Are there instances (disregarding logical impossibilities) where we can make a positive assertion regarding existence of an object/ability. Or do we always have to say "I don't believe flying spaghetti monsters exist." instead of "Spaghetti monsters don't exist."

Is it philosophically incorrect to say "Humans cannot telekinetically fly to the moon"?

I'm pretty sure I can claim that there is no elephant in my garage because when I go to the garage, there is no elephant there. I can (and do) positively assert the absence of an elephant in my garage.

Edit: So there are clearly cases in which the absence of evidence can be used to justify a claim.

I'm not sure this is the same thing as the examples in the OP, in that it is a specific claim, and not a general one.

There is no black hole of mass 10^24 kgr in my room either or i wouldn't be here lol!

Proton doesnt have lifetime 10^5 sec either! The positive version is that proton has lifetime over 10^5 sec since i am still alive since this morning with more or less same features.

I like Seinfeld.

Point taken. How about the claims in the OP?

I guess it's of note that both Masque's and Aaron's claim both involve a location. Can we ever make a positive assertion of nonexistence without referring to a specific location?

I'm only asking because I think it gives off an incorrect connotation to merely say "I don't believe in leprechauns". It's giving implicit credence to the notion that they might exist that doesn't happen when you say "Leprechauns don't exist".

Yes, you can say "experience is". Falsifying it would prove it, so there you go.

It also means empiricism is pretty much the only philosophical approach which doesn't require unprovable assumptions. Yay.

No, you can do either in every day English, everyone knows what you mean.

Of course if you say something like "Spaghetti monsters don't exist." on an internet forum like SM&P you will get nitted to death.


I guess it depends what branch of philosophy. For any statement I am sure you can find some branch of philosophy that will allow you to nit it.

Would be awesome if someone could explain how this works to me; is it because one can never prove something, only disprove it.

With flying spaghetti monsters, it can never really be disproved as one never has enough information to actually infer that there isn't flying spaghetti monsters, as one's sources simply may not have that particular location covered or ability to detect them(maybe they're from outer space or invisible)

Close?

People say "spaghetti monsters don't exist" in everyday conversation?

Not that often, not that I implied they did, just if someone did say it in everyday conversation it would be understood.

However similar stuff does happen. For instance only today someone claimed to have pocket fours for a flopped set, and another player at the table asserted that his 'pocket fours did not exist'. Everyone seemed to understand what was meant.

No you cant.
[quote]
Or physics is wrong, or poorly understood, or some other bizarre explanation.
This depends on what you mean, if you mean that, definitionally, it doesnt, then thats the same as saying "except logical impossibilities." If you simply mean we've never observed a proton with a lifetime of 10^5 sec" then you cant claim its impossible.

There is no pair of integers a and b such that a/b = sqrt (2).

Logical impossibility. It doesn't fit OP's criterion.

I can and just did.

There's a difference between making a justified positive assertion of absence and claiming to know something in a strong epistemological sense.

I was not sure. It is not a superficially impossible statement but it can be proven with some effort that the specified pair of integers cannot exist. Therefore the statement I wrote is true and can be positively stated.

If you rule out all things which can be rigorously proven then the OP becomes:

If you cannot prove a statement to be true, can you make that statement without qualification.

I think the answer is "No". Without a proof it is not a fact, it is an opinion, belief or likely situation, but it is not a fact.

I think he's asking for something less than that (although that's a direction the conversation could reasonably go -- see vhawk, for example).

A reasonable place to look for a starting point is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_justification

imo the nitty (and "right") answer is "it is highly unlikely that FSM is real" or "the chance of FSM being real is 0.00...1%" But personally I think the best way to do it is with relativity, for instance, "it is more likely that Russel's teapot is real than Zeus is real because we already know that teapots are real"

Partly because of the possibility of alternate universes you can't really say anything doesn't exist for sure, talking in general terms.

When it comes to our universe, we just have to decide on what probability levels we are thinking of when saying "somethig doesn't exist".

It is all a mistake of possibility and probability.

We can only speak of lack of probability. It is certainly possible that you are actually the flying spaghetti monster yourself and that each of what you think of as thoughts are actually oscillations of your various strands in a complex function of a random walk process with non-linear drift and cyclicality due to non-explosive regime changes.

However, you have no reason to think that is true and plenty of non-perfect reasons to believe it isn't true.

The more obvious proof is that you can't prove that everything you experience isn't just a clever experiment that I am running. I'm not actually running said experiment, but that is exactly what I would say if it was.

Beyond Brian's pseudo brain-in-a-vat cleverness, I would like to assert that I am actually the ONE running the experiment, and that it has provided me with many a jolly laugh.





-The Laughing Buddha

The soup du jour is always the soup of the day.

You're putting on weight, Zeno.