January 1, 2020
What Is the Burden of Proof in Philosophy
In philosophy, the burden of proof refers to the obligation of someone to provide evidence for an argument. In simple terms, when you and I have a philosophical disagreement, the burden of proof dictates whether it’s me or you who has to prove their position.
Now, this might sound a bit odd. “Surely”, you might say, “we both need to prove our point, isn’t that how philosophy works?”
Not quite.
Recall the post on the only game in town fallacy. If our philosophical argument is whether there are invisible, undetectable pink unicorns flying over the house (as, let’s assume, you might argue), it makes a heck of a difference whether it’s you who has to prove there are or me who has to prove there aren’t.
The burden of proof is basically the philosophical rules of engagement. The burden of proof decides who has to prove what in such arguments. Of course, as it becomes apparent, things get complex (and ugly) quickly, because there is often disagreement as to who has the burden of proof.
The Burden of Proof as Philosophical Rules of Engagement
Philosophy, in its ideal form, is to seek the truth. In order for this truth to emerge during an argument, certain rules have to be observed.
Of course, in realistic, non-ideal contexts, people are less interested in the truth and more interested in arguing for the truth. In other words, people often want to be right, not to learn. That’s why there are so many fallacies out there.
Accidental Versus Deliberate Fallacies
Sometimes a fallacy can be innocent, in the sense that the person committing it doesn’t do it deliberately. That is, the person might argue their position poorly, committing a fallacy, out of ignorance. The bandwagon fallacy could be an example.
On the other hand, there are clear cases where a person knowingly commits a fallacy in order to improve their argumentative position. Ad hominem attacks, such as the appeal to hypocrisy fallacy, are a good example.
We need philosophical rules of engagement to be able to clearly indicate whether one’s argument gets us closer to the truth or further away from it.
Why Deciding on the Burden of Proof Is Important
Let’s get back to the unicorn example. It can help us better visualize the dynamics involved.
You put forward the following argument: “I argue there are invisible, inaudible, and otherwise undetectable pink unicorns flying over our heads all the time.”
I disagree, and argue that no, there is no such thing.
In order to get to the truth of the matter (are there such creatures or not) we need to establish who needs to prove their position. Do I need to prove that there aren’t, or do you need to prove that there are?
This case is pretty self-evident. It goes without saying that the person putting forward the argument for the existence of such creatures (“you”, in the example) needs to provide evidence. How could one (“I”, in the example) prove that something doesn’t exist?
Consider the following example, similar to the one above.
Person A: I argue there are black elephants hidden in some clouds.
Person B: I argue that there aren’t.
Now, do this: Substitute black elephants with absolutely anything you want: silver rocks, azure cats, or green sparrows. Would person B need to take every possible suggestion put forward and prove they do not exist? That would be ludicrous.
Falsifiability: from Azure Cats to Black Swans
A perceptive reader here would suggest taking a look – say, using binoculars from a helicopter. Surely, that would settle the matter, right? It would, but only if we saw black elephants (or azure cats, or whatever we were looking for).
In other words, taking a look implies an attempt to prove by presence. If we saw a black elephant there, the matter would have been settled and person A would have won the argument.
However, this clearly indicates the burden of proof must be placed on person A. Otherwise, if no elephants were seen, person B could not claim victory, as person A would offer some ad hoc explanation. For instance, they could claim there were no elephants in that cloud, but there were in others. Would, then, person B be obliged to visit every single cloud in the atmosphere to prove that there weren’t any elephants hidden there?
The importance of this lies in understanding something I would refer to as a “default position”. We could conceive of this default position as an assumption we currently share about truth and the world – based on past observations, intuition, etc.
It is a default position that there are no black elephants hiding in clouds. “All swans are white” used to be a default position, until actual black swans were observed. Today, the existence of black (and white) swans is a default position because scientific observation has proved they exist.
“All swans are white” is a falsifiable proposition. Seeing a single non-white swan is enough to settle the matter – the way seeing a single elephant in a cloud would also be enough.
But we need to be careful.
Falsifiability is Helpful, if You Know how to Play with It
The proposition “There are no elephants in any clouds” is falsifiable for the reasons we saw just above. Seeing a single elephant in any given cloud would falsify the proposition.
Now, consider the proposition “There are elephants in some clouds”. This proposition is not falsifiable. As I explained further above, all kinds of ad hoc explanations would be given. “There were no elephants in this cloud, but there are in others”.
Back to the swans, we saw how the statement “All swans are white” is falsifiable. But how about “In some areas, there are only white swans”? Unless we specified the area (say, “In this lake, at the present moment, there are only white swans on the surface of the water”), it’s impossible to go about falsifying it.
What It All Means
All this links back to the burden of proof. In simple words, whenever you claim something away from the default position, you need to provide evidence. You have the burden of proof.
Moreover, in order for the argument to be solid, it must be presented in a properly falsifiable way. If you argue that there are undetectable unicorns over the house, it is impossible for me to prove that there aren’t.
Of course, things are never easy. There are complications. The most typical problem is when people disagree about who has the burden of proof. Even without any bad intentions involved – that is, even when people genuinely try to discover the truth – the placement of the burden of proof is not as clear-cut as in the examples we saw. The situation only gets more complicated when the other party puts ideology rather than facts first.
It’s really difficult to wake up someone who pretends to be asleep!
5 Comments
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Good article, Chris, but seems pretty obvious to me. A related topic is covered in my blog: “What is, and how to find, truth?”
See at https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/14303308-what-is-and-how-to-find-truth
Interesting post, Francis. Thanks for sharing!
PS. On rereading my blog it seems that it contradicts your blog on “burden of proof” but it doesn’t. The important word in my definition of Truth is ‘plausible’. This obviously doesn’t include pink unicorns. I was also talking about ‘my truth’ as opposed to ‘objective proof’ (if there is such a thing). Ptolemy and his epicycles come to mind. It was a plausible truth until it wasn’t any more. In my opinion we can only talk about ‘subjective’ or ‘personal’ truth because in a practically infinite universe anything and its exact opposite cmay turn out to be true. As I wrote ion my “Humane Physics” book:, in the “Science and Religion” chapter:
“Bottom line: am I an atheist? If the word ‘atheist’ means that I am absolutely certain, beyond even a shadow of a doubt that there is no such thing as a ‘god’, then I am not an atheist. No self-respecting scientist can be 100% certain of anything in the universe. Only probabilities exist in science and I admit, for lack of evidence to the contrary, that I assign an extremely low probability to the idea of a creator.
However, nothing is proven one way or another. Yes, the universe could have been created by a god or any number of gods. Life and evolution could have been started on Earth by an alien culture of superhuman power and we would not know anything about it.
However, all the established religions with which I am familiar are so obviously man-made that I find it difficult to believe that anyone could take any of them seriously. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu said: “If triangles had a god, he would have three sides”.
“
You’re posing some great questions, hinting at some interesting epistemological problems. In the next couple of months I plan to publish a couple of relevant posts, but for the time being here’s an interesting paradox of sorts. It was presented by Edmund Gettier:
Source
As I am working on the Quantum Physics chapter of the second volume of my Physics, that I am going to title “Epicycle Physics”, I have come to the realization that everybody cheats, if only a little. Even Niels Bohr, who presented the first ‘proof’ of his atomic model by applying his theory to the observed experimental fact of the hydrogen spectrum. The result was in practically perfect agreement with the observation.. Q.E.D.
However, reading his biography I discovered that he fashioned his theory and calculations to agree with the observation of the hydrogen spectrum. This doesn’t make his theory false and, indeed, science often works this way: You know the facts and search around to find a theory to match the observations. Nothing wrong with this and it often leads to a helpful theory that can be applied to real world phenomena and can agree, for a very long time, with the predicted results.
Is it, though, the final, ‘objective’ truth? It wasn’t in Ptolemy’s case, even though it ‘worked’ for a thousand years. In the case of quantum theory, the jury is still out on that (with Einstein as the jury’s foreman)