Miracles and Burden of Proof

0.  I continue my investigation of the role of burden-of-proof considerations in philosophy.  My ruminations are collected in the aptly titled category, Burden of Proof.

1. Consider a dispute in which one party claims that there are miracles and the other claims that there are no miracles.  Where does the burden of proof (BOP) lie?  I am open to the suggestion that both claimants incur an obligation to defend their claims if challenged, simply on the ground of having made a claim or advanced a thesis that cannot count as self-evident or foundational in the way in which the Law of Non-Contradiction is foundational.    But if both have an obligation (dialectical if not moral) to defend their respective claims if challenged, on pain of being deemed unreasonable if they refuse to do so, that is not to say that both shoulder a burden of proof (BOP).  For if I maintain that p and you maintain that ~p, and each of us has a burden of proof, then, given the correlativity of BOP and defeasible presumption (DP) lately explained, there is a defeasible presumption in favor of both p and ~p in the dialectical situation in which we confront each other -- and that is absurd.  In the context of a proceeding wherein the goal is to settle whether a proposition or its negation are true it cannot be provisionally assumed both that the proposition and its negation are true.

So we need to distinguish between the (dialectical if not moral) obligation to defend one's assertions, an obligation one incurs whether one asserts or counter-asserts, and burden of proof.  Thus we talk of the burden of proof in a dialectical proceeding.  It presses down on one interlocutor or the other, but not both, if it presses down on either.

What I want to resist, however, is the notion that there is a fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies.  I want to suggest that there is no context-independent fact as to which side shoulders the BOP.  As a consequence, arguing about where the BOP lies in philosophical debates is as pointless and out-of-place as arguing in a court of law whether the BOP is on the prosecution/plaintiff or on the defense.  That the onus probandi lies on the former is constitutive of the courtroom 'game,' at least in the Anglosphere.  As constitutive, it is not up for grabs in the legal context.

2. Some think that whoever who makes a positive claim assumes a BOP.  But we should beware of the ambiguity of 'positive claim.'  Are we referring to the content of a claim, or the claiming of the content?  Are we talking logic or dialectics?   'There are miracles' is logically affirmative while 'There are no miracles' is logically negative.  And this quite apart from the dialectical situation in which alone it is appropriate to speak of presumptions and probative burdens.  The propositions expressed by those sentences are the contents of the respective claims or assertions.  But both the miracle-affirmer and the miracle-denier are making a positive claim in that they are both positively claiming something.  A counter-assertion is just as much of an assertion as an assertion.

If one makes a claim (advances a thesis, asserts something, etc.), then one does so regardless of whether the content of the claim is logically affirmative or logically negative.  So why should the onus probandi rest  on the one who asserts that there are miracles and not on the one who asserts the opposite?  Since both make a claim, both reasonably incur the obligation to defend the claim if challenged.  I am not assuming dialectical egalitarianism according to which, as Michael Rescorla puts it, "every asserted proposition requires defence when challenged by an interlocutor."  There may be propositions that need no defense.  I am only assuming that the propositions we are discussing can both be reasonably challenged.

3. One cannot therefore in general hold that only those who make assertions the content of which is logically affirmative  assume a burden of proof.  This may also be appreciated from the fact that some logically negative propositions entail logically affirmative ones.  If there are no miracles, then there are no violations/suspensions of natural causal laws.  If there are no such violations, then nature is a causally closed system into which nothing enters and nothing escapes.  But 'Nature is causally closed' is logically affirmative.  The naturalist who claims that there are no miracles is also committed to claiming that nature is causally closed.  Clearly, if he bears a burden of proof with respect to the latter proposition then he bears it with respect to the former one as well.

4. So where does the BOP lie if it doesn't lie on the one the content of whose assertion is logically affirmative?  Does it lie on the one who calls into question received opinion?  That cannot be right either, enshrining as it does an extreme inquiry-inimical doxastic conservatism.   The way 'burden of proof' is standardly used, the BOP lies on one party or the other but not both.  But I fail to see why in the miracle case or any other it rests on one side rather than the other.  I suggest, in line with what I maintained day before yesterday, that there is no fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies.  It is a matter of decision, if not by an individual, then by a community.

5. So let's consider the scientific community.  The members of this community are bound together by common goals and methods.  The 'game' of natural science is played according to game-constitutive rules.  One of these rules is that in natural science there can be no appeal to anything supernatural: everything that science explains -- everything in nature -- is to be explained using only other 'stuff' in nature, smaller 'stuff,' earlier 'stuff.'  Thus the tides are explained in terms of the moon and its gravitational effect; earthquakes in terms of tectonic plate shifts; diseases in terms of viruses, etc.

For one who plays the scientific 'game' and abides by its rules, there is no question but that the burden of proof lies on the one who asserts that there are miracles.  No scientist worth his salt could hold that there is a presumption in favor of the existence of miracles.  It is the other way around: there is an exceedingly strong, if not quite indefeasible, presumption in favor of their nonexistence, and indeed of the nonexistence of anything nonnatural.  But this onus-assignment is relative to the scientific 'game' and partially constitutive of it. 

6.  My point, then, is that BOP-assignments are context- and community-relative and depend on conventions that members of these communities collectively adopt.  In the legal context the BOP is on the prosecution while in the science arena, where methodological naturalism rules, the BOP is on anti-naturalists: those who defend miracles, the existence of God and the soul, the libertarian freedom of the will, etc.  But the science 'game' is not the only game in town.  There is the religious 'game.'  No one who takes the latter seriously could possibly think that science delivers the ultimate metaphysical low-down.  Relative to the religious 'game,' the BOP will be on atheists.

And then there is the moral 'game.'  Most of us play it: we think in moral categories and we cannot imagine not thinking in them.  We speak of right and wrong, good and evil; we hold ourselves and others morally and not just causally responsible for what we do and leave undone.  We judge and we are prepared to be judged.  We praise, we blame, we distinguish among the impermissible, the permissible, the obligatory, and the supererogatory.  We subject our thoughts, words, deeds, institutions and laws to moral evaluation.  Committed as we are to moral responsibility, we are committed to the freedom of the will.  So, from within the moral 'game,' it is clear that there is a presumption in favor of the freedom of the will so that the burden of proof lies squarely and nonnegotiably on the shoulders of those who would deny it.

My suggestion is that it makes no sense to ask where the BOP really lies, on, say, the moralist or on the one who holds that morality and its presuppositions (freedom of the will, etc.) are illusory and without standing in a physical world.  The moral way of thinking brings with it a presumption in favor of the reality of its categories, a presumption which, if defeasible, is just barely so.  The scientistic way of thinking brings with it an opposite presumption.

 So instead of arguing the procedural question as to who has the BOP in a philosophical dispute one should simply get to work and make one's case.

Comments

[Edward Ockham]

Bill: You say that there is no (context-independent ) fact of the matter as to where the burden of proof lies. But consider what Martin Gardner writes (In the classic Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science). He says

"If someone announces that the moon is made of green cheese, the professional astronomer cannot be expected to climb down from his telescope and write a detailed refutation. “A fairly complete textbook of physics would be only part of the answer to Velikovsky,” writes Prof. Laurence J. Lafleur, in his excellent article on “Cranks and Scientists” (Scientific Monthly, Nov., 1951), “'and it is therefore not surprising that the scientist does not find the undertaking worth while.'”

I take him to mean that there is no BOP on the professional astronomer to write a detailed refutation of the thesis that the moon is made of green cheese: he cannot be 'expected' to do so. That would seem to be a 'context-independent' fact of the matter (but I don't entirely follow your 'context-independent').

I have some thoughts on this, particularly regarding the definition of 'miracle', 'supernatural' and cognate concepts, that I would like to share later. For starters I would question whether such terms signify an essence. Is there any such kind of thing as a miracle, or a supernatural event? How would they be differentiated from 'ordinary' events? Does a supernatural event violate 'laws of nature'? Exactly how, on the assumption that there are, or could be such events?

[Edward Ockham]

Following up. I claim that miracles have no essence or nature. The only plausible candidate – an exception to some law of nature – is a self-contradictory one. However, claims to the miraculous do certainly have an essence. Consider the parallel case of get rich quick schemes. Define “genuine get rich quick scheme” as a scheme which if systematically followed will give a high certainty of great riches, with very little effort. Do such schemes, if they exist, have an essence, a nature? I suggest not. I discount any scheme that gets you rich by chance - e.g. buying property on a leveraged basis, which would have made you a lot of money in the first half of the 2000s, but lost you just as much in the latter half, which does not satisfy the ‘high certainty’ criterion. Leaving out mere chance, logic suggests that any obvious scheme for getting rich quickly would (via the definition of obvious) have been spotted by many people, and thus everyone would already be rich, which is false. Or the method would not be obvious at all – I concede that such methods may exist, but they have no inherent nature, but rather have the relational property, relative to human nature, of lacking obviousness.

On the other hand, claims about such schemes do tend to follow a predictable pattern. I am often mailed, or read about, schemes that allow for easy money. I often get emails that suggest very plausible methods, usually beginning with a story about someone who has just died, leaving a large amount of money in a swiss bank account, and would I like to help acquire this money in return for a significant share of it? The stories are indeed plausible, but I reason that a genuine get rich quick scheme is best kept secret, and the fact that I am on a mass mailing list about a secret suggests that it is inauthentic.

I just found another interesting type which I won’t link to here in case it attracts unwanted attention. It begins by warning the investor about some of the appalling schemes that are purveyed on the Internet, with an analysis of what is wrong with each of them. It ends up with, wait, a promise of Ultimate Internet Riches. This tactic is wonderful – it presents the author as genuine, indeed as a victim for whose plight we may have sympathy. By the end of it, you are really trusting him and ready to hand over your cash. But of course, that is all part of the ‘essence’ of such schemes.

In conclusion. ‘Genuine get rich quick schemes’ have no nature, no essence. Rather, we characterise them by the form of the claim that is made, and the possible motives for making it. Can we not say the same of claims about the supernatural, bogus science, and so on?

Turning to the burden of proof bit, all such emails and letters go immediately into my ‘delete’ box. What about you?

[Bill Vallicella]

Edward,

The astronomer is under no obligation to refute the green-cheeser or Velikovsky. But note that the prof. astronomer and the green-cheeser (or the flat-earther, etc.) do not enter into debate, and so the question of who has the BOP does not arise.

BOP considerations arise in dialectical situations in which interlocutors take each other seriously and engage each other. For example, McInerny versus Parsons debating the ex. of God. Each of these men think the BOP is on the other. They think there is a fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies. I am questioning whether there is any sense to the idea that there is a fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies when two worldviews as different as theism and atheism are in collision.

[Vinny]

I am never quite sure why "burden of proof" is relevant in philosophy or history or any other academic field. In a court of law, it is necessary to place the burden of proof on one of the parties because the jury does not have the option of returning a verdict of "we don't know." Therefore, the burden of proof gives a means of deciding cases where the evidence is insufficient or too evenly balanced to assess the probability of one side as any higher than the other.

When we played pick-up baseball games as kids, after we tired of arguing about whether the base runner was safe or out, someone would invoke the "tie goes to the runner" rule, which served a similar purpose to burden of proof.

In any scholarly inquiry, on the other hand, agnosticism should be permissible so I'm not quite sure why burden of proof is an issue other than the fact that one side or the other wishes to declare themselves the winner even though they cannot demonstrate the superiority of their position.

[Bill Vallicella]

I agree that get rich quick schemes have no nature, but that claims on their behalf do.

I don't want to talk about miracles now but about BOP. See my Miracles category: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/miracles/

If A says that there have been miracles, e.g., the parting of the Red Sea described in Exodus, and B denies it, can it be reasonably assumed that there is an objective fact as to where the BOP lies? That's my question.

You understand that the question is not whether, objectively, there are miracles or there aren't. That question receives an affirmative answer. The question is whether, independently of the religionist's conceptual scheme and the naturalist's conceptual scheme, it is objectively the case that the BOP lies on one side or the other.

[Bill Vallicella]

Vinny,

I agree with what you say. You are right to point out that in a court of law a decision has to be made and that is why a BOP has to be assigned. That it is assigned to the plaintiff/prosecutor reflects the judgment that it is better for a guilty man to go free than for an innocent man to be incarcerated or executed.

[Edward Ockham]

I see where you are coming from, and I hadn’t fully appreciated the sidewind introduced by “interlocutors take each other seriously and engage each other”. But I am not sure that is always the case that interlocutors take each other seriously. There are many cases where you need to argue it out, not because you remotely take the other side seriously, but because their arguments are plausible-sounding enough that other people might. Perhaps you might want to show, to all parties, that the arguments are not very good ones at all, and that the ‘burden of proof’ is to provide a decent one. William Craig is a peeve of mine in this respect. I find his arguments altogether fatuous and inconclusive. But their form appears substantial, and I fear many will be taken in by his arguments. Thus, although I do not take him seriously at all, I would certainly debate with him.

[Bill Vallicella]

Suppose we delete 'take each other seriously,' leaving 'engage each other.' Then I can say that BOP comes in only when people agree to debate. No physicist will debate a green-cheeser or a flat-earther, and so BOP does not come in here. But a biologist like Dawkins will debate a theist not because he has any shred of respect for the theist's position but because he believes theism to be extremely pernicious and widely accepted by influential people. So I take your point.

I would be interested in hearing which arguments of William Lane Craig offend you the most.

[Edward Ockham]

I have some thoughts here on what a ‘nominalistic’ account of the miraculous and the nonnatural would look like. This develops Ockham’s idea that some distinctions or classifications are not real, but only verbal.

On burden of proof (BOP), is your post here meant to be relevant?

On Craig, I would have to look at my notes (I studied one of his papers for my theology diploma but that was more than 5 years ago).

[Bill Vallicella]

The relevance of Barry Mann's delightful hit from 1961 should be obvious to any clear-thinking person.

I didn't know you had a theology degree. We'be been in contact for five years or so; I'm surprised you never revealed your theological studies. What was your motivation, and what is the exact title of your degree?

I will now look at your post on the miraculous.