous paranormal entities -- e.g., God [2] --
any two of whose attributes often appear to be, if not overtly,
at least potentially inconsistent.
Even if we disregard the appeal to logical inconsistency,
considerations remain that indicate a virtual parity between the
verification of affirmative and negative existential statements.
It is far easier to verify that there is no elephant or starlet
in my bedroom than to verify the presence of an ant in the same
room. Nor do we have to actually examine the entire domain to do
it. For, when a consistent empirical existential claim contains
a relatively clear and complete e-d, ease of verification is seen
to really be a matter of the size of the entity relative to the
domain (scale), the number of objects in the domain (density),
the similarity of the given entity to other objects in the domain
(resemblance), and quite possibly other factors. I do not have
to examine the entire bedroom domain (the closet, the dresser
drawers, etc.) because, knowing the meaning of the term
"elephant", I know that an elephant cannot fit into a closet or
drawer; painstaking examination may be necessary to prove any
proposition about ants.
Common sense harbors a bit of wisdom concerning verification;
curiously enough, it concerns the verification of an affirmative
proposition, not a negative one. It compares the difficulty of
certain tasks to "looking for a needle in a haystack." It is
hard to find a needle in a haystack, or to decide that there is
no needle there; harder still to find a straw-colored needle;
still easier to find a beach ball, or to confirm its nonexistence
there. All these cases show that the simplicity or difficulty of
verification has little to do with affirmative or negative, but
rather with matters of scale, density, and resemblance.
Let it be granted that nonexistence cannot be proved if the e-d
is seriously lacking in clarity or completeness; but, then,
neither can existence be proved under those conditions.
Nonempirical entities tend to be metaphysically "skinny"
critters; they can always be gratuitously inserted into any
domain. That invisible little man who turns off the refrigerator
light when the door is closed -- can anyone prove that he's not
there? Here, the proper response in to ask, How is an invisible,
intangible miniature man a _man_? Why not call the entity a
marsupial, or a Martian, for that matter? And if the reply were:
"Well, it's not really a man in the usual sense, but still there
really is an unspecified sort of something in some way in the
refrigerator, you prove there isn't!" no responsible inquirer
would feel any logical or moral obligation to answer the
challenge. Here is the extreme case, a paradigm of the gradual
evisceration of an originally substantial thesis (there's a man
there) so as to render it immune to falsification (there's
something there). When the entity is put on this stringent
metaphysical diet, the resultant description is so thin as to be
empty. Whose existence or nonexistence in the domain is to be
proved?
When, however, a given characterization is not vacuous but is of
sufficient content and clarity to be evaluated, but the domain
itself is remote or inaccessible (the past may be construed as an
inaccessible domain), them ordinary probability assessments are
relevant and constitute the proof of either existence or
nonexistence.
--- ConfMail V4.00
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(1:30163/150)
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(15168) Sun 18 Apr 93 8:00p
By: James F. Tims
To: All
Re: Proving Negatives And The Paranormal 8/8
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: p00168@psilink.com (James F. Tims)
Date: 18 Apr 93 15:26:35 GMT
Organization: Apothegmatics, Ltd.
Message-ID: <2944232775.8.p00168@psilink.com>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,sci.skeptic
The following is from the _Skeptical Inquirer_, Spring'84.
PROVING NEGATIVES AND THE PARANORMAL
Is it really impossible to prove
a negative, or is that often-heard
statement merely a platitude that
happens to be false?
by Tony Pasquarello
[Part 8 of 8] Conclusion: The Loch Ness Monster
Most of the issues raised here can be illustrated, and perhaps
clarified and unified, by a summarization in terms of the Loch
Ness monster. Here is one paranormal question that many believe
has the best chance of being decisively settled in the near
future. Our analysis shows why this is so.
The Lock Ness creature is really a modern phenomenon stemming from the
early 1930s, there having been only ten or so dubious
observations prior to that time. Luxuriant imaginations have not
had time to flower out of control, a circumstance favoring a
rather stable and clearly defined entity-description. Nor does there appear to
be any internal logical inconsistency: the creature is a quite
possible one. Never has a serious breath of nonempirical scandal
touched the creature; whatever its specific nature, it has always
been characterized as a very solid, fleshy being. Thus the
creature scores well on consistency and completeness, clarity and
constancy of description.
As for domain, the loch is a nicely circumscribed, virtually
closed domain, rather large in volume but relatively small, since
the creature is also rather large and estimates of number would
range from a minimum breeding population to perhaps 200 or 250
animals. This restricted domain means that, unlike Bigfoot, the
creature cannot wander off to be reported elsewhere. Other
monsters are reported in other lochs, but they are _other_
monsters. The criteria of scale and resemblance also tend to
favor ease of confirmation or discomfirmation -- several large
animals that don't look much like anything else in a reasonably
confined area. And the is accessible and easily reached.
Basically the only hindrances to confirmation ar the great loch's
depth in spots (up to 700 ft.) and the turbidity of the water due
to enormous quantities of suspended peat particles. Both tend to
make visual examination difficult; but then Lock Ness is not the
Marianas Trench.
Scientists have compiled an impressive mass of ecological
information concerning Lock Ness, forming a solid data base from which
to calculate the possibility that a specific candidate is, in
fact, the monster. For, if we know, say, the predatory habits or
temperatures and food supplies in the lock, then we can make
responsible probability estimates as to whether that animal is
the Lock Ness monster. For example, just such calculations produce high
probability rankings for amphibians and thick-bodied eels, and
low rankings for reptiles.
But in addition to probabilistic speculations, the loch provides
a fertile field for the generation of alternative hypotheses.
From ducks to otters, fishing birds to fishing boats, vegetation
mats to gas bubbles, there has been no shortage of explanations.
Perhaps the best among these, for sheer brilliance and scientific
perspicaciousness, is that of Robert Craig. [7] He suggests that
Scots Pine trees, plentiful about the loch, die, sink to the
bottom, and form resin-covered watertight logs. Eventually,
decomposition produces internal gases that form blisters at the
truncated limb ends and cause the log to rise to the surface.
The blisters burst, the log is propelled, swims, fizzles --
mimicking all monster movements and appearances -- then sinks
again to its watery grave: Another monster sighting is recorded.
Yet, having created a virtually perfect alternative explanation,
Craig, in his justifiable pride, tends to overstate the import of
weak refutation: "All that is needed to confirm this highly
plausible hypothesis is to dredge the bottom for blistered logs."
We may well inquire, What hypothesis? That the monster does not
exist? That the monster really is blistered logs? Strictly
speaking, if we find these logs, that only confirms the theory
that there are blistered logs in the loch. Craig forgets that
there might be as many fetching blistered logs as you like
performing their hydrodynamic ballet, Swan Loch -- or is it Swan
Log? -- and there might be Nessie, an actual aquatic animal,
playfully swimming alongside.
So much for probability estimates and weak refutations. Finally,
can there be strong refutation? Can we prove that the Lock Ness
monster does not exist? (And this particular "can" is more than
bare logical or even empirical possibility; "can" here means
practicality or feasibility.) Why of course we can! We can
drain, strain, or seine the loch. Or, more pragmatically, we can
devise any number of scientific technologies that amount to the
same thing -- the functional equivalent of examining every
portion of the domain capable of containing a creature of that
description. This, after all, is what a number of Loch Ness
research teams have been doing for years, and their tools --
sonar, submersible, cameras, and microphones -- are simply
devices for examining the domain. It makes no difference whether
we describe their efforts as trying to find the monster or trying
to prove there is none, for these are, as we have insisted, two
sides of the same coin. [8]
To say that something exists is really to say that certain
properties that we ordinarily take to be important, essential,
defining, or "core" properties can be found _in combination_.
Since we never find the upper-half of a woman combined with the
lower-half of a fish, we say that there are no mermaids. Two of
the central characteristics of the Lock Ness monster are, at least, that
is an animal and that it is big. Yes, we may find items that
have been taken to be, or mistaken for, the creature. But if
thorough examination of the domain does not discover the proper
combination of characteristics, then we have proved that the
monster does not exist. And, in so doing, have another
confirming instance of what deserves to become the new, and this
time, authentic truism: "It is always possible to prove the
nonexistence of something."
NOTES:
1. Dale Beyerstein. "Skepticism, Closed-Mindedness, and Science
Fiction." Skeptical Inquirer (Summer 1982)
2. The interface between religion and the paranormal is so rich
and so obvious that no apology is needed for classifying the
Deity as a paranormal entity. If the Shroud, exorcism, spirits,
spiritualism, reincarnation, miracles, and gods, tribal or
Olympian, are all paranormal issues, then so is the existence of
God.
3. In both cases mentioned, at least one investigator was the
redoubtable James Randi.
4. It could be helpful to divide alternative hypotheses into
objective and subjective -- the former based upon actual, but
misinterpreted, external events; the latter emphasizing
alterations in the perceptual state due to drugs, stress, etc.
5. Joe Nickell, "The Turin Shroud: Fake? Fact? Photograph?"
_Popular Photography_ (Nov.1979). See also his _Inquest on the
Shroud of Turin_(Buffalo, NY.:Prometheus Books, 1983)
6. James Randi. " 'Top Psychic' Hydrick: Puffery and Puffs."
_SKEPTICAL INQUIRER_(Summer 1981)
7. Robert P. Craig. "Lock Ness: The Monster Unveiled." _New
Scientist_(Aug. 5, 1982)
8. Most of the information on Lock Ness is taken from the definitive
work: Roy P. Mackal, The Monsters of Lock Ness(Chicago: Swallow Press,
1976).
***Tony Pasquarello is in the Department of Philosophy, Ohio
***State University, Mansfield Campus.
--- ConfMail V4.00
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(1:30163/150)
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(15169) Sun 18 Apr 93 8:00p
By: James F. Tims
To: All
Re: Proving Negatives And The Paranormal 6/8
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: p00168@psilink.com (James F. Tims)
Date: 18 Apr 93 15:25:20 GMT
Organization: Apothegmatics, Ltd.
Message-ID: <2944232699.6.p00168@psilink.com>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,sci.skeptic
The following is from the _Skeptical Inquirer_, Spring'84.
PROVING NEGATIVES AND THE PARANORMAL
Is it really impossible to prove
a negative, or is that often-heard
statement merely a platitude that
happens to be false?
by Tony Pasquarello
[Part 6 of 8] Difficulty and Inconsistency
Descriptive fuzziness, inconstancy, and domain inspecificity are
subtle ploys evolved over centuries for ensuring that the
nonexistence of an entity in a domain goes undetected.
Chameleonlike pawns, paranormal entities are often shifted form
sphere to sphere, from here to there, sometimes characterized as
this, then later as that. Pity the poor language analyst
attempting to trace out the complex entailments and family
relationships among a network of relevant concepts: "paranormal,"
"metaphysical," "nonmaterial", "nonempirical,"
"nonspatial,""spiritual,""mental,""domain-free,""universal,",
etc. Beware of any simplistic judgments concerning synonymy or
implications among these; in truth, we simply do not know, in any
comprehensive sense, what these terms mean. Numbers are
nonmaterial, but surely not spiritual and perhaps not mental.
Are they metaphysical? Universal? God claims a universal domain
-- he is characterized as "omnipresent" -- yet even the
staunchest believer might balk at saying that God is literally
_in_ the intestinal tract of a skunk, or a member of the series
of natural numbers. The individual mind -- notice that the mind
is never characterized as "mental" -- purported to be
nonmaterial, seems oddly restricted to bodily quarters. My mind,
alas, stays fairly close to this Italianate body, never liberated
to go traipsing about the beaches of Nice or St. Tropez. Ghosts,
poltergeists, and other assorted spirits are, of course,
spiritual -- Are they? Or are they composed of that wonderfully
ambiguous stuff ectoplasm? -- yet exhibit a decided affinity for
specific houses, crypts, and graveyards.
One particularly insidious aspect of muddled, shifting entity-description
involves the frequent switching from the physical to the
spiritual, and back again, ad infinitum. The Christian deity is
one such example.
The same ambivalence plagues the entire entourage of spiritual
entities -- angels, demons, ghosts, heaven, hell -- all are
normally classified as utterly spiritual, while at the same time
exhibiting some surprisingly solid and substantial properties. A
very large portion of the history of theological musings can be
seen as that wide, often frantic pendulum swings between the
spiritual and the physical. On the one hand, we have the quite
understandable attempt to make nonstandard entities more "real"by
providing them with matter or body. On the other hand, we see
them -- or their nonexistence -- conveniently made
detection-proof by the insistence that they are not only and not
always physical. When the domain and entity-descriptions are
sufficiently specific and coherent and domain inspection is
possible, and when the inspection comes perilously close to
proving that the entity simply does not exist, that elusive
entity is given sanctuary in the realm of the "spiritual,"
thereby insulating it from apprehension.
Bigfoot proponents have learned all these lessons well, providing
us with a contemporary sample of evasive maneuvers: In the
treasury of Bigfoot tidbits, often reported in the SKI, that same
pattern is manifest. To give the monster his due, Bigfoot has
always been a sharply described creature favoring a quite
definite habitat, the high country of the Pacific Northwest. But
since years of investigation and field study have produced
nothing tangible, we come near to unmasking him as a fraud; we
have almost proved his nonexistence. Voila! The predictable
reaction -- reports of Bigfoot sightings in other states,
particularly Ohio (how could he survive a Columbus summer?) and
claims that he is so hard to spot because he is, after all, a
hyperspatial being presumably capable of warping between
different dimensions or universes.
The moral is surely evident. When in the course of scientific
investigation we approach a point of wholly warranted
justification in claiming that a certain entity does no exist,
then champions of the entity simply enlarge, alter, or shift
domains entirely, or change the entity-description, thereby protecting and
perpetuating the entity's bare possibility.
--- ConfMail V4.00
* Origin: Paranet(sm) - The world's leading UFO Investigative News Network
(1:30163/150)
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(15170) Sun 18 Apr 93 8:00p
By: James F. Tims
To: All
Re: Proving Negatives And The Paranormal 7/8
St:
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From: p00168@psilink.com (James F. Tims)
Date: 18 Apr 93 15:25:51 GMT
Organization: Apothegmatics, Ltd.
Message-ID: <2944232728.7.p00168@psilink.com>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,sci.skeptic
The following is from the _Skeptical Inquirer_, Spring'84.
PROVING NEGATIVES AND THE PARANORMAL
Is it really impossible to prove
a negative, or is that often-heard
statement merely a platitude that
happens to be false?
by Tony Pasquarello
[Part 7 of 8] Exploratory Hypothesis
A psychic surgeon performs seeming wonders, complete with an
appropriate display of blood and guts (the excised tumor); an
investigator duplicates the feat of digital dexterity, using a fake
digit containing chicken innards, and suggests that this is how
psychic surgery is really done. Hasn't the surgeon been
unmasked?
A psychokineticist claims to move such objects as balanced
pencils and dollar bills by the vibration of his mind alone; an
investigator [3] achieves the same results by wafting
imperceptible puffs of air toward the objects. Doesn't this blow
away the psychic's claim?
In each instance, the answer is a mixed one. Frequently, a fully
explanatory, satisfying alternative hypothesis as to the true
cause of the phenomenon in question is the best that we can
practically obtain. Such explanations do constitute a form of
disproof of the paranormal claim that might be termed "weak
refutation." But alternative hypotheses are usually consistent
with other hypotheses (always providing that each is fully
explanatory), including the truth of the paranormal account
itself.
since the creation, formulation, and testing of hypotheses and
their role in scientific methodology constitute the most
difficult and intriguing set of problems in the philosophy of
science, a detailed treatment can hardly be provided here that
would cover all types of explanations. Those most prominent in
discussions of the paranormal are _alternative_ explanations --
accounts of how a given event might have come about in a
perfectly normal way; postulations of naturalistic causes for
various sightings; ingenious scenarios providing plausible modes
in which certain results might have been forthcoming without
violating ordinary scientific laws. These hypotheses mirror,
quite expectedly, the staggering diversity of the paranormal
phenomena themselves. Some explanations are meant to account
only for _this_ sighting, _that_ event; others are broader in
scope, purporting to be the explanation for _all_ of a certain
sort of observation or event. Naturally those that are most
specified and restricted are the easiest to conclusively confirm
and _do_ rule out the paranormal, _for that observation_. "What
you are now observing and take to be a flying saucer is really a
street light on the opposite hill" is such a hypothesis, capable
of complete, decisive confirmation. Also critical in evaluating
the adequacy of hypotheses re the temporal parameters of the
event -- the question of whether it is current, past, or
distantly past.
Lumping a very large number of diverse events under one heading,
such as "UFO phenomena," can produce conceptual muddiness, for it
is surely not the case that there is one and only one explanation
for all UFO sightings. A wild assortment of hypotheses,
including weather balloons, inversion effects, the planet Venus,
advertising planes, swarms of luminous insects, experimental
aircraft -- not to mention those many other explanations based on
the psychological state of the subject [4] -- has been advanced
for some subset of the sightings and that collectively they may
well account for all the sightings. Nevertheless, little green
extraterrestrials may have been circling the earth in flying
saucers for these past fifty years and could be there now.
Alternative hypotheses do not eliminate the paranormal account
and, unless the entire stratosphere can be monitored with a far
greater efficiency than we now do the U.S.-Mexican border, there
cannot be strong refutation of flying saucers.
Here, the immensity of the domain bars direct inspection and
strong refutation. In the case of ancient astronauts, the
inaccessibility of the remote past is the prohibitive factor. In
both cases, alternative explanations account for all the
sightings or alleged evidence, while the aforementioned
probability assessments -- where the primary negative exponent
will be those vast, incomprehensible visitors, ancient or modern.
Weak refutation often appears to be conclusive because there is a
natural tendency to supply those intuitive principles that, taken
together with the exploratory hypothesis, strengthen the
refutation to near-deductive limits. Those tacit additional
assumptions are the familiar ones: among others (1) Occam's Razor
-- the simplest explanation is the correct one; (2) Naturalistic
Commitment -- the explanation within the bounds of known natural
law is correct; (3) Uniqueness of Causes -- for any given type of
event, sufficiently specified, there can be only one cause. Joe
Nickell's brilliant replication of all relevant Shroud
characteristics by rubbing and daubing bas-reliefs, using only
fourteenth-century techniques and materials, is a splendid
example of such an attractive alternative hypothesis. [5]
Nickell's enthusiasm is so contagious, and his achievement to
remarkable, that we unwittingly make those imperceptible
inferential leaps from "it could have been made in this way" to
"this is the only way it could have been made" and thence to
"this is how it was made." But it must be emphasized that the
Nickell hypothesis does not of itself eliminate other
explanations, not even the one including that infamous "burst of
spiritual radiant energy" at the moment of Resurrection.
No, the "fake thumb" explanation does not prove that the psychic
surgeon is not operation paranormally, but films of the "surgeon"
using a fake thumb _do_ -- and such films exist. And, while the
"blowing" hypothesis does not prove that Hames Hydricks is a
fraud, Hydrick's own admission that blowing is his modus operandi
most decidedly does! [6] Here are wonderfully clear examples of
the contrast between weak refutation (alternative hypothesis) and
strong refutation. I would venture the suggestion that part of
the motivation for anti-negativism is the fascination with and
concentration on alternative explanations, coupled with the
perception that weak refutation is indecisive because alternative
explanations do not prove that a given entity does not exist. In
this perception, anti-negativism is entirely correct. We cannot
prove a negative, or nonexistence, _in that way_, but it is
fallacious to spring to the generalization that we can never
prove a negative; in addition to weak refutation, strong
refutation is often viable. Explanations in terms of a
peculiarly shaped new waterbed and dark-gray designer bedding may
explain prior elephant sightings in my bedroom but do not prove
that there is no elephant there. However, to reiterate an
opening point, _looking does_.
--- ConfMail V4.00
* Origin: Paranet(sm) - The world's leading UFO Investigative News Network
(1:30163/150)
ay_, but it is fallacious to spring to the generalization that we can never prove a negative; in addition to weak refutation, strong refutation is often viable. Explanations in terms of a peculiarly shaped new waterbed and dark-gray designer bedding may explain prior elephant sightings in my bedroom but do not prove that there is no elephant there. However, to reiterate an opening point, _looking does_.
--- ConfMail V4.00
* Origin: Paranet(sm) - The world's leading UFO Investigative News Network
(1:30163/150)
