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Arguments from Ignorance
An argument from ignorance happens when we argue that something is not the case because we do not have evidence for it, or argue that something is the case because we do not have evidence against it. Arguments from ignorance are fallacious often enough that the term “argument from ignorance,” or argumentum ad ignorantiam, is often given as the name of an informal fallacy.
That’s not quite right. “Argument from ignorance” is the name of a pattern of argument, or a way of reasoning about things. But there are few–probably not any–patterns of argument that are inherently fallacious. It depends on what the argument is supposed to accomplish and on what we’re reasoning about–not always and only on the way we reason about it. Most of what we call the “informal fallacies” are just argument patterns that have the misfortune to be used fallaciously fairly often. (For more information, see my earlier commentaries on logic and informal fallacies here and here.)
There’s some ignorance out there about arguments from ignorance. Let’s talk about that:
Arguments from ignorance are not all fallacious; some arguments about G-d or the soul that are labeled “arguments from ignorance” are nothing of the sort; and not every argument that relies on ignorance is an argument from ignorance. But it’s still a reasonable question what exactly some of these arguments are, and in particular whether certain of them can be classified as scientific arguments.
They’re Not All Fallacious!
Arguments from ignorance are not necessarily bad:
I have no evidence that there are any elephants in my living room.
Therefore, there are probably no elephants in my living room.
But it’s easy to see how the same pattern of argument can also be used fallaciously:
I have no evidence that there are any spiders in my living room.
Therefore, there are probably no spiders in my living room.
This argument reasons in the same way, and it’s bad because it’s reasoning about something different, something that yields a different answer to the following question:
If the thing were there, would we probably have good evidence for it by now?
That’s an important question, and an affirmative answer to it should usually make for an ok argument from ignorance; a negative answer should usually make for a fallacious one.
Arguments from ignorance, even if they aren’t fallacious, tend to have this disadvantage: If we learn just the right thing in the future, the argument will turn out to have been wrong. That doesn’t, in itself, make an argument from ignorance fallacious; but it does mean that, like nearly everything else, it’s fallible.
Once in a while, an elephant may even turn up in the living room, as Gary Larson illustrates.
And why should we care about arguments from ignorance? Well, we can talk about that too.
Some Interesting Arguments from Ignorance
Here’s an interesting argument from ignorance:
If G-d existed, He would have made His existence obvious.
He hasn’t.
So He probably doesn’t exist.
And this:
If there were WMD in Iraq, we would have found them by now.
We haven’t.
So there probably weren’t any.
And this:
If extraterrestrials existed, I would probably have seen some better evidence for it by now.
I haven’t.
So they probably don’t exist.
Let no one say that all arguments from ignorance are fallacious and useless!
Of course, we can quibble these particular arguments. Would G-d make it obvious? Would the aliens? And not every argument from ignorance, even if its premises do a decent job supporting its conclusion, has true premises. Evidence for the existence of G-d is a real thing, and do you need me to give you the three Google search terms I keep in my head about those WMD? (Ok, we’ll just skip to the third and best one; it’s “NYT five thousand WMD”. Look up the 2014 article, not the 2002 one.)
But what about the really interesting arguments from ignorance–you know, the arguments that G-d or an immaterial soul must exist because we have no idea how else to explain things otherwise?
Yeah, we should talk about that.
About Those Arguments for G-d or the Soul
People talk about arguments from ignorance for the existence of G-d a lot, but I don’t believe I’ve ever even seen one.
I’ve studied plenty of arguments for the existence of G-d–arguments cosmological, teleological, moral, ontological cosmontological, Platonic, empirical, and maybe a few others. Certainly there is no argument from ignorance among the many with which I have some familiarity from Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, William James, Allama Iqbal, C. S. Lewis, Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, Robert Adams, William Lane Craig, and Andrew Loke. These are arguments from things we know, not from ignorance.
Not even William Paley‘s argument was an argument from ignorance. (It was an argument from analogy.)
But here is an interesting argument.
If matter could produce consciousness, we’d have probably figured out how by now.
We have no idea how matter might produce consciousness.
So the mind is probably not the body.
One thing that interests me about this argument is that I think it might actually be pretty good. But only pretty good, and always vulnerable to the possibility that tomorrow will see the crucial discovery that bridges matter and mind.
But what really interests me is that I don’t really care about this argument, and I don’t even know whoever made such an argument. It certainly wasn’t Descartes. Nor was it anyone else I can remember ever looking at who talked about mind and matter. The arguments that the mind is not matter are arguments from knowledge of what mind and matter are.
Of course, everyone thinks that “G-d of the gaps” is the way people argue for G-d before science fills in the gaps, and that the “soul of the gaps” is the traditional way to argue for a non-physical soul. But I don’t know why people think this since I can’t remember ever seeing any such arguments. (Here’s Brandon Rickabaugh’s fine article on how arguments for non-physical souls are not soul-of-the-gaps arguments; a quick skim of page 203 should get the point across.)
Of course, most books are books I have never read; if there’s something out there, there’s a good chance I haven’t read it. I’m not arguing from my ignorance of anyone making these kinds of arguments that no one ever has. My main point is a bit simpler:
The prominence of such arguments is greatly exaggerated.
But what about this one?
Stephen Meyer’s argument, as reported in this blog post:
Premise One: Despite a thorough search, no material causes have been discovered that demonstrate the power to produce large amounts of specified information.
Premise Two: Intelligent causes have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified information.
Conclusion: Intelligent design constitutes the best, most causally adequate, explanation for information in the cell.
(See also this Ricochet post from Henry Racette, and there have been other Ricochet conversations on this matter.)
Ok–it’s an interesting argument. And ok–it relies on ignorance. Premise One there is a huge statement about our ignorance.
But that doesn’t make it an argument from ignorance. Let’s talk about that.
Not Every Argument Relying on Ignorance Is an Argument from Ignorance
Meyer’s argument relies on ignorance, but that does not make it an argument from ignorance. Here’s a similar argument:
There is no known explanation for the mess in the living room other than that the kids did it.
This is the sort of thing the kids normally do.
Therefore, the kids probably made the mess in the living room.
Or this one:
We don’t know of any reason to think Mark’s symptoms are caused by something other than a sinus infection.
Mark’s symptoms correspond to a sinus infection.
So Mark probably has a sinus infection.
And this last one illustrates an important point about ignorance and science: Every argument that draws some conclusion about the efficient causes of some physical phenomenon relies on our ignorance of any other cause.
In this way, scientific reasoning often relies on ignorance. But that doesn’t mean it’s also arguing from ignorance. In the example above, the argument argues from knowledge of Mark’s symptoms, knowledge of sinus infections, and an understanding of the fact that the two fit.
So what’s the ignorance doing in there? Not much; it’s just making sure we don’t know of any good competing explanation.
But Are They Scientific?
I like the Intelligent Design Arguments, but there is at least one reasonable concern with them. One can argue that Meyer’s religious conclusions are not falsifiable and are therefore unscientific.
I like that objection; it draws from Karl Popper’s philosophy of science, and Popper is the man!
The worst I can say about this objection to Meyer is that Popper’s philosophy of science is not the only game in town, and that I think Thomas Kuhn is also awesome. (He may even be right!)
Actually, I’m not even sure I care. I want to know if the premises support the conclusion. I don’t care all that much whether the premises are learned from science or not, whether the conclusion is theological or not, and whether or not the argument can technically be classified as scientific. I just care about the logic.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Where do you see that in Meyer’s argument?
Go back to the argument and look at the premises again. What prior known examples of G-d are needed?
And don’t compare it to the elephant and spider argument; it’s a completely different pattern of argument. Compare it to arguments about the sinus infection and the mess in the living room.
Aha! You‘re the one making the argument from ignorance that mind is not matter?
Seriously, if you are, I need to remember this.
But please take my advice: Learn and remember that Descartes’ argument is a different kind of argument entirely.
Wrong question. Consciousness is consciousness. We already know what it is (if we pay attention).
The question is what causes it.
The answer is: Something that has something to do with consciousness.
And that means: anything but matter.
And Descartes will back you up on that. His argument is based on knowing what consciousness is, knowing what matter is, and understanding that they are not the same kind of thing. (Not an argument from ignorance or even relying on ignorance at all; observations on brain, mind, and teacups may clarify.)
But you can always ditch Descartes and say we don’t actually know what matter is. That’s fine. Or you can even go further in that direction and redefine matter as something involving consciousness. (See Star Trek: The Next Generation S1 E6; see also @NanoceltTheContrarian.)
I don’t know. But I can assure you that the teacher dined only with the kids and the principal, because we homeschool.
Do tell.
It’d be a long article. I’ve started it once or twice. But it wouldn’t get you superstitious folk past the qualia objections anyway.
Well please fill me in!
If by that you mean that the argument would get past the difficulty of explaining first-person experience by ignoring the very thing to be explained, then, yes, it wouldn’t get me very far.
What if I could argue, along Godel’s lines, that it is not possible to have a first-person experience that explains a first-person experience? That should not
convincesatisfy, of course, but it should permit progress.Oh, man, speaking of progress. I have a question and this is the perfect time to ask it.
Is there any other reasonable argument for the non-materialist view of consciousness besides qualia? For instance, once you get past the ridiculous sentence construction, that’s all Nagel really had.
Nope, just the fact that we (actually I) don’t have a known history of gods that were in existence before so I can’t very well predict anything about the existence of a current god based on that non-experience.
You’re going to have to explain that in a different way. I’m not sure what you’re asking.
Concepts can be directly associated, one-to-many, with neurons. Neurons in cortical layer IV perform a best-of function, that activates layers II-III. Those associate with other columns in other regions, activating those columns. Each active region observes the other active regions. Active columns feed the thalamus, which feeds layer IV. Thalomo-cortical loops keep the whole thing going.
Seriously, it’d be a long article.
I don’t know what you mean. I’m not in the habit of thinking that experience explains experience, whatever exactly that would mean.
I don’t know what you think “qualia” are, but it’s not difficult to make a Nagel argument without even using the term.
This is very confusing. I was asking about what you said, nothing more or less.
What are you talking about? Who’s predicting anything about any gods or G-d?
I thought you were talking about the Meyer argument. But you’re saying things about it that have no connection I can discern to what’s actually in the argument.
My advice is: Go back to the argument, and comment on it without importing any other ideas into it.
My additional advice is: Try and forget about all comparisons to the elephant and spider arguments. They are a different kind of argument–they’re in the opening post for contrast, not for comparison. If you want to compare the Meyer argument to other arguments, look at the arguments about the sinus infection and the mess in the living room; those arguments use the same pattern of reasoning.
“Anything but matter?”
Consciousness and life have something in common: both are phenomena that are difficult to describe concisely, that seem to transcend material existence, and that are in some sense tenuous and fleeting.
But I would be slow to deny an intimate relationship between these phenomena and matter.
As far as I know, we have no evidence — absolutely none — of either life or consciousness existing without matter. More, we know that both life and consciousness, so far as we can perceive them, are dependent on very specific configurations of matter being maintained, and that both life and consciousness quickly become imperceptible — even permanently so — when the matter with which they’re associated is disturbed beyond certain narrow parameters.
Those who posit that consciousness is in some sense independent of matter must still acknowledge that, as far as we know based on evidence, consciousness is complete dependent on those particular configurations of matter. So, at least, it seems necessary to admit that matter (and matter in an appropriate configuration) is a prerequisite, an essential pre-condition, of consciousness, and that consciousness is only observed so long as that configuration of matter is maintained.
There are endless conjectures about consciousness in some sense transcending matter. However, all of the evidence seems to suggest that consciousness is a product of particular narrowly constrained configurations of matter.
My own suspicion is that consciousness is, like life, entirely the product of and dependent on material causes. I’ve certainly seen no evidence to the contrary.
If that’s all it is, then it’s not even the beginning of an explanation. Mental states have been associated with physical things ever since the first human experienced a knock on the head or downed a cup of beer. None of that means mental states are physical things, or are solely caused by them.
That would make a lousy explanation in Descartes’ day, and it makes a lousy explanation now.
If, that is, that’s all you have. But you may have more. I can’t tell:
What sort of observation are we talking about here?
Actually, I affirm the intimate relationship between consciousness and matter.
I deny that they are the same thing, or that one is the sole cause of the other.
Circular reasoning fallacy: That is precisely the issue under dispute.
Do you have evidence of consciousness not dependent on particular configurations of matter? My point is that we have no such evidence. That isn’t circular reasoning, merely an observation. You’re welcome to challenge that observation, that we have no evidence of consciousness absent these particular configurations of matter, but my next question will be “to what evidence are you referring?”
Don’t change the words.
Do I have evidence of consciousness not completely dependent on particular configurations of matter?
Yes, of course I do.
I’m referring to consciousness. I know what consciousness is. I have plenty of the stuff.
I know that it’s nothing like the same kind of thing as a teacup. But if matter produces consciousness, then it actually is the same kind of thing as a teacup.
Let’s try it with an example. I enjoy Tolkien. My love of Tolkien is a thing. It exists.
My teacup also exists. My teacup is, on the materialist account of teacups, nothing but an arrangement of particles and energy. So is my brain.
(That’s the materialist account, mind you, and, it would seem, the only account of either brain or teacup you’ve ever known. I know a better account, but we can save that for later if we need it.)
So we have three things:
–my brain,
–my teacup,
–and my love of Tolkien.
An argument in the Descartes style is simple:
–My love of Tolkien is a completely different kind of thing from my teacup.
–and my brain is entirely the same kind of thing,
–and therefore my love of Tolkien is a completely different kind of thing from my brain.
If we need it, we can do another argument:
–My love of Tolkien is a completely different kind of thing from anything that could be caused by my teacup.
–and my brain is entirely the same kind of thing,
–and therefore my love of Tolkien is a completely different kind of thing anything that could be caused by my teacup.
I suppose that, for each argument, you materialists and materialism-friendly types would dispute the first premise. That’s fine. But you’re wrong, and my evidence is the first premise. I know that premise, whether you know it or not.
All you can have is electrochemical interaction. I have no idea what “observe” means in this context.
See, this kind of thing makes it hard, then I end up not trying. I get the feeling that if I don’t deliver it on a platter with an index, you’ll find nothing in it. No, that isn’t all there is. It’s more than I understand, but I can see the outlines of it. The observation I refer to occurs over the net of afferent and efferent connections of each region.
If you don’t learn how the substrate of consciousness works, you’ll be stuck with projections and guesses. I think Stephen Hawking was right about philosophy in our time, that it has allowed itself to be superseded by knowledge. He was talking about physics, not neuroscience, but the idea holds.
If a philosopher does not learn what is known and available from physical exploration, is he necessarily arguing from ignorance?
No, he’s just arguing while ignorant. But matters not at all if he’s ignorant about one thing and arguing from his knowledge about something else.
That’s what I’m doing. See my previous comment.
As for the supposed materialist account of consciousness you have in mind, if it’s association plus some mysterious unstated something that you don’t fully understand and I don’t understand at all, then I certainly can’t object to the account.
Not that there’s much I can do with it either, other than make a mental note of its existence.
I don’t think you do. I think every instance of consciousness you can cite will be associated with a brain, and all evidence of the continuation of that consciousness will vanish if that brain is sufficiently damaged.
If you have evidence of consciousness outlasting the brain (the matter) associated with it, I would be interested to hear of it. But I don’t think you do, and that was precisely my point.
Hypothetically, so what?
What is at issue is whether the brain is the sole cause of consciousness, not whether consciousness as we know it in this is life always associated with the brain.
Why are you ignoring the arguments I gave?
SA, you have no evidence for your claim that consciousness is independent from the material brain. I have no proof that it is not.
But what we have is the peculiar circumstance that there are no known examples of consciousness independent of the material brain; that consciousness is dependent on the state of that brain; and that even fairly subtle changes to the brain have profound impacts on — right up to the apparent elimination of — that consciousness.
In short, it sure looks like consciousness is a product of brain, and there’s no evidence that it is a product of anything other than brain.
Just out of curiosity, if you think that something other than the brain is responsible for consciousness, do you have a nice, concise description of what that other thing is? And is that thing something the existence of which is itself evident — that is, something for which objective evidence exists?
So I’m not going to pretend to be able to talk like a philosophy major, or that I can split hairs and bend words with that kind of dexterity. I can’t. I’m a pretty linear guy, I tend to think in a straight line, and I have a weakness for the obvious — knowing full well that the obvious isn’t always right.
Maybe “argument from ignorance” isn’t quite the right phrase for it. Maybe “God of the gaps” isn’t quite right either.
But there’s a class of argument that goes something like this:
The natural sciences tells us this about that, and this, and this, but it doesn’t answer this question about that. We’ve been sitting here thinking about it, and we’ve concluded that the natural sciences can’t answer this about that, just can’t. Never mind that we’re talking about something fairly new and cutting edge, cosmology or mental function for example, and never mind that there are various competing hypotheses out there in the natural sciences community. We’re convinced that none of them can be right, and we have this pretty wordy proof that there’s no way science can answer this question, despite how science-y it sounds.
So we are going to tangentially leave the realm of the testable and the provable, assert the existence of an entire universe of meta-physical constructs, entities, rules, or what-have-you. No, we won’t provide actual evidence for that, but we will continue to assert that the failure of science to provide an acceptable explanation leaves us free to invoke this admittedly elaborate untestable alternative, Occam be damned.
I don’t find that class of argument compelling. That doesn’t mean that it leads to the wrong conclusions (though I think it generally does). But I notice that, as our scientific knowledge advances, the leaping-off point for the tangential lunge into metaphysics advances with it, so that the departure from the normal rules of evidence and objective analysis seems always to be, conveniently, right at the frothy edge of the unknown.
Where, frankly, it’s pretty easy to bamboozle most people who, after all, have only a passing interest in or knowledge of the state and track record of the science.
Straw man fallacy, or at least a misunderstanding:
I’m not even saying it’s independent. I’m saying it’s not produced solely by matter.
Yes, I have evidence. I just gave it. See the arguments in # 49.
Yes, it’s mind, which is a non-physical thing. I gave the evidence in # 49.
I’ve read your #49, and think it sophistry — and not particularly good sophistry.
Pain is nothing like the same kind of thing as a teacup. The sensation of warmth is nothing like the same kind of thing as a teacup. The perception of color is nothing like the same kind of thing as a teacup. The anxiety caused by fear is nothing like the same kind of thing as a teacup. And yet we have quite a lot of evidence that these things are the products of biochemistry, both in humans and in animals.
If that’s true, does that mean that the sensation of pain is the same kind of thing as a teacup? Or are you of the view that pain is caused by something other than matter?
That’s not a class of argument. That’s a stream of consciousness.
Why not look at the pretty wordy proof and see what sort of argument it is?
Also, no one ever gives a wordy proof and then asserts says they have no actual evidence for what they just proved!
And then, the most important point: In your final sentence–“No, we won’t provide actual evidence for that, but we will continue to assert that the failure of science to provide an acceptable explanation leaves us free to invoke this admittedly elaborate untestable alternative, Occam be damned.“–you are describing arguments from ignorance.
But who makes an argument from ignorance? Not I. Not Meyer. Not Dembski. Not Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Craig, etc.
So I wonder why the same conclusions about G-d and souls, and the same sort of evidence, are still being given after all these years.
Two arguments with plausible premises that guaranty their respective conclusions are not sophistry, but it may be sophistry to falsely accuse them of such.
Indeed.
So you agree with the first premise of that first argument.
Do you also accept its conclusion–“My love of Tolkien is a completely different kind of thing from my brain”?
Do tell.
And, while you’re at it, why not look at the final argument in # 49. Which premise do you reject?
Yes, in part.