How Do You Prove Something Doesn't Exist?

[w1ndscar]

You cant. Just like you cant honestly disprove the lochness monster or bigfoot. You would have to have an army of people searching every square foot of every forest that bigfoots been claimed to be in. Otherwise if he did really exist he could be in that one section no ones at.

 

[[.redacted]]

You can't.

But...

Nigh everything we know about the universe is only a model, a way we explain it which is close to but not entirely the ultimate truth (in the same way as Newton's laws work for nearly everything nearly exactly).

This is relevant because it essentially means that while we can't prove anything, we can deduce the next best thing, and assume that to be true in the meantime.

If we take god, for instance, one can say that due to the lack of solid evidence for it - and the fact that the initial state of the rational mind should be disbelief that is open to conversion

(in any and all situations: it's the same way as you would have to convince someone that your theory for why black holes can evaporate without the outer rim being subject to faster than speed of light travel as the radius decreases is true: the natural standpoint would be to say bullshit.)

as such, the question should not be "how do you prove something does not exist", but instead "shouldn't the burden of proof lie with those who suggest something without evidence".

To wrap this all up and make the start make sense: it is logical that the best model we currently have for explaining the universe is the one we must assume to be correct when it comes to basing decisions off it - for using it as a model to predict outcomes. The natural standpoint is having no theory, we don't come preprogrammed with ideas about the nature of the universe, so if we can prove something we take another step - if we can't, we don't.

[sub]It's been a while since I bothered to post, nice topic.[/sub]

 

[Grand_Arcana]

By the laws of aerodynamics, bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly.

This riddle has already been solved. IIRC, the rapid beating of their wings create a small pocket of high and low pressure providing lift.

The cartoon painted all religious people and their way of thinking in a false and denigrating manner. We're not all Sarah Palin, was what I was trying to say. The direct reply to your post was the part above the Cicero bit, namely regarding the obsolete nature of the idea of a personal god. The analogy is fallacious because religious people (at least the smart ones) don't say that we have a baseball, we say that there might be a baseball around here somewhere, and that looking for it, we might actually tidy up this room a little bit, even if we don't end up actually finding it.

As for your last sentence: is it? Is it really? OF COURSE "God" is a human construct. That's the beautiful thing about Him. The existence of a higher being is contingent upon the notion of a personal god; what literate and educated person actually believes that crap anymore? As said in the other posts, ideas are real because of their consequences. If their belief in God made Michelangelo, Dante, Milton, Francis, Giotto etc do what they did, then that's all I bloody need to worship at His altar.

I can approve of this, but I think most religious people do believe God actually exists, even if they aren't Sarah Palin or the Phelps. I think most religious people are literate but uneducated, or at the very least unwilling to explore the nature of their faith in the same manner that you have. That's the problem with being smart, you think other people are smart as well; they aren't.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Basically, you can't prove something isn't there, just because there is no evidence, which means you can't disprove something, EVER.

unless it's in an established world of fiction or just a hard fact. such as in... say... Inception, throughout the film's screen time there is a moment on screen where Cobb kicks a puppy. That is entirely possible to disprove.

In BioShock you can swim in the ocean, walk to the surface, and drag people back to the ocean. Again, can be disproven.

Things that are "supernatural" cannot be disproved, such as the existence of a God or ghosts, but definitely things in established works can be disproved if people try to deviate from the hard facts.

EDIT: ninja'd

 

[Slanzinger]

Technically if the Universe if infinite then everything that can exist must exist somewhere = P

Except, perhaps, a finite universe.

 

[ThreeWords]

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Basically, you can't prove something isn't there, just because there is no evidence, which means you can't disprove something, EVER.

Proof by contradiction does work.
You can prove that if something did exist (say an immovable object) then it would violate a bunch of established physical rules.
Thereby, something can be proved to be physically impossible.

 

[Jinx_Dragon]

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Basically, you can't prove something isn't there, just because there is no evidence, which means you can't disprove something, EVER.

I disagree.

To test for the absence of something you carry out multiple tests designed to prove the positive. These tests should be varied and definitive, and often carried out in redundancy to ensure the results are accurate. If the result is negative to these tests then you have reasonable proof to the absence of something.

The real question in these cases is: How do we carry out definitive tests for the positive?

My best example for testing a negative is proof I do not carry a child inside of me. By undertake out multiple medical tests, all designed to find the presence of a spawn, and they are negative results then I can clearly say I am NOT pregnant. The fact I am male means the negative results are a very good thing, cause apparently many of the tests in males would find prostate cancer if positive....

Proving the negative, twice over as I don't have spawn or cancer!

Yay.

 

[ImperialSunlight]

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing" - Socrates

Nothing is provable.
As long as we base our knowledge on epistemological evidence and allow society's prejudices to cloud our judgement, truth is nonexistant. However, we have no other realistic, objective way of seeing the world. Therefore, this argument is meaningless. In fact, all arguments are meaningless. Nothing can ever be proven for sure.

 

[Jinx_Dragon]

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing" - Socrates

Nothing is provable.

Damn, now I do need to revive my thoughts on the matter. It is true, nothing can be definitively proved as everything we believe is going to be "proven" false in the future. I would try and argue this point, but all arguments ARE meaningless.

 

[Geekmaster]

Actually, it's the other way around. You need to prove things actually do exist.

If you're really ambitious, you'll also refrain from redunant metaphysical considerations such as if the food you're eating is actually real.

Edit: On the topic of gods, this is especially important. We don't need to disprove them because the theories have no indicators in the first place. It's just speculation to explain unknowns.

 

[dyre]

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing" -Socrates

Nothing is provable.
As long as we base our knowledge on epistemological evidence and allow society's prejudices to cloud our judgement, truth is nonexistant. However, we have no other realistic, objective way of seeing the world. Therefore, this argument is meaningless. In fact, all arguments are meaningless. Nothing can ever be proven for sure.

I exist, and I am conscious.

 

[dfphetteplace]

i've often thought of this and the only possible way i can think of is to meet the person who made said thing up, like in Fable when the Oracle tells you Avo and Skorm don't exist because they were invented by a trader, anyone think of any other way?

The burden of proof lies upon the accuser. If someone states something is real, they need to prove it is real. It is not the responsibility of those that do not believe something to prove it does not exist. Usually when this becomes an argument, those that are stated something exist, but has no proof, will try to do the whole "Well prove it doesn't exist"; or "Well then how can you know anything is real". I just tell them I do not have time for arguments of solipsism.

 

[Genericjim101]

Pretty much this. Empiricism is at odds with the idea over simplified idea of that which cannot be proved cannot be disproved. Edit: Whoops I meant to quote BottleOfAwesome posting the clip of The Boondocks

 

[ImperialSunlight]

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing" -Socrates

Nothing is provable.
As long as we base our knowledge on epistemological evidence and allow society's prejudices to cloud our judgement, truth is nonexistant. However, we have no other realistic, objective way of seeing the world. Therefore, this argument is meaningless. In fact, all arguments are meaningless. Nothing can ever be proven for sure.

I exist, and I am conscious.

The only evidence you can put forth of that is your belief in it. Also, define conscious.

 

[i7omahawki]

i've often thought of this and the only possible way i can think of is to meet the person who made said thing up, like in Fable when the Oracle tells you Avo and Skorm don't exist because they were invented by a trader, anyone think of any other way?

Ah, but the guy who invented them might not know that it is in fact true! So it can't even be proved that way either.

That said, scientifically, if something is unfalsifiable it is incoherant as a scientific theory (see: Freud, God, and metaphysics).

Otherwise, you'll just have to travel the entire universe, for every second of its existence, and observe that the thing is absent...short of that, you can only rationally conclude that it is improbable that such a thing exists, and move on with your life .

 

[let's rock]

Find a video or quote of a lawer or politicion saying it does

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Well you can't really prove that it doesn't exist, but you can eliminate any evidence that it does. While a lack of evidence may not disprove it's existence perfectly, it does a good job of putting others in doubt about it.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

You can't.

The closest you can get to doing so would be to logically excluding it, like how since dogs are mammels, it's logically impossible that there is a dog that is a fish.

The issue is that even in those cases it's not 100%. (One could argue that a dog IS a fish, as there is no clear line that seperates a fish from a tetrapod, or a teterapod from a amphibian, or a a amphibian from a reptilomorph, etc)

Even saying that a triangle must always have internal angles equaling 180 degress isn't necessarily true.

 

[dyre]

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing" -Socrates

Nothing is provable.
As long as we base our knowledge on epistemological evidence and allow society's prejudices to cloud our judgement, truth is nonexistant. However, we have no other realistic, objective way of seeing the world. Therefore, this argument is meaningless. In fact, all arguments are meaningless. Nothing can ever be proven for sure.

I exist, and I am conscious.

The only evidence you can put forth of that is your belief in it. Also, define conscious.

nah, it's self-evident. If I did not exist, I could not believe I existed. If I were not conscious, I could not believe I were conscious. It's the ever-popular cogito ergo sum

Conscious meaning aware, so I'm not a thoughtless rock.

 

[DracoSuave]

Things can be disproved. All it takes to prove something does not exist is to disprove the possibility of its existance.

Proving the existance of something is actually much harder.

But then, not everything can be proven, nor disproven, and in some cases, it's impossible to know if something is unprovable or undisprovable. Godol's Law.