Proof By Rhetoric

This sounds like it belongs in the ConversationalChaff page somewhere.

I'm absolutely convinced that somewhere in our Wiki audience there is someone who can do this term justice.

It's what the media does all the time. People swallow it. At least in the field of science, a theory can only be proven false, but that doesn't make a good story. You want logical proof, forget it. It all becomes tautology anyway. You want to really convince people, you need ProofByRhetoric.

Let P be any theory in the field of science, and Q be the negation of P (so Q is also a theory in the field of science). Proving P false is equivalent to proving Q true. Get my drift? So let's not hear any more about being unable to prove such theories, but able to disprove them. There are necessarily exactly the same number that can be proved as can be disproved.

OK, your drift would be easier to swallow if it were as easy to negate a theory, as it is to negate a proposition. My suggestion is that the former is considerably more complex. I guess I had better bone up on why Sir Karl Popper (KarlPopper) is considered a bonehead these days. Then again, maybe philosophy of science is considered off topic on this ever more sanitized wiki.

... even the best rig the questions so that the expected answers will be obtained. -- PhlIp (paraphrased and then taken out of context)

This feature of argumentation is not a fault. It allows scientists to refer to theoretical entities when talking about the 'facts'. It allows us to meaningfully make a distinction between reality and illusion without denying that illusions occur in a reality that is indistinct. Science itself is built around assumptions such as the unreliability of appearances and the separability of proposed entities from their historical context but is fascinated with the empirical evidence.

To understand and to communicate meaningfully, vague notions need to crystallize, world-views and ideologies must be adopted, and the vastness and abundance of reality has to be ignored. A liberating factor is that this does not have to be done once and for all. -- ChrisSteinbach

This feature of argumentation is not a fault.

Except to the degree that it allows "I am more eloquent that you are, therefore I am more right than you are." -- GarryHamilton

I think what I meant to say is that rigging the argument is inevitable. Not really my own idea (see http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric). -- cs

A liberating factor is that this does not have to be done once and for all.

Hear, hear. You go, Chris. This tiny, yet enormous, bit of wisdom has broad application. At any point in Life or Thought or Belief where a decision must be made, the fact that one is free to change one's mind later as greater understanding is attained makes it possible for one to get off the fence and into action, knowing that one need not be chained to a "permanently bad" decision. -- GarryHamilton

CategoryCommunication