At 07:48 AM 7/22/2011, Damon Craig wrote:
"the burden of proof lies with the claimant"
it does?
1) prove it.
2) in having made the burden-of-proof argument, are you obligated to
me to prove it?
3) what is your burden/penalty if you decide not to oblige me?
Arguments like this assume absolutes that aren't, they are
interpretations, sometimes widely supported, which doesn't change
that they are intepretations.
Essentially, "burden" is a social construct, it doesn't exist aside
from human conventions. There is no "burden meter."
So, when there are arguments over this, they can easily boil down to
"My imagined absolute standards are better than your imagined
absolute standards. You are wrong, I'm right. Q.E.D."
This can then take various forms: "My imagined absolute standards are
shared by all right-thinking people. People who do not share these
standards are, by definition, not "right-thinking.'"
Sometimes, the claimant asserts that "The majority support my
position." Sometimes this could be established -- this can be made
into an objective assessment under some conditions -- but often it's
just an assertion, based on the belief of the claimant that his or
her own position is obviously the only reasonable one, and we assume
that the majority are reasonable, right?
Wrong. Not necessarily! Majority opinion is certainly of interest,
but anyone who makes it into an authority has lost the possibility of
moving out of established ideas. The majority, even, may be *usually*
right, but about what?
About usual questions, those they have experience with....
