Uncle Flo (imported) wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2011 4:53 pm I see the possibility that instead of a drive to believe in a supreme being that and the desire to believe in space aliens (or whatever other mysterious beings one may believe in) are both manifestations of a drive to reject finite limits - ie: this can not be all there is, there must be something else. --FLO--

Life after death, perhaps? Or that death is not the end of consciousness?

morganster (imported) wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2011 6:10 pm Life after death, perhaps? Or that death is not the end of consciousness?

That would seem to fit the pattern. --FLO--

morganster (imported) wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2011 11:10 pm Ok, I will support my argument: The SETI project (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) has been canceled for lack of results. "SETI has also occasionally been the target of criticism by those who suggest that it is a form of pseudoscience. In particular, critics allege that no observed phenomena suggest the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, and furthermore that the assertion of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence has no good Popperian criteria for falsifiability." (source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 1316a.html)

Will that do? Now it's your turn. Provide some evidence that life exists elsewhere than the Earth please, I'm all ears. Mine is not a 'statement of faith'. My statement adheres to the scientific principle that any hypothesis (e.g. life exists elsewhere than the Earth) must be considered speculative at best until evidence for it is provided.

You are under no obligation to prove any number of speculative things, like the existence of God for example, but if you believe such things without evidence, it is you who are immersed in faith, not me.

And your statement that "

transward (imported) wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2011 1:04 am The lack of evidence for the existence of alien lif

morganster (imported) wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2011 11:10 pm e is not evidence for the non existence thereof

", is simply wrong. Absent evidence of 'A', not-'A' must be assumed until evidence of 'A' emerges or is discovered. For example, lack of evidence f

or 'A' having committed murder results in 'A's acquittal.

You perplex me. You seem incapable of logic, yet you throw in references to Karl Popper. If you can follow Popper's arguments then you know that your conclusions and reasoning are preposterous and are putting us on. And if you are incapable of logic, arguing is probably futile. But I will try one more time.

Your entire argument is a text book example of the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle or False Dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

A false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice, black and white thinking or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses) is a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options.

False dilemma can arise intentionally, when fallacy is used in an attempt to force a choice ("If you are not with us, you are against us.") But the fallacy can also arise simply by accidental omission of additional options rather than by deliberate deception (e.g., "I thought we were friends, but all my friends were at my apartment last night and you weren't there.")..... Similarly, when two alternatives are presented, they are often, though not always, two extreme points on some spectrum of possibilities. This can lend credence to the larger argument by giving the impression that the options are mutually exclusive, even though they need not be. Furthermore, the options in false dichotomies are typically presented as being collectively exhaustive, in which case the fallacy can be overcome, or at least weakened, by considering other possibilities, or perhaps by considering a whole spectrum of possibilities, as in fuzzy logic.

You propose only two alternatives. Either alien life is proved to exist or it is proved to not exist. Either A or not-A. But you ignore the alternatives. The analogy you

morganster (imported) wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2011 11:10 pm cite in support of your position illustrates the problem.

Absent evidence of 'A', not-'A' must be assumed until evidence of 'A' emerges or is discovered. For example, lack of evidence f

or 'A' having committed murder results in 'A's acquittal. But an acquittal is not the same as being proved innocent. This is clearly illustrated in European courts where juries can return three possible verdicts, proved guilty, proved innocent and not proved. In the US the not guilty verdicts includes both the innocent and the not proved verdicts. But the lack of evidence of murder is not the same thing as evidence of innocence. If "Alien life exists" is "A" then "not-A" is not "Alien life does not exist." "Not-A" is the set combining "Alien life does not exist" plus "Alien life exists, but we have no evidence of it" Without experimental evidence we have absolutely no way of distinguishing between the two cases and your assertion that you have proved the first is ridiculous, and we are under no obligation to supply evidence of the existence of alien life to refute you. We need only show that y

morganster (imported) wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2011 11:37 pm ou cannot draw the conclusion you do, f

rom the evidence you supply.

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith Definition

morganster (imported) wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2011 11:37 pm of FAITH b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof

You have stated the firm belief that life exists nowhere else in the universe. Y

ou have no proof one way or another. Your statement is based on faith. QED

I just thought of a compromise assertion that might cool this debate:

"Life exists nowhere else in the universe except here on Earth as far as we know."

Absent some new evidence one way or the other, I have little interest in the debate, beyond insisting that if you are going to argue that you be willing to follow the dictates of logic. I just find it amazing that you can make a statement about the conditions on the other side of the universe without the slightest evidence, without bothering to go to the far side of the universe to see if there is any life there, and call your opinion scientific.

Transward

Transward

transward (imported) wrote: Sun Jan 09, 2011 1:40 am You perplex me. You seem incapable of logic, yet you throw in references to Karl Popper. If you can follow Popper's arguments then you know that your conclusions and reasoning are preposterous and are putting us on. And if you are incapable of logic, arguing is probably futile. But I will try one more time.

Your entire argument is a text book example of the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle or False Dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

You propose only two alternatives. Either alien life is proved to exist or it is proved to not exist. Either A or not-A. But you ignore the alternatives. The analogy you

cite in support of your position illustrates the problem

transward (imported) wrote: Sun Jan 09, 2011 1:40 am . But an acquittal is not the same as being proved innocent. This is clearly illustrated in European courts where juries can return three possible verdicts, proved guilty, proved innocent and not proved. In the US the not guilty verdicts includes both the innocent and the not proved verdicts. But the lack of evidence of murder is not the same thing as evidence of innocence. If "Alien life exists" is "A" then "not-A" is not "Alien life does not exist." "Not-A" is the set combining "Alien life does not exist" plus "Alien life exists, but we have no evidence of it" Without experimental evidence we have absolutely no way of distinguishing between the two cases and your assertion that you have proved the first is ridiculous, and we are under no obligation to supply evidence of the existence of alien life to refute you. We need only show that y

ou cannot draw the conclusion you do, from the evidence you supply.

You have stated the firm belief that l

transward (imported) wrote: Sun Jan 09, 2011 1:40 am

morganster (imported) wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2011 11:37 pm ife exists nowhere else in the universe.

You have no proof one way or another. Your statement is based on faith. QED

Absent some new evidence one way or the other, I have little interest in the debate, beyond insisting that if you are going to argue that you be willing to follow the dictates of logic. I just find it amazing that you can make a statement about the conditions on the other side of the universe without the slightest evidence, without bothering to go to the far side of the universe to see if there is any life ther

e, and call your opinion scientific.

Transward

Transward

Hey Transward, can the personal attacks Ok? I will graciously overlook those for the moment, but there's another way to support my proposition for those who don't buy into the need to provide actual evidence of something before they believe in it.

Alien life does not exist because there is no practical way to verify its existence. There are unlimited things that might be true but we'll never know. I used the 'beam me up' analogy in a previous post because that's another example of the same kind of magical thinking as alien life forms, both ideas foisted on our culture by Star Trek movies and their ilk. The notion that you could deconstruct a material object, let alone a human being, convert it to photons or whatever and reconstruct it at another location in its prior form carries fantasy to the level of absurdity. Yet it might be possible so lets cling to the idea because its fun!

The existence of alien life is similarly impractical and fantastic because we have no way of verifying it. There certainly is no life in this solar system except on Earth and the nearest bodies that MIGHT harbor life are too far away to examine. If we sent a message to Betelgeuse, for example, it would take 650 years (approximately Gareth) to get there and 650 years to get the answer assuming they answered right away. That's 1300 years! Who's going to send such a message and who's going to wait around for the answer? Ridiculous!

So in every practical sense of the word 'verifiable' and every practical sense of the word 'existence', alien life does not exist. If you're going to tell me that micro-life might exist closer to home (e.g. on Mars etc.) then that too is impractical to verify because we'd have to go there and look for it. And we have neither the time nor the budget to do that.

Ergo (or QED?) we are in every practical sense alone.

PS - you've got the definition of 'faith' backward. Faith is belief without evidence to support it. Your belief in alien life is therefore 'faith'. My lack of belief in it is lack of 'faith'. I win, you lose, on that point at least.

gareth19 (imported) wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2011 4:08 am That's the equivalent of saying that the the Universe only exists in front of my face as far as I know. The Logical Positivists are relics from the last century.

So you are what, ten years old? Logical positivism may be discredited within the field of philosophy but philosophy itself is discredited within the fields of science. From a scientific perspective, philosophy equates to the reading of tea leaves, just so many academic airheads sifting though the detritus of their own minds looking for the 'truth'.

As Uncle Flo points out, science does not have the means to verify the existence of alien life, and philosophy can only speculate about anything. So I feel quite safe, as well as justified, in asserting that alien life does not exist. If it does exist it does so only in the realm of the the imagination (like beaming somebody up) and is therefore of no practical consequence.

Our inability to prove the existence of alien life in the Universe doesn't mean it does or does not exist. All it says is that we don't currently have the means to prove it one way or the other. And, we may never have that ability.

To use your logic, we could have - until recently - said that atoms and electrons don't exist, because we didn't have any means of detecting them.

I'm not one that believes Earth has ever been visited by aliens in space ships. The distances are too great, and it is improbable that anyone would have undertaken such a trip, unless travel in excess of the speed of light is possible, and I don't believe it is.

I think it is possible Earth has been seeded with "life" or the components of life through being bombarded by comets, and I think we may find that "life," although not intelligent life, exists in our solar system.

If everyone said, "I don't see it; therefore, it doesn't exist," scientific theory would have died out a long time ago.

I will agree that the existence of intelligent life is probably of no consequence; because I don't believe we will ever make contact with them. The distances are too great, no warp speed or folding of space being possible, in my opinion.

BossTamsin (imported) wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2011 4:30 am Hmm.... According to some aspects of quantum physics, he may be right. I'm willing to accept his assertion, with the hopes that he is willing to reconsider his position should information change.

No, you misunderstand the significance of Schroedinger's cat; the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal has nothing to do with the solipcism of the Logical Positivists and has to do with the the variability of quantum states and their linkages. If a particle disintegrates into a particle and anti-particle pair, their spins (and other properties) are linked to each other, but those properties cannot be identified until they are measured so the measurement of one implies the measurement of the other, so until the measurements are taken the quantum states are indeterminate. That is quite different from the Logical Positivists' claims that the sheep are only shorn on the side visible to the viewer and that inferring that the sheep even have another side is an unscientific act of faith. The physicists' claims are based on knowledge; the Logical Positivists' claims are based on a failure to know what knowledge is, a naive view that knowledge consists solely of observation and must be either analytic or be synthetic a posteriori and that synthetic a priori knowledge is impossible.

morganster (imported) wrote: Sun Jan 09, 2011 11:00 am Hey Transward, can the personal attacks Ok? I will g

morganster (imported) wrote: Sun Jan 09, 2011 2:40 pm raciously overlook those for the

moment,

Then

So you are what, ten years old?

Sounds like the kettle calling the pot black to me.

So which is it????

I think I have seen enough on this.

River