The logic that dare not speak its name - Forum

Proposition: There are eleven leprechauns colored green with purple polka dots dancing away here in my study. They are all undetectable by any means whatsoever. You don't believe me? Very well then. Prove me wrong.

You have probably come across this sort of "logic" before (yes, I'm afraid logic must have those alerting quotation marks around it), though the chances are that rather than multicolored leprechauns it was ESP, UFOs, the Tooth Fairy, the Great Pumpkin, little silvery men with big funny eyes from the planet Koozbane, ghosts, goblins, angels, demons, gods, and a thousand other things like them. You find it all very time-wasting and silly? Well, two of the twentieth century's greatest professional thinkers, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, hotly debated the exact same proposition I mention in my opening paragraph, except that it was an undetectable tiger that was in Russell's study, rather than my leprechauns.

They argued all day and for several days afterwards over the question of whether such a statement--"There is a totally undetectable tiger here in the study"--was logically and linguistically valid or flawed, Russell insisting it wasn't valid, Wittgenstein maintaining oh yes, it was. No, I don't know who won the argument and if you do happen to know, please don't write in and tell me.

For this is the logic that dare not speak its name, the logic that says, I believe in something completely incredible, unprovable, irrational, and with no evidence to support it, but never mind all that. Just show me where I'm wrong. Prove that my (fill in favorite belief system) doesn't exist!

People are a funny lot. They spend half their lives telling everyone who'll listen how reasonable they, the spokespersons of unreason are, and the other, and more energetic half, describing in minute detail what God's opinion on genetically modified tomatoes is. Their approach is too desperately self-assured to be entertaining (for such screeching certainty is a sure sign of inner insecurity), nor are they inclined to regard such a triviality as plausibility to be a consideration.

What they are good at is picking logic up by its tail and whirling it around in circles, ignoring its protesting screams and caterwauls. Since it is not possible for you to produce overriding evidence that my undetectable leprechauns, or tiger, or god, do not exist, I am free to insist that they do (Strong Wooly-Minded Assertion) or at least that they might (Mild Wooly-Minded Assertion). Having no acquaintance with the rules governing logical, deductive thinking and analysis, they feel free to use them any way they like, stand them on their heads, spin them around, turn them inside-out, back to front, tie them up into a pretzel, and, through it all, proclaim with total aplomb, What a thoroughly rational boy, or girl, am I.

It will not wash. It will not even rinse lightly.

Reason follows rather stricter rules. Among other things, it demands that the proposer of a new (or as in the case of our "logicians," very, very old) hypothesis is the one who must supply evidence for it, not that his doubters must supply evidence against it--though of course if they can so much the better--the point being they are nor obliged to. Onus of proof is always on the initiator, the originator, the proud papa. For (important point so read carefully) it is not necessarily the idea itself that is under assault, but the evidence presented in its behalf. It is this evidence, observational, experimental, mathematical, or analytic, that must undergo the test of validation. If no evidence is presented, then no test can be performed, and the hypothesis is still-born. This does not prove the hypothesis false, but it does prove it unworthy of further consideration, time, and effort.

Scientists are rather prone to make this sort of dismissal and nonscientists often get quite worked up about it. After all, no one has conclusively shown that cold fusion cannot occur! Quite so, and also quite beside the point. For what scientists are saying is not that they are totally and absolutely convinced that it can't happen, they are only totally and absolutely convinced that no sure and telling evidence for its occurrence has been produced so far.

Another example: Lots of people, including several who ought to know better, point to the case of Alfred Lothar Wegener. In 1912 Wegener proposed the notion of continental drift. He noticed, as thousands had before him, that South America and Africa could fit together rather well if you nudged them a bit and he suggested that they once had been so fitted, that land masses break up and bump together, floating around on the surface of the Earth like scum on boiling cabbage soup. The trouble was, he could think of no driving force that would create such motion. His hypothesis was dismissed by almost all geologists of the day. Forty and more years later, evidence began to emerge that indicated a cause for such movements of the Earth's crust and the idea of plate tectonics was born, gained converts as the evidence accumulated, and, as mote proof piled up, became a standard theory. This caused some philosophers and historians of science to exclaim, See how wrong scientists can be! See how quick they are to dismiss a correct hypothesis out of hand! Let it, as mother used to say (about all sorts of things), be a lesson!