Argument from incredulity

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This page is part of the EvoWiki encyclopedia of fallacies.

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Contents

Synonyms

  • Ad Ignorantiam
  • Ad ignorantiam fallacy
  • Appeal to Ignorance
  • Arguing from Ignorance
  • Argument by Lack of Imagination
  • Argument from Ignorance
  • Argument from Personal Incredulity
  • Argument to Ignorance
  • Argumentum ad ignorantiam
  • Fallacy of Argument from Ignorance
  • Fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam
  • Fallacy of Negative Proof
  • Falsifiability
  • From Ignorance
  • Negative Proof
  • Proving a Negative
  • Shifting the Burden of Proof

Explanation

An appeal to ignorance is an argument that absence of proof is evidence of absence. That is, claiming that something is true only because it hasn't been proved false, or that something is false only because it has not been proved true. For example:

One cannot prove that the Loch Ness Monster is certainly a fake. The creature continues to evade all scientific endeavours to locate it, and no conclusive proof exists indicating that sighting were faked. Therefore, the Loch Ness Monster is real.

If there is positive evidence for the conclusion, then of course we have other reasons for accepting it, but a lack of proof it is false is not proof it is true. (Where 'proof' means the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance of a truth, or the process of establishing the validity of a statement by derivation from other statements in accordance with principles of reasoning.)

Forbidding this type of reasoning is not the same as a reasonable presumption (such as the presumption of 'No guilt' in court) like this:

Any proposition like "There is X" is reasonably presumed false (not argued false, just presumed false, taken for granted) unless proven true.

This is a basic principle of logic, since the burden of proof can never be shifted to the negation in any case.

Argument from Incredulity

The argument from incredulity is a type of argument from ignorance, as it argues that the absence of evidence (or a convincing explanation) of some premise is evidence that the premise is false (or unexplainable). There are two forms of this fallacy, depending on whether it's the arguer's own incredulity or the incredulity of science (or the populace as a whole):

  • "This is unexplainable" (meaning, of course, "I can't explain this"). This is the argument from personal incredulity, and it contains the (usually unwritten) assumption that the speaker is a superhuman genius who should be able to understand everything -unless he or she is missing an assumption. So the superhuman genius concludes that some assumption ('God did it', 'aliens did it', 'psi was involved' or whichever) is true, because it makes things easier to understand. For example:
    "There is no way I can explain how the human mind really works using conventional physics. (Unwritten assumption: If the brain really was governed by simple physics, I should be able to understand it). Therefore, it must be tapping into the computational power of the quantum universe."
  • "Scientists cannot explain this" (meaning, of course, "as far as I know, science can't explain this"). This variation contains the unwritten assumption that scientists are superhuman geniuses and should be able to understand everything unless they are missing an assumption. This undue veneration of scientists is a form of scientism, or using science as an ersatz religion. On top of that, it is simply not true in many cases - scientists do have an explanation, and the speaker just doesn't know it. For example:
    "Scientists are at a loss to explain the evolution of the platypus by Darwinian evolution. (Unwritten assumption: If it was of a Darwinian origin, scientists should know how it happened). Therefore, it didn't evolve."

Category

Subfallacies

External Links

  • Bruce Thompson [1]
  • Fallacy Files [2]
  • Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [3]
  • Objectivism [4]
  • Wikipedia [5]
  • Skeptic's Dictionary [6]
  • Stephen Downes [7]
  • Julian Baggini, Bad Moves: Arguments from incredulity [8]
  • Video Explanation [9]

References

  1. Behe, Michael, 2003. A Functional Pseudogene?: An Open Letter to Nature [10]

Further Reading

  • Drummond, Henry, 1904. The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man [11], Glasgow: Robert Maclehose and Co. Ltd., (Chpt. X has perhaps the first reference to God of the Gaps.)

Examples in creationist arguments

See also the examples in the subfallacies.

See Also

Why is Creationism not a Scientific Theory?

Acknowledgments

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