Difference between revisions of "Burden Of Proof"

Revision as of 23:27, 18 January 2024

The Burden of Proof is a convention of discourse that ranges from making discussion easier to making discussion possible at all. "Shifting the Burden of Proof" is often considered an informal fallacy -- where the person who should have the burden of proof according to convention instead demands it of the other -- although accusations of shifting such burdens appear just as likely to be incorrect in practice.

When it is said that somebody has the "Burden of Proof" in an argument, that means as a convention of discourse that person is the one who should provide a logical argument and/or evidence for the claims he or she is making.

What causes one to have the burden of proof?

Making a Claim

The burden of proof is typically said to fall on the person "making a claim". While this is on its face pragmatic in some discourse, it's not necessarily helpful in others because generally speaking each side has a claim.

If we can presume the person making the claim is endeavoring to convince the other, and the other is open to the argument but otherwise ambivalent to discussion and does not seek to convince anybody of anything, then in practice the burden of proof must fall on the claimant in order for discourse to occur at all.

In other words, if party A wants to convince party B of something, and party B doesn't care to convince party A of anything, then party A carries the burden of proof for some kind of argument to gain a foothold with party B.

However, in public and private discourse alike, there are also implicit claims that may be weighed against explicit ones. For instance, an implicit claim of virtually all people in acting or speaking is that of being consistent and genuine. So an explicit claim (e.g. of hypocrisy) may be made against that implicit claim, and it could be found that among those competing claims that the actor being criticized carries the burden of proof to demonstrate consistency in his or her action (see next section on consistency). When engaging an ambivalent party (for instance, many carnists), it can be useful to reveal the implicit claim being made (e.g. consistency of eating meat) and then examine burden of proof between competing claims (it's consistent vs. inconsistent) and encourage the person to engage in that for sake of intellectual honesty.

Making an Existence Claim

The mere act of making a claim is not sufficient for determining burden of proof, because much discourse involves both sides advancing opposing claims and attempting to convince one another or an audience of that side. In this case, the claims may be deconstructed to try to determine if one is a so called "existence" claim, or a "positive claim".

For instance, in the opposing empirical claims of "There is a tea pot orbiting the moon" vs. "There is no such teapot" it would be said that the person claiming the teapot exists is the one carrying the burden of proof. This is because it is claimed that "you can't prove a negative". This is a misconception, and false on multiple levels.

All empirical claims are based on provisional probabilistic evidence -- there is no absolute proof in either case. While absence of evidence alone is not evidence of absence, an exhaustive search does provide evidence for absence on empirical matters.

Logical arguments can be proved false (invalid) by identifying fallacious reasoning. Logical arguments, however, are not existence claims in themselves and presenting a logical argument is part of carrying a burden of proof for a claim such as "X is logically true". Logical arguments are where existence claims carry the burden of proof over denial claims: Person A who claims there's logical proof of X is compelled to present it. Person B who denies such a proof does not carry the burden of proof to show all possible arguments that could be made and why they all fail -- the latter is arguably impossible (or nearly so) unlike the empirical analog. In existence claims about logical arguments, there is an inherent asymmetry that necessitates the burden the carried by those saying an argument exists.

It is important to note that presenting a supposed logical proof informally in such a way that the logical structure can not be obviously deduced does not fulfill such a burden. A presenter must come close enough to formality for the argument to be unambiguously converted into a formal argument.

Making an extraordinary claim

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

In this context, Extraordinarity refers to empirical claims and their probability. If probability can not be easily assessed, a claim is usually more extraordinary when it falls farther from what would be considered the null hypothesis -- such as more complex assumptions that violate Occam's razor.

A teapot in orbit around the moon is a more extraordinary claim than the likely null hypothesis that such a thing exists due to known matters of science. It is true that in these cases the burden of proof falls on those making the most extraordinary claim. However, it's not always apparent to both sides or the audience which that is -- sometimes ordinary claims can seem extraordinary or extraordinary ones seem ordinary to those ignorant of the implications around them. In such cases, one means of moving forward can be shifting the discussion to one about which claims are more extraordinary to break down the complexity involved.

A common example is God creation claims. An atheist educated in biology may see God creation as extraordinary and evolution as very ordinary, but a creationist with poor understanding of evolution may see as extraordinary claims that we randomly came about through natural processes. Breaking these down into assumptions can provide clarity.

Things cam about naturally vs. Things came about by god, and god came about by what?

An additional series of complex assumptions may be revealed about how god (often an infinitely complex being) was created, or about the mechanics of time that would allow a being outside time to exist eternally and affect things within time without paradox.

In many cases, the deconstruction will fail to reach and end-point suggesting unknowably large complexity of assumptions (such as the existence of a god outside time without paradox or hoe those paradoxes are solved without violating logic, this point is as of yet unsolved by creationists). Usually these claims will be replaced by the claim "I don't know what the logical proof is but there is one that I don't know" -- this is an existence claim about a logical argument, and carries an unmet burden of proof. Because most theistic belief is based on such faith in the unknown, atheists can easily demonstrate an unmet burden of proof and "win" discourse by default by asking enough logical questions about a god. However, if the audience is satisfied by faith then such arguments are not necessarily useful. As in cases of an ambivalent partner in discourse, atheists normally need to voluntarily assume the burden of proof to engage in more extensive argument and actually convince others.

Extraordinary Claims in Carnism

The theistic analogy in the previous section is relevant to discourse between carnists and vegans, because carnists see an extraordinarily implausible moral system that allows humans to eat animals but maintains other desired progressive values as very ordinary and do not understand and are not always convinced by deconstruction of those arguments to reveal an endless series of unknowns. Carnists aren't going to convince any vegans that veganism is wrong by failing to carry their burden of proof implicit or explicit claim that there is exists somewhere an unknown logical argument that makes the behavior fine, but it is usually the vegan who wishes the carnist to change his or her behavior and reduce harm to animals rather than the other way around, and so any use of burden of proof arguments is of very limited utility. It can be useful to point out and may get the person thinking -- and in that sense it is also a kind of argument along the lines of Socratic street epistemology that is less likely to be offensive if done well -- but it may do little to move the dial in serious discourse. Vegans may be well served by voluntarily assuming the burden of proof and arguing constructively for an objective moral framework that precludes carnism.

Burden of Proof in Parsimony

Parsimony, roughly frugality, establishes a burden of proof to show that an action will not be wasteful of resources (time, money, etc.) and will be most probably cost effective before the course of action is taken.

This is relevant to social programs in politics, but can also be relevant to effective altruism where a charity needs to demonstrate itself to use funds effectively in reducing suffering in order to argue for receiving donations over alternatives.

Philosophical Vegan advocates for effective giving, including asking that most sources soliciting donations provide evidence of efficacy, but paradoxically Philosophical Vegan accepts donations to run the site despite not having the resources to evaluate impact. Philosophical Vegan is a high level philosophical primary source for activists and others on veganism, animal ethics, and other related subjects rather than a policy lobby or direct vegan advocacy where conversions or attitude changes could be theoretically tracked or tested. If Philosophical Vegan was useful to you, it's probably useful to others -- that induction is all we have at the present. It's also the standard that should probably be applied to other content creators from bloggers to youtubers. Efficacy of such content creation is unknown and in most cases currently unknowable due to the distributed nature of means of impact. We understand and respect people not contributing to an unknown, and while we discourage use of intuition or guessing generally, must just ask that contributors use their intuition or guess about the potential value of this resource because no other metrics can be practically obtained.

Burden of Proof in the Precautionary Principle

The Precautionary Principle seeks to avoid causing harm, and in ethics that kind of moral harm includes things like torturing and killing other creatures. If it is unknown whether a creature is sentient or has moral value, the safe assumption is to assume and act as though it does to avoid causing such harms. The burden of proof in these cases is on the one devaluing another. A person must make an argument, and present justification, to act in a way that may be harmful. This is true whether it's a matter of devaluing non-human animals, devaluing a "race" of human being, or devaluing a gender in moral terms. Moral devaluation must be justified.

In the case of gratuitous harm to plants (because meat eaters also harm plants indirectly this is only relevant to gratuitous non-food harms to plants) vegans must also justify that in light of the precautionary principle. Luckily that's an easy feat, because plants lack sentience and have no interests: it is not possible to respect the interests of one that has no interests. See Consensus on Plant Intelligence.

Following the Precautionary Principle can occasionally clash with Parsimony where avoiding an action just in case it may cause harm can end up wasting resources. Fortunately, at least on a global scale, plant based and vegan eating is a more efficient use of resources and also does less economic harm via climate change and through preserving human health and reducing medical costs. Vegans can fairly easily dismiss concerns over parsimony when arguing for the null hypothesis under the precautionary principle and asking carnists to prove their positions against non-human animal moral value.