So how can you prove that who you are is random and not "what was meant to be"? I am asking because that statement is often used in religious debates, for example, and I don't think it is fully understood.
The Burden of Proof Canard is one of the most pernicious of logical fallacies. It is a canard because those who are guilty of it assert there is such a thing as a "positive claim" and a "negative claim," and then pretend that the so-called negative claim is right by default until someone "proves" the positive claim.The default position is that we do not know until one view (or the opposing view) has significant evidence to support it.For example, atheists pretend it is right by default that a universe can form on its own. When stated in this way, it is perfectly unjustified to pretend this is a negative claim, but they justify it by saying that "nobody has proved" there is a God who made the universe.So as for your question, WE DO NOT KNOW if there is intentionality behind who we are. We also WE DO NOT KNOW if it is possible to for anything to be truly random in this universe.I know that's probably not exactly what you were after, but there it is.
Things are the way they currently are (true, a = a)To say that things were meant to be this way is a claim that I don't believe. If someone believes the claim, they should show the claim is true, so the burden of proof is on the one trying to convince you. If things were random, we'd expect to see stuff, we do see stuff, so it's possible that things are random. (if b, then a. a, therefore maybe b)It's not a proof things must be random, but there's no reason that it couldn't be random, unless they prove that this state was pre-planned.
>>16298105>If someone believes the claim, they should show the claim is true, so the burden of proof is on the one trying to convince you.But also if someone believes the COUNTER claim (that the universe is truly random), the burden of proof is upon them to prove it.
>>16298121Sure, if they want to convince anyone. If someone asked me why I believe it, my answer would be along the lines of>I see no reason it can't be this way, and on the other hand for it to be otherwise would require more positive proof, so occam's razor says take the lighter theory.Since random chance is already accepted to exist, and can "cause" things to happen, and seems to be able to explain everything, why should I propose something else?
>>16298099Good point.The notion of "positive" and "negative" claims or a "burden of proof" that might depend on that distinction makes no fucking sense once you understand the concept of double negation. Literally any claim can be expressed as a "negative" statement. The notion of a proposition being "positive" or "negative" is therefore not an inherent property of the proposition itself, but is rather entirely contingent upon how we express such a proposition in English (or whatever language you happen to be speaking). If we want to assign something like a valence to statements, so as to classify them as "positive" or "negative", we can do so, but this will be purely a syntactic or phonetic property of a particular sentence, and not an inherent logical property of the underlying proposition encoded by this sentence. *If the terminology is confusing, in logic and linguistics and "proposition" is a more abstract object that expresses a meaning or "logical form", whereas a "sentence" refers to a specific sequence of symbol in a specific language that provides just one way of encoding the more abstract meaning or "proposition" underlying this sentence.
>>16298099>>16298207i'm going to kill myself because i wasn't smart enough to come up with these two insightful tidbits on logic/semantics/whatever. go jack off with my compliment, assholes.
>>16298099>>16298207>>16298224On further thought, I realize that both of your critiques on the "burden of proof" as a fallacy are lacking in a sense.We are dealing with the empirical world of knowledge, not with a deductive one. The adjective of "exists" is often synonymous with "credible observation"--as is the standard. As such the burden of proof idea works well with existential claims--such as God.To claim that something exists from an empirical perspective, it must be observed somehow. Nobody is waving the "burden of proof" flag when somebody says "I believe trees exist", and yet if somebody says "I do not believe trees exist", the burden of proof would rightfully be invoked.The burden of proof as a concept then rests soundly upon the principles of empirical knowledge--it must be observed, and there must be evidence of its observation.Your critiques still work well with claims that have nothing to do with "existence/non-existence", however those are seldom applicable from an empirical point of view.
>>16298099>nobody has proved" there is a God who made the universeto be fair atheists merely deny the existence of that abrahamic god
>>16298099Thanks, that's a pretty good response. I always appreciate these. Well, too bad we don't know that, because if we would, everything else would become obvious and order would come. What I think we should do in the light of that is to formulate a procedure to live as a world's society "meanwhile". Stupid people will insist on taking one of the mentioned sides, like it's a fucking game and then they will argue and poison their lives, not realizing it all might be completely futile. And it's all just to prove to others that they supposedly know something. They so easily forget that "only truth can set you free" and therefore they don't act accordingly. They just want to represent their side/team and fulfil their plans.
