You've just made Pascal's wager with respect to fairies.

The logical structure of "if you don't take action X, God may be pissed, so you must take action X" is the same as the logical structure of "if you don't take action X, magical creatures may be hurt, so you must take action X."

I probably shouldn't have to refute this for you, but as one argument, tailoring our actions to minimize harm to unknown entities is clearly a search and optimization problem. Furthermore, I have little knowledge of the range and properties of these creatures (a virtually infinite set of creatures that may exist). No free lunch theorems don't technically apply, because I have some information about the universe, but that information gives me no reason to believe that the net harm of cutting down trees outweighs the net benefit.

What concerns may exist are well addressed by conventional environmentalism.

I voted for Yvonne, man.

Didn't one of your threads define belief based on what would surprise you? I wouldn't be surprised to learn that fairies exist, though I'd be surprised to meet one.

The problem is that there is a distinction between saying I believe claim X that fairies exist is false and saying I believe fairies don't exist.

Then the the clever person goes " aha, but then I define fairies to be equal to the fairies in your second statement"

Then I go "since that lacks any property or category, it makes no sense to claim it exists"

Really this is only a debate because conventional language is unprecise. In my first post in this thread I made a point about defining what fairies were, since one can't argue the ontology of fairies if they can be anything.

For the record, the above view is agnosticism in practice. Some claims are unknowable because they are metaphysical, so it is pointless to regard them as true or false...but we can disregard them for that very reason.

I'm game with what you said.

This.

I simply don't accept the claim that fairies exist. I am not making any definitive claims that they don't exist. They just might, for all I know. But until I am given reason/evidence that they do, I dismiss their existence out of hand.

My main point was that I do not feel I should have to go out of my way to label myself, or make known, or even show a belief in every single thing that I dismiss as being true. I'm willing to label myself an atheist for the intents and purposes of this forum or for theistic discussions in general. But only because there are so many who actually think a god exists. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't even need such a label and I'm still undecided how I feel about ever having to wear one even for this.

Yeah, that...and the fact that you actually think you know more about what others believe then they do themselves.

Semi-grunch. It's trickier than it looked at first.

'Fairies' are small winged humanoids with various 'magical' attributes. Folklore from numerous cultures is littered with reports of their existence and accounts of their nature. So fairies in the Midsummer Night's Dream sense, I am fairly confident don't exist. This doesn't preclude the existence of some other phenomenon which, misapprehended by unsophisticated cultures in the past, prompted the mythic account of fairies - and in fact, everybody who believes fairies don't exist accepts the existence of such a phenomenon, though probably within pretty narrow parameters; peasants eating ergot-tainted rye and suchlike.

The fact that I think the originating phenomenon likely was something similar to that can't close off the possibility that it wasn't. Even though 'likelihood' isn't really the right concept, I'm perfectly happy to say it is possible, though extremely 'unlikely', that whatever prompted the mythology was something entirely outside the realm of current documented experience.

Let's say that the origin of the legend of fairies was actually small humanoid looking birds. Would this mean that "fairies" existed? If you answer yes, that means that when you tell stories about fairies, you are actually telling stories about that kind of bird. Is that what you are really doing?

It seems to me that when I and other people in my culture talk about fairies, regardless of the actual origin of the term, we are talking about a kind of being that is mythical by nature. Thus, if we discovered these birds, we would not have discovered "fairies," but rather the beings which inspired the legend of fairies.

No, that wouldn't do it. Maybe I wasn't clear. I mean that fairies (small winged humanoids with 'magical' attributes) almost definitely don't exist, but that fairies (some as-yet-unclear stimulus prompting the mythology) are a lock to exist (my money's still on the ergot).

That's what I thought I was saying. The only difference between the above and my intended meaning is that I added not being able to rule out that the explanation might turn out to be something 'closer' to fairies than we would consider plausible - extremely unlikely, in that not-quite-appropriate sense of 'likelihood', but still not impossible.

Not sure that we actually disagree here.

Who says fairies, as they exist, have to be linked in any way to the myths about fairies?

I mean, I still don't think your confidence is justified, but it seems more extreme since the poll isn't about "fairies at the bottom of the garden" but about fairies, period.

You believe there are no small winged humanoids anywhere in the universe?

1. If you wanted a debate on definitons, you could have said so on page one and me/maybe others could have focused on other more interesting threads.
2. Nobody here is going to say that they believe X does not exist for all values of X. The same goes for for fairies and all values of fairies.
3. Now if you want a debate on absolute certainty, that is fine too...but belief has never required absolute certainty so the thread subject is a little strange in that regard.
4. If you want a debate on agnosticism that is fine, I/maybe others reject all metaphysical claims of fairies existing on the grounds that such claims are unknowable.

Rational belief requires rational certainty. Otherwise it is faith based belief.

Also Madnak the way you closed the other thread was hilarious. I looked through the thread to see your response to yourself. V nice.

OK, 'fairies' definitely exist, then. It only remains for someone, somewhere, to define some obviously-extant thing as 'fairies' and we're golden.

I mean, if 'the myths about fairies' are in no way linked to real live fairies, then in what sense are they 'myths about fairies'? Surely they're just myths about something with a similar name (Thomas Jefferson was a Republican!).
What confidence? I'm quite confident that small, winged humanoids with 'magical' attributes don't exist on this planet. I have pretty good reason for thinking that, not quite on a par with the reason I have for thinking the next fire I put my hand into will burn my hand, but not more than one rank below. Again, if 'fairy' is granted a definitional blank cheque, then the question borders on meaningless.

Hell no. I don't believe it to be the case, but as with a blank-cheque definition of "god", it just smacks of effort to believe it not to be the case.

I'm going back to Taleb. Let's say there was a myth in medieval Europe about a black swan. This was a fabricated story, of course - nobody in medieval Europe had any kind of even indirect connection to real black swans.

So you discover that the story about a black swan was fictional, somebody made it up. Does this justify a conclusion that black swans don't exist?

I don't think it's necessarily true that myths about fairies have no basis, but the question of "do myths about fairies have a basis in reality" and "do fairies (defined in the same way) actually exist" are two different questions. Even if you prove that every story about fairies is made up, that doesn't imply that fairies don't exist.

You plan on sticking your hand in a fire.

If fairies can exist in a different physical place (in another galaxy, for example, there may be aliens whom we would commonly describe as "fairies" if we could observe them), then why can't they exist in some other form?

That's not really a fair comparison - it might be if there were wingless, un-magical humanoids roughly the size of fairies, and fairies were held to be some exotic variant. But it's a minor point, since as with OrP I don't see where we actually disagree here.

No reason at all. That's what I thought I was saying.

Oh, for some reason I thought you were on a hardline "no fairies" position.

That's just the thing. It is not nit picking its the whole point.

Two people sit down and discuss faeries. They both act as if they are talking about the same thing but really there is very little correspondence between their conception of faeries.

Any conclusion reached about one persons concept of faeries will have little to do with someone else's. Best to avoid the whole thing. Wait until zoologists examine and tag some specimens and then use a different name that no one has any preconceptions about.

I'm a bad reader, so I missed the black swan thing....

No claim can be made with absolute certainty and information can never be known to be complete. At a point in time the conclusion that black swans existed was solid, and a claim that they did exist was not. I don't ask more from a belief than it being the result of of a continuous honest review of available information.

You seem to describing a state of holding no beliefs as superior, if you did so in jest or in seriousness I don't know...but; The conclusion to be found in the bottom of this slope is that rocks seem to be intellectually superior to humans because they make less errors. I find that conclusion to be mildly unusable and somewhat paradoxal.

Maybe beliefs are indeed uncertain to the extent that we can't even know if they are wrong, but wrong isn't the anti-thesis of cognition...that would be the state of not thinking, which isn't even sophisticated enough to be wrong.

Well, I think rocks are better at philosophy.

Clever.

However, I'm confused as to where you want to go...if you want to declare philosophy for dead (or atleast retired) that's fine by me because I would agree to some extent, but if you want to conclude that any belief is unjustified, then I do not agree...and if I did agree, it would be a paradox.

I think beliefs are justified if they have value, in terms of predicting observations and/or in terms of general utility. I think the appropriate state in terms of untestable/unempirical beliefs is that of no belief, particularly if belief doesn't accord any benefits.

Beliefs are tools the brain uses to help make decisions. Their justification is the extent that their effect on decision making improves the viability of the organism. Veracity of beliefs is only important to the extent that it improves consequential decisions.

Fantastic post.

I don't think any information system can function without belief, it is the core of cognition. Without an assessment of TRUE/FALSE there is no thinking. This begins at a cellular level.

The base of your arguments seem to be that if someone says they do not believe fairies exist, then you think that is silly because fairies can be anything/anywhere. This is not disagreement, this is merely lack of precision in communication.

I stated in my first post in this thread that I defined fairies to be winged humanoids hanging around in groves/mushroom rings, and I did this for that specific reason. I reject statements regarding unknowable values of "fairies" because they are unknowable. That is agnosticism.