Talk:Argument from ignorance/Archive 2

Support for Pragmatism Claim
Second paragraph suggests that Russell's teapot is a pragmatist argument, and links internally to article on Pragmatism, but it is not clear from that rather extensive article what about Russell's implicit evidence of absence argument (that the teapot is "unlikely") would justify characterizing it as pragmatist. Could we get a link to a specific subsection of the Pragmatism article to more clearly substantiate this claim?

Also, are there any published sources that draw this connection between Russell and pragmatism vis a vis the teapot? As far as I understand, Russell was a critic of pragmatism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beadsland (talk • contribs) 20:45, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Straw Dolls everywhere
I'm going to change this as it is a classic straw man argument. There are a ton of these on wiki (probably a fair few in this article) and I'm trying to get rid of them.



Ion Zone (talk) 23:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Concerning the Big Bang in this article
The cyclic model of the universe is very quickly gaining support within the scientific community due to its ability to model the early universe without special rules, as are present within the Big Bang's inflationary model. This article mentions that there is no evidence against the Big Bang, which is untrue. The WMAP measurements strongly imply that either the Big Bang model needs significant restructuring, or that the early universe did not originate from a singularity, but from non-local region. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.40.10.122 (talk) 19:23, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, someone seems to be forgetting about the missing anti-matter - among many anomalies - that are not so much explained by the theory as subsumed, post-facto, by deus ex machina explanations. JG17 (talk) 14:18, 25 April 2010 (UTC).

Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence is NOT logically valid
Someone please stop saying that and editing it out. Absence of Evidence is NOT evidence of absence, but absence of evidence when evidence should be present is evidence of absence...that is the correct view--141.156.18.73 (talk) 21:30, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Just to check, are you stating that if a preexisting condition - such as burden of proof on one side of an argument - applies, then absence of evidence is evidence of absence? e.g.


 * - Person A has been accused of crime X
 * - There is no evidence that A committed X
 * - Therefore, A did not commit X in the eyes of the law
 * Editus Reloaded (talk) 22:14, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * You're confusing the court of law with logic, in the court of the law something IS assumed to be false until proven true, not in logic, this is done to protect innocent people from being convicted in our court system--141.156.18.90 (talk) 15:21, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought in law the defendant was "innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt" unless you're talking about talking within the context The Crucible. Thus, your argument isn't sound --Stan the fisher (talk) 17:22, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand the discussion, I'm just using the law as an example of a logical process where some preexisting condition exists causing absence of evidence to represent evidence of absence. Ergo: if habeas corpus did not apply, trial would be a LOGICAL argument where each side would have to logically prove their case. Editus Reloaded (talk) 13:54, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Law is not a logical process. It has nothing to do with logic. It is a process created by representatives who are elected with no testing or any requirements for that matter on their capability for rational thought.

Suppose I suspect, or somehow have been informed, that a small family of beavers are currently living in the back seat of my car and with appropriate concern I therefore go out and check or somehow look for tell tale signs or any kind of indication that the assertion may be true, perhaps I look in the window, only to find absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

And so I open the door and look inside… Nothing.

If I am to conclude that there is indeed no family of beavers living in the back seat of my car I must first accept the Idea that absence of evidence is identical to evidence of absence when there are no great gaps, of a kind large enough to hold a family beavers, within my knowledge about the back seat of my car.

It seems to me that the entire question of when or if absence of evidence is identical, or even close enough, to evidence of absence depends entirely on the relative size of the knowledge gap as compared to the subject or assertion in question.


 * Thomas L. Thompson writes "What we do know of Israel and Judah of the tenth century does not allow us to interpret this lack of evidence as a gap in our knowledge and information about the past" (emphasis added) Agenzen (talk) 02:00, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

If we were talking about microscopic size beavers on the other hand the gap in our knowledge, given only a brief visual search would in fact be large enough to hide a very tiny family and would therefore distinguish perfectly well the difference between absence of evidence and evidence of absence. At that scale given only a visual search, the knowledge Gap is relatively large and the assertion that there are no microscopic beavers living in the back seat of said car would in fact be a fallacy of the kind that arises from ignorance.

I believe therefore, that consideration of the relative size of any knowledge gap involved in any given case is of some relevance in this regard. Agenzen (talk) 17:18, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * However, you did not know that the beavers had made an opening at the bottom of the backseat of your car, and they could squeeze themselves into the backseat, hiding themselves from your eyes when you opened the car door and looked inside...  Lova Falk     talk   18:44, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Not knowing "that the beavers had made an opening at the bottom of the backseat" represents exactly the kind of gap in knowledge that I am referring to. It’s equivalent to the microscopic family of beavers case. To the extent that such holes or gaps in our knowledge can be eliminated the difference between absence of evidence and evidence of absence is likewise diminished by the exact same process. To the extent that such holes cannot be completely eliminated one cannot assert that they are not hiding in some unknown hole or location somewhere in the back seat exactly as you suggest. The question remains one of the relative size of the gap in our knowledge v the assertion in question. If I substituted tigers for beavers in our hypothetical a small hole under the carpet would not be sufficient a gap to account for the absence of evidence and would therefore be equivalent to evidence of absence. One might say that the confidence or value of such evidence depends on, and is inversely proportional to, the size of the gap in our knowledge regarding the circumstances involved.Agenzen (talk) 19:19, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Some of you are confusing absence of evidence with any kind of negative result. A negative result can either be absence of evidence or evidence of absence. A positive result can be either absence of evidence or evidence of presence. Absence of evidence just means we don't have evidence. If we do have evidence, then it's not "absent." An example of a positive result with absence of evidence for beavers in your car would be seeing a broken window from the outside. There's something positive, and it could have been done by beavers, but the specificity of the result is so low that the window cannot be considered evidence for beavers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.243.219.227 (talk) 19:00, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Weak and inconclusive evidence is nonetheless evidence. — Robin Lionheart (talk) 00:46, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It has been proven that "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" here: http://kim.oyhus.no/AbsenceOfEvidence.html Since you now can know that it is true, further discussion will just be superfluous, somewhat like philosophy. I am the expert that made this proof, so it is against Wikipedias guidelines for me to write about it myself. Kim0kim0 (talk) 10:57, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Simple solution to IP problem
Since the section is talking about laws and how the fallacy applies to legal decisions, instead of putting in the IP issue, put in an actual legal decision which many people can more easily grasp. Edited to do so, inserted "Michael Jackson" example. Many people could not imagine how he could have slept with young boys and not had sex with them, therefore assuming he must be guilty. However, the trial showed otherwise, because to argue "I can't imagine him NOT having done it" is, by definition, argument from lack of imagination. This example is shorter, more straightforward, and does not confuse the issue with the secondary arguments of Intellectual Property laws. user:xaa
 * The lack of imagination is not widely used. Christopher William Tindale (who?) (pg 206) in Acts of arguing: a rhetorical model of argument cites page 125 of The new rhetoric: a treatise on argumentation By Chaïm Perelman, Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca and but not much else.... other than other web sites reflecting Wikipedia content. So I'd agree its an idea in law but not widely used outside of law. Ttiotsw (talk) 12:38, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Significant changes to the article in March, 2006
FT2, thanks for the repeated help with edits recently, and for the very sensible re-sectioning.

I wanted to make a quick point about the Argument from personal incredulity: The most recent edit (the bulleted examples of argument from incredulity) is, I think, a further step in the right direction. However, as currently written it confuses the argument itself with the explanation of the argument for the reader-- that is, currently the bulleted examples do not accurately represent forms of the argument per se, but rather are part argument, part explanation of the argument. These need to be separated out. The bullets, if they are to be included, should highlight a typical form of the falacious argument itself, and the explanation needs to be separate from the bulleted example.

Another approach could be used too, which is already used in the Examples section. There, examples of the argument are given, with explanations of the fallacy in parenthesis.

Incidentally, FT2, superb work on the TA article! Kudos to you... Kenosis 16:12, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * FT2, you also raised an interesting issue about the difference between not being aware of evidence and not having evidence. It's a potential quagmire that I think should be included only very carefully, and I think definitely not in any example of the argument itself-- e.g., do we mean unaware (ignorant) of the entire body of scientific evidence to date?, unaware of the current consensus and summaries on an issue of inquiry?, unaware of someone's most recent proposed explanation just published?, is the most recent proposed explanation verifiable and useful to other scientists?, etc, etc....Kenosis 16:42, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

What a tricky question!! I am going to have a stab at it. Forgive me if this is crass and poor quality by competent standards.

(And thanks for the compliment. Can you have a stab at the bullets for a bit? I want to think and see how you see it, your last edits were good ones too)

I think its more along the lines of, arguing on the basis that ignorance is factual, as opposed to ignorance being lack of knowledge. So for example, this is my understanding of a slippery divide where one can read it strictly or not:
 * If I argue that Fermat's Last Theorem can't (currently) be proven, because I'm unaware of latest research, and I state that because we haven't yet proven the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture or any equivalent result FLT is presently unprovable, that's ignorance. But my claim clearly states it is a belief, and conditional upon a reason which I leave open to others to judge.
 * If I state that it can't be proven, or no alternatives exist, I am stating this as a statement that has truth-value, at that point I've slipped into argument from ignorance. I am asserting that because a specific person at a specific time in a specific life cannot prove it (or has an opinion that it cannot be true), therefore it cannot be proven at all, and/or is untrue for all people, all times, all lives.

So I think its 3 things that makes it a fallacy: the generalization (personal opinion --> universal truth), the absoluteness rather than conditionality (its true if --> its true), and the failure to neutrally appraise evidence held. The point where it slips from "I think that [X], because [to the best of my knowledge (Y)]" to "[X] is a fact because [obvious to me (Y')]"

In this sense, argument from ignorance is like the term "theory", I suppose..... every argument unless very carefully specified, is capable of being found "ignorant" tomorrow. So "[Blah], therefore [fact:] the earth goes round the sun", if [Blah] later turns out an assumption, is technically also an argument from ignorance, even though the present evidence is vast and we have no credible reason to disbelieve it. Since we are discussing an argument in logic, rather than an argument in everyday commonsense and rhetoric, a strict reading is probably not inappropriate, where we say "only what is logical is correct to assert".

I don't know if this is utterly right, or valid, or even "original research", but maybe in it there is something that will help us identify in academic and logic texts, what exactly we need to bring into the article to clarify it better.

Of course even if it is, the examples may not show this as well as they could.... FT2 (Talk) 22:07, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi FT2. Please see, which describes the point I was trying to make before that the Argument has both a positive and a negative construction.  The adage "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" only illustrates the negative construction...Kenosis 22:36, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Kenosis -- really reallynice edits. I think you've captured it much better than it was, for the first time this article really starts to feel encyclopedic as well as "just capturing information". Very neat work this time round. FT2 (Talk) 22:08, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks FT2. I hope this gets the article much closer to stable, and thanks for your help.  I felt it was really important because of the relationship to the intelligent design controversy, where so many people get confused about what the arguments are.  I also appreciate our conversation here...Kenosis 05:52, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I still think it's nice to actually have that sense of working with someone here, in that way. Many thanks, and yes, close to stable now, sort of :) Nice work :) FT2 (Talk) 18:06, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

You can't prove your views, so don't argue with me!"
This isn't an example of argument from ignorance. Somerset219 00:42, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) This has to do with personal desiscion, not nessesarily logic, due to the "don't argue with me". That is a choice on the person making the argument, absurd as it may sound.
 * 2) Not being able to prove your views doesn't mean your wrong, but doesn't mean you're right.
 * 3) This example may have alternate views, but is taken out of context. If one is making a claim and and the other states this, it is a rational statement.
 * 4) If one is making a claim and they state this, its irrational, because the burden of "proof" is up to them.
 * If someone tried to begin an argument with me based on their belief that the tooth fairy really did exist, then I could imagine myself saying something similar, though it would be more along the lines of "This will lead nowhere productive, so dont waste my time".

it's a really bad example.--87.65.181.203 20:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Fallacies fallaciously promoted as valid
Argumentum ad ignorantiam is "the fallacy that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proved false or that it is false simply because it has not been proved true." This is pretty clear and well established. Most of this article has nothing to do with that, but is instead thinly veiled attempts to promote an agenda, for example much of the examples section. Xj 08:44, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

"No one saw X, so how can we know X actually happened?"
this is not an argument from ignorance. it's not arguing anything, it's a legitimate question. "No one saw X happen, so x cannot/has not happened" would be an argument from ignorance.--87.65.144.52 15:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Right, I'm changing it then.--87.65.181.203 16:50, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

arguing atheism
I am adding a point here, though its clear this is contentious from the talk page it seems to me that by adding a theistic argument from ignorance you have to add an atheistic argument from ignorance it is impossible for God\supernatural to exist, because we have no physical evidence for it  this seems like a clear argument from ignorance. It is not stating what is more likely, whether we evolved or were created or by whom or anything else, it only states that the solid belief, without any room for doubt that a supernatural being of any type could not under any circumstances exist, as a fact. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Colin 8 (talk • contribs) 21:20, 7 December 2006 (UTC).

I forgot to add my signature to that last edit "arguing atheism" sorry, its --Colin 8 21:21, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I've removed this:
 * It is impossible under any circumstances for God/supernatural being to exist because their is no evidence to prove it. An argument made by atheist's to prove that a supernatural deity could not exist
 * because atheists don't make this claim. The currently popular atheist tract, Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, titles the relevant chapter "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God", not "Why There Is No God". Atheists have made the point in innumerable ways, via the Celestial Teapot, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Invisible Pink Unicorn and others, that there are plenty of things we can't disprove, and that while we may technically have to remain agnostics, in practice "we are all teapot-atheists", as Dawkins puts it. grendel|khan 17:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * This is patently false. Many atheists make this claim. Perhaps not all do, but many. And Bertrand Russell was the originator of the "teapot-atheist" phrase. --BlarghHgralb 23:14, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Who are these "many"? Please point to someone with a bare minimum of stature rather than some dude on Youtube. If the burden of evidence is "someone somewhere once said it", you're going to naturally get a heap of fallacies. grendel|khan 03:38, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Who are these many you speak of? I'd like sources on that because some guy on wikipedia doesn't mean much.

Okay, now the problem is reversed, there's an argument for atheism and no arguments against. Maybe we should just avoid the issue entirely. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.215.154.27 (talk) 03:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Suggest removing example that discusses exist/non-exist of God unless it is referenced.
This argument example was added by IP back in mid-November. It's been swapped around recently. It is stated without evidence (either way). I suggest it is boldy removed as it will simply attract edit-"lint" unless who ever wants it in there can clearly show examples of the use and the cite/ref must be notable.

version a) - from one POV, version b) - from the flip POV, I vote it is culled as we could stick any fantasy "x" figure in there e.g. fairies, FSM, teapots, any of the god or gods invented since the dawn of time such as the Christian one or Allah etc, and then have the usual revert wars. Ttiotsw 09:06, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * "God exists, because science is incapable at this time to prove that he does not exist." A common argument used by Theists to disprove the claims of non theists that a supernatural diety does not actually exist.
 * "God does not exist, because science is incapable at this time of proving that he does exist." A common argument used by nontheists to disprove the claims of theists that a supernatural deity does exist.
 * Today I'm bold - I've culled it. See history if you want it back. Ttiotsw 09:13, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Suggest removing example on Sun age estimate
Nice article. I find this example incorrect but leave the edition to those active on this page. In the example under a false hypothesis ("if the sun energy come from a burning process") a false conclusion was reached (million instead of billions of years). However, the logic is correct. This is not an argument from ignorance. 83.250.248.45 00:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Luis

Every statement is wrong - including this article
I just happened to read this article and there is something fundamentally wrong with it. It is a basic theory of statistics that you can be certain of something by not finding any evidence. E.g. in a factory, they will sample TVs are prove that they are at least 90% confident that less than 0.1% of TVs will break down within the guarantee period '''by not finding a certain number of TVs that break down in a sample".

[***This statistics example does not have anything to do with the argument from ignorance fallacy. The fallacy can be restated as "I assume X is true until someone provides evidence of ~X." The TV example can be restated as "Few TVs are defective because I have tested a statistically significant sample of TVs" or "X is true because I have evidence X is true." The author of the example doesn't understanding the meaning of "absence of evidence" relating to the fallacy. Of course if we could test for god like we could test for defects in TVs, then the argument from ignorance would fail as a rhetorical device.] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.89.103.10 (talk) 19:05, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I quote: "Because there appears to be a lack of evidence for one hypothesis, another chosen hypothesis is therefore considered proven".

A lack of evidence for a systemic failure on a production is ABSOLUTE proof that a certain degree of confidence is stastically possible of the number of failures. IT IS ABSOLUTE, because it matters no a bit what the actual level of failure is, the statement about confidence in the level of defects is a formula dependant only on the number of units found not to have an evidence of failure! (FOr info lookup quality control and statistical sampling)

Another fallacy of the article is the assumption that one cannot exclude outcomes that are unreasonable. Let us say, you flip a coin, you are told it has not landed on the heads side, and it has not landed on the edge. Now it is reasonable to say it has landed on the tails side, but as the article is written, it is possible to introduce any number of "alternatives" such as "it is floating in a black hole", it has transmutated into an elephant and has landed on its trunk.

Logic is based on the premise that people won't talk patent nonsense, and therefore it is quite plausible to argue that you don't believe a coin will turn into an elephant and land on its trunk and so dismiss this possible outcome. Otherwise, you may as well all go home - because it is impossible to conclude anything. TIME FOR THE PUB! 88.109.77.5 10:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Let us see whether this article fails WP:Bollocks. First assume it does, we are therefore required to find evidence that it doesn't - I have a very fertile imagination - for any argument you can bring I accuse you of a lack of imagination to conceive of why you are wrong. Therefore you cannot prove it does not fail WP:Bollocks therefore QED it does - to which you will of course accuse me of a lack of imagination ..... and we have the normal Wikipedia nonsense! It's a load of WP:bollocks! 88.109.77.5 10:56, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with 88.109.77.5 wholeheartedly. It is impossible to say that one theory is correct because of a lack of evidence in a competing theory. Besides that, to me, God is a more outrageous solution than Evolution. One can not sensibly think that the Intellegent Design hypothesis (or Creationism if you perfer) is a simpler solution than Evolution, which is based on the observable particulars of life and the universe. I believe Dawkins best explains this when he speaks of the God of Gaps. Or, in other words, a God which exists only in the gaps of human knowledge.

JustinInSpace 16:32, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

It would seem that when a new phenomena is discovered, it should immediately be described as "unexplained" and should not be assumed to be a supernatural event. As of yet, there are no repeatable steps one can take to show the existence of supernatural phenomena. Once one has repeatable steps to create an unexplained event the discovery process has always led to the phenomena being explained as natural. One might conclude without a clear path to show that supernatural phenomena are extant, that the topic becomes meaningless, without merit. The point of this being that in an absence of an explanation, working towards an explanation in nature should be the default, as opposed to attributing events to a "higher being". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.197.144.252 (talk) 01:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The post by TIME FOR THE PUB that starts this section contains an obfuscation in the sentence: A lack of evidence for a systemic failure on a production is ABSOLUTE proof that a certain degree of confidence is stastically possible of the number of failures. The heavy-handed and repeated capitalisation of the word "absolute" cannot override the fact that neither "degree of confidence" nor its complement "degree of uncertainty" are certain conclusions. They are estimations that can be quantised numerically from incomplete (sampled) information. The only way to be certain about all the TVs in the example is to test them all. Please do not weaken your proposal(s) for improving the article by using histrionic rhetoric such as unnecessary capitalisation of words. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 13:36, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Examples
The examples cited repeat the same point over and over again without adding anything new. The only good examples in this section are the one about the age of the solar system and the one about polar bears. The others should be cut. I'm willing to do this myself unless someone argues for their retention. Le poulet noir 15:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm reading this for the first time in April 2008 and agree with the above statement. It appears as if the article has had multiple authors, each wanting to explain the same thing in their own words as if this would improve upon the existing explanations. --220.235.141.51 (talk) 11:53, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

The arguments about the solar system and polar bears are not examples of the argument from ignorance (or the argument from personal incredulity) and should be removed. Neither argument follows the form "X hasn't been proved true, therefore it's false" or "X hasn't been proved false, therefore it's true." Not every argument with a mistake that results from the arguer's ignorance is an argument from ignorance. In an argument from ignorance, the arguer acknowledges that there is no evidence.T c holz (talk) 03:31, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Argument from personal incredulity
This section is unclear, contradictory and longer than it needs to be.

1) There is no need for the two common versions of the argument. Argument from personal incredulity is simply asserting that something must be true because the alternatives defy the imagination of the speaker and, by extension, all reasonable people.

2) Argument from personal incredulity and argumentum ad populum are two different things.

3) The entry states that argument from personal incredulity is the same as argument from ignorance only if "the person making the argument has solely their particular personal belief... as evidence that the alternative scenario is true". It then states that "quite commonly, the argument from personal incredulity is used in combination with some evidence in an attempt to sway opinion". There is an obvious contradiction here. Either the speaker is relying solely on his lack of imagination or he is not.

4) Without wanting to open a can of worms, I suggest that the label of argument of personal incredulity is commonly used by evolutionary theorists to describe arguments put forward by supporters of intelligent design. I don't think proponents of intelligent design would dispute that one of the attractions of their theory is that it is easier to imagine that the complexity of the natural world is caused by an intelligent force than a series of disjointed processes.

I'm happy to rewrite if no one objects. Le poulet noir 17:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with all of these comments. What happened to the rewrite?  The bits on argument from personal incredulity seem a confusing mess today, two years later. Phiwum (talk) 14:08, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Michael Jackson
Is it necessary to present the reader with an example of an argument relating to Jackson's abuse charges? The Fifth Amendment prevents double-jeopardy, so an acquitted man cannot (in law) be guilty O.J. Simpson. Editus Reloaded 22:30, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. I was shocked to read about an example of 'argument from ignorance' using Michael Jackson. This is surely inappropriate in any encyclopedia. Mwlin1 15:10, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * frankly, i think the general tone of the article is haughty and presumptuous; and whatever might be my personal opinion on MJ, i aqree wholeheartedly on that particular note as well. i, for one, will change what i can when i can - i tend to chip away rather than go whole hog.  Metanoid (talk, email) 03:41, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

punk eek
just stumbling through, then my eye caught the article's mention of punctuated equilibrium as an example of a gap in evidence. i don't think that's right (see the archive at, e.g., the www.talkorigins.org archive, for sources). discussion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Metanoid (talk • contribs) 03:37, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

removed it. Metanoid (talk, email) 03:42, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

negative evidence
Since negative evidence was redirected to this article, I have added a section (perhaps not in the best location). If it does not belong, the article should be recreated. kwami (talk) 23:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Need Better Examples
I have read over the current example section (all of 1 example), which, in addition to being worded exceptionally awkwardly, does not present the concept accurately and brings to mind questions regarding the poster's knowledge of biology. For the sake of completion, I'll quote it and explain the problem:
 * "If polar bears are (the) dominant (predator) in the Arctic, then there would seem to have been no need for them to evolve a white-coloured form of camouflage." In his book Probability of God, Anglican Bishop Hugh Montefiore casts doubt on neo-Darwinian evolution with that statement. This argument was addressed by the evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker, who wrote that if the writer had thought to imagine a black polar bear trying to sneak up on a seal in the Arctic, he would see the evolutionary value of such fur .Even though seals can't detect color "Unlike land animals, a seal’s eyes consist only of rods (sensory cells) that work great in low light, plus they don’t have cones (other sensory cells) to detect color." The ignorance in this case was assuming that seals can detect color.

From the way it's phrased, the reader might inclined to believe that Dawkins was the victim of the fallacy in question, though this is subject to some degree of interpretation. However, basic knowledge of the eye brings this conclusion into question due to whoever wrote the section qualifying the fallacy through "assuming that seals can detect color" and noting a lack of cones in seal eyes. This is an exceptionally probelmatic description, as neither black and white fall under those things cones would be required to detect. On the contrary, shades such as black, white and grey fall quite easily under the purview of rods, which the writer himself states that the seals have. One could state that the explanation itself is the argument from ignorance, but in that case, the fact that it itself suggests that a part preceding it was such makes the example confusing for the reader. My suggestion, therefore is to delete the current example and replace it with more fitting, simplistic ones that explain how the fallacy works, such as:
 * You can't prove I'm wrong, so I'm right.

It's short, simple, to the point, and perfectly illustrates the concept as described. Variations include (but are by no means limited) "You can't prove ghosts aren't real, so they are", or "there will never be enough evidence to completely disprove Bigfoot, so just admit you're wrong". While admittedly, none of these are scholarly examples, they are far more illustrative. 74.248.147.181 (talk) 20:51, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Negative Proof
Negative Proof links here, and there is a link to Negative Proof on this page, but no real discussion of Negative Proof. 98.24.75.26 (talk) 16:48, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Here is a current explanation of what happened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Negative_proof#Redirect_to_Argument_from_ignorance. Matt Yohe (talk) 07:29, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

A stunning example of OR and synthesis.
This article makes a really surprising number of claims without any citations, including the following:


 * Argument from personal incredulity is more or less the same as argument from ignorance.


 * Appeal to popularity is a special case of argument from personal incredulity.


 * Phonetics is particularly prone to a negative evidence problem.

The entire article has *two* references! Truly remarkable. I hope to clean up this article a bit at a time, but I'm going to start by deleting the entire section on Negative evidence, since it seems to be a wholly original presentation. See for the diff. Phiwum (talk) 14:16, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Argument from personal incredulity -- overemphasized?
The article currently treats Argument from Ignorance and Argument from Personal Incredulity as if they are on a par, but the latter has apparently been coined by Dawkins and hence is nearly a neologism. A search of Google books confirms that the phrase is in fairly widespread usage, but surely it is not as significant or well-established in the literature as argument from ignorance. I think we should rewrite the treatment, making clearer the recent introduction of the phrase.

Also, it's not really clear to me why this fallacy is treated on a page about argument from ignorance at all. The article alleges that the two are similar, but I don't see it. Personal incredulity is a fallacy of the form, "I can't believe X/X seems utterly implausible; therefore X is false." There is nothing explicit about lack of evidence in this fallacy and hence it is dissimilar to argument from ignorance. Phiwum (talk) 15:23, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the argument from incredulity section should be removed because: a) it's not really a fallacy at all - it seems to have been invented, and is solely used, as an argument to shift the burden of proof onto anyone who doubts evolution (I can't find any use of it, or mention of it, anywhere else); and b) it's not really a form of the argument from ignorance at all. Indeed, it seems more approriate to say that the accusation that someone has committed the fallacy of the argument from incredulity is itself a bizarre twist on the argument from ignorance. That is, the form seems to be: nobody has any idea how P could possibly be true, therefore to disbelieve P is simply a failure of the imagination, therefore P. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.103.124.52 (talk) 13:36, 11 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm with Phiwum here, purely because of its ubiquity. It requires, of course, a solipsistic worldview: "I think this, therefore this is true" which ultimately evolves from "I want to believe this, therefore ...", and appears to evolve from a genuinely held conviction that whatever person A chooses to believe about the state of the universe is genuinely true about the universe.
 * There was an advert some time back: "I'm Nadine Bagot, beauty editor of (some wimmin's rag) and I think that the (vaunted claim) is pentapeptides." The tone was self-congratulatory and dogmatic, as though what she thinks has a higher chance of being true than whatever a moderately-educated person knows about protein. (It does of course have the same argumental thrust as "I'm a reader of newspapers, and I think that the most important means of communication is via five-letter words.")
 * Argument from incredulity requires that same level of self-important narcissism: the attitude that one's own belief structure is so important that it is unthinkable that the universe would organise itself on different lines. I believe it is important to document this phenomenon - if sufficient 2ndary etc. sources can be found to back it up. I'm no researcher myself, just an amateur polemicist. --Matt Westwood 05:36, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Special cases
I think there is a subcategory of argument from ignorance which may be called “argument from own ignorance”. I have seen pseudoscientists use it many times. Examples:

¤ “I don't know any scientific explanation of this phenomenon so no-one exists.” In reality there is a well-established scientific explanation. The person making the argument has just not tried hard enough to find it.

¤ “I don't know about any variation between members of this category so no differences exists.” In fact there is so much variation within the category that it is divided into several substantially different subcategories. The person making the argument only knows about one of these subcategories and does not even realise that more exists.

¤ “I don't know about any other examples of this phenomenon so no more exists.” Real-world experts knows about more cases very well. The person making the argument has failed to realise the wideness of his or her ignorance.

Supposing that nothing more exist than one has personal knowledge of seems quite common among people which wrongfully think they are experts. What I mean is that they neither have formal qualifications nor are treated as equals by those which have. How important do you think this subcategory is?

2010-04-30 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.


 * Unless you can find a reliable source describing this category, importance really isn't relevant. Do you have a source in mind? Phiwum (talk) 21:14, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

No, I don’t have any source. I have just noted that it is common for pseudoscientists to reason as if there was no more within the area then they personally know about. Sorry for not thinking about that.

2010-05-04 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.247.167.70 (talk) 11:04, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Science Section
I would like to make the following recommendations and suggestions to this section of the main article:
 * The 1st example has nothing at all to do with an argument from ignorance "Unexplained phenomena" is an argument from knowledge demonstrating the ignorance or incompleteness of a theory. It should be removed I think


 * The article claims that "later theories based on quantum mechanics provide an adequate explanatory model of both (waves and particles)" This is simply not so. There is no adequate model of any kind explaining anything in quantum mechanics. What we have is an accounting method or algorithm that is capable of predicting and describing the outcome of events that includes both particle and wave like phenomena. Feynman spends the 1st section of his QED comparing our complete lack of model on this very issue to that of the ancient Mayans who could predict very well when Venus would appear as a morning or evening star but never the less had no adequate model of any kind to explain anything, they just knew how to count and noticed a pattern in terms of the number of days. QM uses a different kind of number (complex number) to calculate something else (Probability of events) but the absence of model is exactly the same as it was for our Mayan friends.


 * I would like to suggest that the word "explains" be replaced with the perhaps more "Scientific" term "accounts for" throughout this section as in "sufficient to explain or predict" should be replaced with "sufficient to account for or predict"

Agenzen (talk) 21:48, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * On second thought let's delete this section. Science is subject to the same rules of logic as everyone else. This article needs a re-write.

Proposed Rewrite
Hello everyone I'm new here and would like to fix up this article because I believe that in its current form it causes more confusion than it can possibly clear up.

I would therefore like to propose the following outline for a rewrite and invite comment:

Proposed rewrite and restructure available here Agenzen (talk) 10:25, 26 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. Perhaps you could expand a bit on negative evidence and absence of evidence, so this article is a good summary of those topics, which currently redirect here. — kwami (talk) 06:04, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Good Idea, Thanks, I may have to move some things around a bit so as not be too repetitive. I also rewrote Evidence of absence Last night. Agenzen (talk) 16:36, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Or, if you prefer, either of those could be expanded. What I'm looking for is WP internal: critiques of various forms of superstition and quackery frequently make mention of those terms, and the reader is currently directed here to make sense of them. — kwami (talk) 21:52, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, I expanded it a bit as you suggested but this subject is hard to source properly. There seems to be a lot of confusion out there and everyone want's to claim this fallacy to their own advantage sometimes both embracing and denouncing it simultaneously. It's really very amusing Agenzen (talk) 04:46, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Ok now that I am not getting any more comments what can I infer or deduce? ... (Click here). Agenzen (talk) 16:00, 27 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd take it as silent consent. Go ahead and post it. S.o. can always revert if they really object, or more likely modify some of the phrasing or examples. — kwami (talk) 17:02, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

It's live. Agenzen (talk) 05:10, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Carl Sagan's contribution? Really?
I have nothing at all against Carl Sagan, who was a great popularizer of science and skepticism as well as a scientist. But Sagan's contribution to the "Appeal to Ignorance"? It looks to me that he merely summarized the fallacy for a new group of readers. He did not provide any essentially new understanding of it, near as I can tell. It is not really a contribution to the relevant literature or breaking any new ground at all.

So, why a section labeled "Carl Sagan's Contribution"? I've removed the header (note that most of the section isn't about Sagan in any case!).


 * I agree. Although Sagan is well worth quoting, the header was a little much.-Tesseract2 (talk) 01:25, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Original quote? cfr Evidence of absence (talk)
Original quote? (talk) absence of evidence & evidence of absence --PLA y Grande Covián (talk) 03:28, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Talk:Evidence of absence
 * Argument from ignorance ← Absence of evidence

realist vs antirealist
"Reality exists at all times, and it exists independently of what is in the mind of anyone." And independently is mark with Bold.

This is a clearly realist view on a very important philosophical problem concerning ontology and epistemology.

Actually this sentence without reference is the perfect example of the argument from ignorance. Even better than the teapot.

Sorry to bother and have a nice day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.71.135.14 (talk) 23:18, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Contraposition and Transposition
"Transposition is exactly the same thing described in a different language."

Is that what is really meant? It seems to me that what is meant is "Transposition is a different term for exactly the same thing."

The fact that "Contraposition" and "Transposition" go to completely different pages adds to the confusion here. What do we really want to say here? --Matt Westwood 11:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Rebuttal from article
Removed this from the article text (an article should not contradict itself, and it was in the wrong place anyway, and would disrupt the presentation by following an irrelevent tangent):

Rebuttal;

It would be healthy (and only right), to note that since man can travel to the Arctic, man has weapons stronger and more lethal than a Polar Bears claws or jaws, that may be used to hunt, maim, or even kill a Polar Bear from great distances that man is indeed on occasion a predator of Polar Bears...Hence the Polar Bear needs the camouflage of white fur. This dents that example a wee bit. Except for the fact that man has not hunted polar bears long enough or in large enough numbers to warrant an evolutionary change. Polars bears are rarely hunted, and man is not a 'natural' predator or the polar bear.

Teleological Argument
I reverted out & deleted a poorly-written & reasoned example from Ohanian on the 14th of January. At first I considered merely correcting the grammar and rewriting the style, but I think the whole example is bad. That said, some form of reference might be reasonable. Any thoughts?

Before I say mine, should Argument from Ignorance & Argument from Lack of Imagination really be tied together as the same thing in the introduction? Argument from Ignorance, to me at least, assumes that all sides agree that X is unknown, and the fallacy is claiming that therefore explanation Y 'must' be false. Argument from Lack of Imagination would be more appropriately filed under the "From Personal Conviction" sides, as some explanation Y is proferred to X, which is rejected for irrelevant reasons.

Anyway, naive versions of the Teleological Argument for specific phonemena do nicely qualify for Argument from Lack of Imagination / Personal Conviction. However, for this to qualify, the conclusion must be exclusive. Saying "We don't know why lightning bolts happen, therefore it's Zeus" should only be an example of this fallacy if the person also rules out any future explanation and says that because this must be eternally unknown and unexplainable (lack of imagination), Zeus is the only possible explanation. Merely saying "God is in the gaps" does not necessarily deny that scientific explanations can also be right (Zeus changes the weather patterns?), and also allows a nice retreat into other gaps. If somebody can find a cite of an actual medieval or Renaissance philosopher saying that something unexplainable at the time must therefore be God and only God, that might work. Otherwise, we can just leave this out.

Bayes's Theorem
Need to connect this article with probability (which may not be strict logic, but which Jaynes did call "the logic of science"). In reality all evidence is uncertain, and the absence of evidence does provide information. If you visit 10 lakes and in each of the first 9 catch hundreds of fish, but catch none in the 10th, you would be right to increase your confidence that the first 9 contain fish and the 10th doesn't, even though the possibility exists that there are fish in the 10th that didn't bite. (Note that the treatment of the first 9 is probabilistic too: the possibility also exists that those lakes don't contain any more fish because you just removed the last.)

Request for better example in the "matters of confusion" section
In the body of the 'matters of confusion' section, the following example is used :

"For example, if the causal proposition that If it's raining outside then the streets will be wet is assumed, then it can be assumed that if the streets are not wet then it is not raining outside."

It can be raining outside with dry streets (a hot day with a light rain that evaporates immediately when it strikes the pavement, which ruins the logic of the example. I understand the overarcing point that is trying to be made, and I understand the difficulty of coming up with spotless examples, not the least due to me currently being unable to provide a better example with which to replace it.  I would like to see a new example with which my insufferable neighbor cannot find details to argue while missing the point entirely. 24.79.75.240 (talk) 02:29, 8 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, not a good example, and also not a good article. A classic example is rain falling on a tin roof, the absence of noise suggesting no rain. As below, I will suggest fixes. History2007 (talk) 10:53, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Article quality and sources
This is pretty much an "article from ignorance" now, or perhaps "article by diversion" for it zig-zags between various (often less than logical) examples. And of course, it is mostly source free. John Locke who coined the term is mentioned in passing at the end, but the article is in need of serious clean up. A lot of it seems to have been written by user Agenzen who stopped editing 2 years ago. I seem to have left him a message 2 years ago with a pointer to negation as failure, now that I have looked, but that point is not discussed in the article except in see also. In any case, the best way would be to have a shorter, referenced and to the point definition with a couple of well known examples, instead of of the logical jambalaya that exists now. I will do that. History2007 (talk) 10:53, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Anyway, I went ahead and cleaned it up now, added WP:RS sources, etc. History2007 (talk) 22:24, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Expression "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
Ah, but it is evidence of absence (one knows what evidence is, yes? I hope?...). It is not proof of absence, which may be what people mean, but which is no excuse for mussing with the language. Quite a few references could be given, including this one from the point of view of probability theory which is relevant to the case. Schissel | Sound the Note! 15:51, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

"In law" section
This section seems needlessly wordy. There are two real options: either the jury determines that the evidence of guilt is sufficient (so the person is "judged guilty") or not (so the person is "judged not guilty"). Instead the decision tree multiplies the complexity needlessly, by adding conditions that the person "really" is guilty or not.

I just don't see how this better explains the situation. Phiwum (talk) 16:49, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Suggested Removal of 2nd Paragraph
I suggest killing the paragraph that currently mentions Russell's teapot and raises the idea that there could be good reasons to believe that something doesn't exist.

Here's why.

1. If there are good reasons to believe that something doesn't exist those 'good reasons' (if they are in any way valid) constitute a form of evidence or knowledge. No reason to remind people that the argument from ignorance may not apply where the adversaries are not ignorant. 2. Failure to state the reverse. Why say, "Sometimes where we know very little there's good reason to assume that a proposition is false." If we don't include the opposite possibility "Sometimes... that a proposition is true." 3. Lastly, to come to the point. Get this thing out of here because it belongs the God vs. No God debate and comes in unnecessarily and right up front rather than defining the fallacy itself which has much broader usage, and frankly, is the topic of the article. Worse still, these sentences shamelessly argue to rescue the specific perspective that, in the case of God vs. Atheism, (and I can back this up with Russell's famous teapot!) the atheist has good reason to believe the proposition of God to be false without committing the fallacy of argument from ignorance. Whether such a distinction is justifiably clarified I don't really care either way. That there is a kind of predictive and preemptive strike against the way someone might apply or misapply the argument from ignorance to a specific debate is just a silly joke. Again, get this out! Wikipedia is biased enough!

If this is a real concern, eliminate the possibility of misapplication of the fallacy by clearer definition of the fallacy itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.67.242.251 (talk) 22:08, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The null result of the Michelson–Morley experiment
I have removed the Michelson–Morley experiment from the list of examples.

The reason is that the article makes an unsourced claim that its null result is "strong evidence" that there is no luminiferous aether.

I have never seen such a claim, only that the luminiferous aether cannot explain the observed null result, which is not the same (and which is not a logical fallacy).

There are many things I have never seen and a source (notable in the field of physics) making an argument from ignorance regarding this observation would justify reinserting the example. Lklundin (talk) 17:42, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Basic argument — Plagiarism.
''Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. '' That content was plagiarised from "Vision and Visual Perception," By Duco A. Schreuder. I put it in a BLOCKQUOTE element with a citation. I think I did right but I am not sure.

The reference in that page, to www.mnstate.edu/custom404.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/gracyk/courses/phil 110/fallaciesexplained.htm#ignorance, is a broken link. I deleted that ref. Xkit (talk) 22:52, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Conspicuous Lack of Citations
In reading the various sections, there seems to be an abundance of material but with few references. It would be better to be able to be certain that this article isn't just a diatribe by an obsessed person, but a scholarly synopsis with back-up. How can anyone rely on this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.89.229.157 (talk) 16:16, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Confusion around presumption of innocence
There is a section in the article on the presumption of innocence which is apparently all original research as it presents no citations. I believe some useful discourse around the presumption of innocence could come into play in the context of the argument from ignorance, but the existing text is opaque on this point. It seems to confuse notions of factual guilt with legal guilt on the one hand, and factual innocence and lack of proof on the other. In factual terms we might say a person is "guilty" in the sense that "he did it" or "innocent" in the sense that "he didn't do it." But the choice in law is between "guilty" and "not guilty", not "guilty" and "innocent." Regardless of issues of burden of proof, a legal finding of guilt is not dependent solely on whether the defendant "did it" but also application of legal categories such as intent. "Guilt" is a legal finding, not a factual finding. This is why in some systems the verdict of "not guilty" is instead referred to (more accurately) as "not proved."

In short, I will DELETE this section but encourage replacement with a more focused discussion - with sources. Zagraniczniak (talk) 15:42, 27 March 2018 (UTC)