Time to address my argument, not to repeat yours.

Decrease the number to zero, and see how that affects things. You have already declared that there are eggs. That is confirmed by every egg, but that they are all white is only confirmed by looking at them all. The whole problem is that you are translating the symmetry of the logic without existential claims to a real world of existential claims and ignoring the existential claims you are actually making. Look again at the diagram, and tell me what's wrong with that.

But I am right out of breath now, someone else have a go.

Well you start with a compound statement from the beginning. "there are eggs and they are all white." Then you also stipulate how many eggs there are - 12. And finally you put a completely arbitrary value on the probability of an egg being white.

But given that original probability, why should each white egg found make it more likely that the next one is white rather than less likely?I looks like a reverse gambler's fallacy to me.

Edit. No, that last bit's wrong. It's the limited number of eggs that raises the probability, If there were only 12 ravens and eleven had been found to be black, your probabilities would work. It's knowing how many there are before you start looking at them that is problematic, along with making the existential claim that I have been pointing out all along.

2. Is false. There is no such thing as evidence for a universal statement. What's more, you can't apply probabilities to universal statements. — tom

That. If 1. then not 2.



"All ravens are black" declares the blue area to be empty. This is refuted by evidence that there is something in the blue area, but not confirmed or made more likely by anything appearing anywhere else. The contrapositive says exactly the same thing, and the same evidence rule applies.

"There are ravens, and they are all black" on the other hand, declares that there is nothing in the blue area and something in the turquoise. In this case, the contrapositive is not the same, and every black raven found in the absence of any non-black ravens can be said to support the compound statement. But again stuff appearing elsewhere in the diagram is irrelevant.

You admit that your existence as a Welsh man is evidence against the claim "if someone is Welsh then they are a woman". — Michael

I'd say it's a knock down disproof. Unless you wish to make it definitional in some way, such that being Welsh means being a woman, and men cannot be Welsh. At which point the claim is definitional and says nothing about the world. And at that point evidence does not exist.

"Those particles are not electrons, because all electrons have a negative charge."
"Those white birds are not ravens, because all ravens are black."

It is a choice whether the statement is about the world or about the way we are going to talk. If it is about the world, then there will be evidence. But if it is about the world, it is not the same as the contrapositive, for reasons I've already gone into ad nauseam. The paradox relies on the ambiguity, and the refusal to choose whether the statement is actually making a claim about the world or not, but still applying rules of evidence as though it were.

Just to confuse you further, 'Welsh' is a contested term. Since I was born and brought up in England of English and Scottish parents, I do not consider myself 'Welsh', though in quasi-legal terms I am Welsh, by virtue of living here. On the other hand, Mrs un was born in England of Welsh and Caribbean parents but brought up mainly in Wales, and does consider herself Welsh, though many people consider her 'foreign' by virtue of the colour of her skin. And then there is the language issue... My existence as a Welsh man is highly contestable. :-O

Only if I exist. Are you claiming I exist? Then there can be evidence.
— unenlightened

And that's the point. According to the paradox, the existence of green apples is evidence for the claim "if something isn't black then it isn't a raven", and because of contraposition is also evidence for the claim "if something is a raven then it is black". — Michael

The point you are missing is that if I don't exist, there can be no evidence as to my gender or my place of habitation. None at all. Not green apples, and not my genitals. Evidence can only be brought for or against existential claims.

"All dragons are Welsh." Look around and you will not find a non-Welsh dragon, though there may be stories. And of course there are those green apples in England. But this is nonsense. There are no dragons, and so no evidence is forthcoming about their nationality. "all dragons are Welsh" says nothing about the world, and therefore there is no evidence for or against it.

I don't understand this. If I were to say "if you are from Wales then you are a women" then you can provide evidence (or even proof) against this claim by showing me that you're from Wales but not a woman. So evidence from the world certain does apply to if/then claims. — Michael

Only if I exist. Are you claiming I exist? Then there can be evidence.

You can just use 1) "if something is a raven then it is black" and the logically equivalent 2) "if something is not black then it is not a raven". The paradox still holds. Evidence for 2) is evidence for 1). — Michael

Fuckin ell Micheal. You can if you want, but if you don't say anything that populates the world, you ain't saying anything about the world, and no evidence from the world applies. And then the statements are equivalent and there is no evidence for any of it and thus no paradox, because it is just a declaration about language.

A raven is evidence that there are ravens. If there aren't ravens, I really don't care what you say about them or what evidence you produce.

We know that (1) and (2) do not say the same thing..
— Metaphysician Undercover

We do know that they say the same thing. That's what it means for them to be logically equivalent, and their logical equivalence is entailed by the law of contraposition. — Michael

I really feel I sorted this out earlier, but obviously not. I'll try one more time.

If they are taken to be analytic, they say exactly the same thing, that there are no non-white ravens. But such a declaration is not disproved by evidence as pictured above, because one simply declares that these white birds are not ravens, because they lack the essential quality of blackness. Likewise, there can be no supporting evidence, because it is analytic, and declares how the words are to be used.

Thusly, 'all electrons have a negative charge' is not disproved by finding a very similar particle with a positive charge, instead we give it a new name - 'positron'. Likewise we can decide to call those white birds, 'positavens' if we wish.

However, If we choose to define an electron by its mass and not its charge, and then we find a particle with the same mass and a positive charge, then we have to say, very well, it turns out that not all electrons have a negative charge.

Now the convention in logic is that 'all ravens are black' does not entail that there are any ravens, but only that there are no non-black ones. In Venn diagram terms it declares the emptiness of a region. And the contrapositive does exactly the same.

But science is not interested in emptiness and empty claims. When a scientist says all electrons have negative charge, he is saying under either analytic or synthetic interpretation that there are electrons. In Venn diagram terms, he is not merely depopulating a region, but also populating a region. Nothing there, but something here.

Under this interpretation, we have:
"All ravens are black" = "there are ravens, & there are no non-black ravens."
The contrapositive, though becomes:
"There are non-black things, & none of them are ravens."

These are not logically equivalent because They populate different regions of the Venn diagram.

I'm asking you practically, for you, what does it mean that your life is about love? What makes your life about love? If I look at your life, what in it makes me think "this is about love"? — Agustino

Probably nothing practically, I don't know. Rather as a Christian is not a good person, but a sinner, and climbers can often be found at the foot of the mountain rather than the peak.

When I have given her the ring, was it just the ring that was given? — Agustino

When I have given a ring, it was a commitment. And when the ring was thrown away, it was the rejection of that commitment. There is an understanding of the symbolic meaning, but ritual is not idolatry.

This is an abstraction. What is it concretely? How is my life, concretely, about something? What makes it about something instead of about something else? — Agustino

I don't know what your life is about. It is for you to say what is the most important thing to you. For me it is love - which is not to say that I am loving or lovely, but that is what it is about; that is where I stand, and where I am trying to go. And it is an abstraction, to the extent that I fail to make it real in my life.

Is it, in the end, about your wife? If it is, you are worshipping an idol.
— unenlightened
Why would that be so? What makes my wife an idol? Or better said, what would make her an idol? — Agustino

One makes an idol by giving central importance to, by worshipping, something that is not worthy of that place in life.

If I give a ring to my wife-to-be, have I given her a worldly thing? — Agustino

Yes, obviously.

What distinguishes the worldly thing from the non-worldly? — Agustino

Take justice as an unworldly example. It is not a natural condition, but is only brought into being by a just man. I don't think I can make the unworldly concrete, except in so far as I can show you a life lived.

What does it mean to put something at the center of your life? — Agustino

It means your life is about something.

Consider the situation I have asked andrewk to consider. If I give a ring to my wife-to-be, have I given her a worldly thing? What distinguishes the worldly thing from the ideal? — Agustino

What is important here, your giving, the ring itself or your wife? And are any of these the centre of your life? Is your life about a ring? Is it, in the end, about your wife? If it is, you are worshipping an idol.

I tend to think that the analytic/synthetic distinction is a matter of choice.

1. All swans are white.

2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABlack_Swan_at_Martin_Mere.JPG

Choice: (a) that's not a swan because all swans are white.
(b) ok some swans are black.

Or compare, 'all electrons have a negative charge, therefore that particle with the same mass and a positive charge is not an electron - let's call it a positron.'

I'm not your Biblical scholar, but It looks to me as though you aren't looking for that.

So from first principles ...

Everyone must put something at the centre of their life as the most important; God, money, social status, pleasure, power, love, themselves, science, ... something. That thing is what one worships, whether one is in a church, a mosque, a temple, a laboratory, or the hypermarket.

An idol is a worldly thing, as distinct from an ideal. In this scheme, there are no atheists, only self-made men who worship their maker.

Amazing that they discovered these correlations. — csalisbury

It's not the discovery that is significant, it's that messages can be targeted. If you're gay, you'll get messages about Islamic gay persecutions, if you like US cars you'll get messages about foreigners dumping cheap cars.

Yes, I can readily accept that statement. What I'm having trouble with is finding a reason to believe the antecedent - that observation of a black raven is evidence for the proposition that all ravens are black. It is conclusive evidence for the proposition that SOME ravens are black, but I can't see why it should be any evidence at all for the ALL proposition. — andrewk

Well add a few million black ravens and no non-black ones, and you might start to see that no evidence at all multiplied sufficiently starts to become convincing - which means that either it is some evidence, or one is convinced by mere habit.

It depends on who is assigning meaning to those statements and what meanings they're assigning, doesn't it? — Terrapin Station

This is the bollocks of a loser out of his depth.

Prima facie, it seems to be no evidence at all, since the claim is universal, and a single datum doesn't help us with the universal. — andrewk

The thinking is that if a black raven is supporting evidence that all ravens are black (not proof, note), then by the same token a green apple is supporting evidence that all non black things are non-ravens.

It's like love and marriage, you can't have one without the other. Unless you use unenlightened's patent interpretation of scientific generalisations.

The green apples are not evidence that there are ravens of any stripe. — unenlightened

I think the analysis is complete if one points out that 'there are ravens and all ravens are black' is no longer equivalent to 'There are non-black things and all non-black things are non-ravens'. And this asymmetry is the scientific escape from the logical paradox.

Because for logic, there is no problem in saying that all dragons breathe fire and no dragons breathe fire... As long as there are no dragons.. But the science of dragons is in its infancy

Yes, it is the end. Because scientific claims are existential claims, and in logic universal claims have no existential import. Thus the claim 'All ravens are black' can be taken as a priori. Part of the definition of raven-hood. In which case Cava's counterexample is indeed declared not to be a raven, but a short-necked swan, or some such. The scientific claim is that there are ravens, and they are all black, and being a raven is defined in some other way- shape rather than colour, say. The green apples are not evidence that there are ravens of any stripe.

Evidence can only apply to existential claims.

Well no. The evidence that as far as I know all ravens are black is limited to my having seen some ravens and them all being black. (That's the point of the dragons example.) It is evidence that some ravens are black, and all the one's Iv'e seen are black. At this point my having seen some non-black non-ravens falls out of contention,given that I have indeed seen some ravens, as being evidence that some non black things are non ravens, which cannot be translated in the same way,

That's not as clear as I'd like it to be. But consider, 'as far as I know all dragons breathe fire'. Given that my knowledge extends to no dragons at all, my evidence is nil, no matter how many non-fire-breathing non-dragons I have seen. 'As far as I know' needs to be a non zero distance wrt dragons or ravens, and not non-dragons and non ravens. The evidence makes the claim an existential one, or it is not evidence.

If that were the case then much of science would have to be dismissed. From a finite number of observations we infer general rules of nature that are applicable to everything of that type. — Michael

I don't think so. You just have to preface your universals with 'As far as I know', or some such trope. Science is provisional, but you don't have to dismiss it. The general rule applies until you find an exception, and then progress is made. I mean nearly all ravens are black still, until someone discovers the vast antarctic flock of white ravens, or the red ravens of Mars.

Back in the day, 'all' statements had no existential import, whereas 'some' statements did. Following which, one might have a bit of a get out, by denying that evidence can be for universal statements, but only against. Thus we have evidence above against all ravens being black and for 'some ravens are white'.

Thus 'all dragons breathe fire' cannot be supported by any number of fire breathing dragons, but is falsified by a single non-fire-breathing dragon. This fits with the Venn diagram approach, and also with Popper.

(2*) For every x, if x is not black, then x is not a raven.
Do you see that 'a green apple' is not related to (2*)?
— quine

No. Green apples are evidence that support this claim. They're not black and not ravens. — Michael

What's even more annoying is that intuition seems to say that a black raven is not evidence that non-black things are non ravens.

Unless someone wants to reform logic fairly drastically, the only thing to do is to agree with Hume that 'evidence' is all just habit and has no logic, and then follow Popper and @Cavacava and look to falsification.

I believe we will eventually get to the point where we can say "This person is bi-polar, or paranoid schizophrenic, because xyz gene is overactive or xyz chemical is metabolized too quickly (or not quickly enough. — Bitter Crank

it's not a genetic slam dunk ... there are other factors ... — Bitter Crank

That modification is a lot more acceptable.

I believe we will eventually get to the point where we can say "This person is bi-polar, or paranoid schizophrenic, because xyz gene is overactive or xyz chemical is metabolized too quickly (or not quickly enough — Bitter Crank

We know, by definition, that there is no gene for PTSD. We know, as Freud started to know, that childhood trauma in the form particularly of physical and sexual abuse is a major contributor to various mental illnesses. And we already know that genes play only a contributory part in schizophrenia.

So your belief is ill founded.

I wonder if folks would be interested enough to lend an ear to Adrian Piper, artist, feminist, philosopher, harridan. — unenlightened

Seemingly not. Which explains why there are no significant female philosophers. They are just too difficult to understand, and not worth the trouble, because ... there are no significant female philosophers.

Aldous Huxley answered that a while back in Brave New World.

For example, consider a laptop. It seems like a single machine. But when you connect two laptops together via an ethernet cable we can conceptualize the "two" laptops as a single machine. The difference between seeing them as one, and seeing them as two is purely a matter imagination and convention. — Michael Gagnon

No it isn't, it's a matter of an ethernet cable. Joining them with an imaginary cable doesn't work.

I know what you mean, but I disagree. I am not in the habit of drawing boundaries round stuff. One does not need to draw an imaginary boundary round a hurricane to notice that it is real, and something different to the generality of the atmosphere. Perfectionism leads to folly yet again. This theory, by its own insistence is nothing but the wind of imagination blowing through the dust of imagination. There is necessarily nothing to it.

I thought there was something in the constitution about not having an established religion. Anyway, we should obviously be doing the same here. Priority for orthodox physicalists.

And an end to the aborting of threads too. I'm sick and tired of grabbing people by the idea only to have them murder their unwanted ops.

There can be no selection without rejection. Try calling it 'natural rejection' for a while. It should make no difference to the theory...

That's just your pro-life bias talking - as if the universe really wanted you. This is the odd thing, that this view is so primitive and antiscientific. It reanimates matter by way of de-animating itself, reintroduces the gods that it sought to displace, and gives exactly the central importance to life that it wants to remove.

To be honest, I'm at a loss to find the right place to cut through this circularity, so I'll have to bow out.

There can only be one last word.

But the unthinking mechanism has a teleology of sorts, and that is to continue the project of life. It may not be designed with purpose, but it is there nonetheless. Notice, my examples are both ones whereby the outcome is whatever is optimal for continuing to live (both culturally surviving or genetically surviving). Natural selection just so happens to create the optimal situation for life to continue via adaptation. — schopenhauer1

No, you have the teleology backwards. The aim of genes is to go extinct, and most of them achieve this eventually. Natural selection provides the optimal situation for extinction to occur to all but the unfortunate minority.

I hope this makes as little sense to you as your teleology does to me, and you can see in the reflection that both are equally senseless.

Genes don't want to survive any more than they want to go extinct. It is humans that want things, and then project their own teleology onto nature.

Thus humans are imaginary in the same sense that the Big Dipper is imaginary. — Michael Gagnon

Well not really the same. The Big Dipper does not imagine itself. A group of particles with an imagination is more than an arbitrary invention of itself. The capacity to imagine oneself is real, and carves out a real distinction between a human and a heap of sand.

What's with all this welcoming refugees nonsense. Send them all back, they'll only create problems and undermine our civilisation.

I save time, you spend time, they waste time. Time is money.

Or possibly not.

The trouble with Maslow is that he couldn't multi-task. That and getting his pyramid upside down. Everything depends on the sanity of the individual. It is madness to look for security in a world of madmen; it is foolish to expect the insane to be able to feed themselves or look after each other lovingly. And it is ridiculous to expect mechanical thinkers directed by madmen to solve the problem.

How does the un-actualised self-actualise? The problem is not that we have been too busy with the mundane to consider the finer things, our own being. It is that the task is obviously impossible. The madness that is in my life will act on my life; the madman is in charge of his own therapy.

We have already arrived at the point where most of our time is spent in entertainment and recreation, to distract ourselves from the impossible problem. The impossible problem cannot be solved by saving and spending time. Time is the essence of the problem; time is the continuation of the un-actual self.

How I'm I implying it's using us? You don't think you can be a pawn in an unthinking mechanism? — schopenhauer1

No I don't. I think it's a muddle. One can be a pawn in someone else's game, if someone else is using one for some purpose not one's own. But an unthinking mechanism can have no purpose of its own. It is as if a driver complained that he had to go wherever the car took him. A passenger might reasonably complain, but not the driver. You can refuse to drive and then complain that the car is not going anywhere, but I'm afraid I have little sympathy.

From the (true) gene-centred perspective, — tom

It's not a true perspective, it's an imaginary perspective. Truly, there is no such perspective.