Argument from silence

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Brian Dean wrote:


> BRIDEAN

> I have been thinking about the argument from silence in reference to

> the problem of why the Romans/Jews did not just simply produce Jesus's

> dead body.

>

> The problem with this is that it seems that sometimes the errantists

> also argues from silence.  An example of this is the Josephus

> reference.  The errantist claims that no one references the Josephus

> quote until the fourth century.  So Polycarp doesn't mention it,

> Origin doesn't mention it, and so forth.  This also seems to me to

> be an argument from silence.  Perhaps these guys simply didn't notice

> what Josephus said.

>


    The argument is most usually known as the argument from ignorance
(Argument Ad Ignorantiam), of which the argument from silence is one
variation.     Oh. where to start. I guess with one of my favorite
illustrations.

    Say we're sitting the living room of my townhouse, just you me and
Credulous. Credulous, as you prepare to stand up says "Watch out for the
elephant!".
    Stunned, you stop where you're at and ask "What elephant?"
    Credulous replies, "The one right in the middle of the room!"
"There's no elephant in the middle of the room. If there were, I'd see
it." you reply.    "Oh yeah?" Credulous rejoinders, "Can you PROVE there's
no elephant? How do you know you're not just suffering from hysterical
blindness?"

    Now in the above situation, with all three of us present, you and I
could quickly come to the conclusion that Credulous was the one suffering
from sensory/perceptual difficulties. So lets change the scenario a bit.

    Let's say a carnival with performing elephants sets up in the swap
meet lot a few blocks over, so we know that there are in fact some
elephants near by.  Suppose I get a phone call at school from Credulous
telling me I have to come home right now because an elephant escaped from
the carnival and while wandering about got scared by something, crashed
into my townhouse and stomped everything in my living room to splinters.
    Rushing home I find - - - -nothing amiss, and conclude Credulous is in
need of professional help.

    There is, ta da, "no evidence" that any elephant has so much as been
near my house, let alone crashed through a wall to get in, stomped on
everything in reach, and left.

    See how the "argument from silence" works here? My townhouse, as much
recent home construction in SoCal, has stuccoed exterior walls. And it's a
few years old. It would be impossible to make an undetectable major repair
to the wall, particularly in the half hour it would take me to get home
from school. Fresh, undried stucco does not look the same as dried stucco.
New dried stucco does not look the same as aged stucco, even if you can
match the brand and color exactly. Finally, there is no way to restore the
interior of the house to the exact condition it was in before. We've been
living here with small kids and a dog now for about ten years, and the
living room furniture (nice durable black vinyl, one of the few battles I
won) is as old as our occupation here. Even though the furniture has held
up well (not that that's why I picked it), there are still battle scars
from small children. It is simply not possible that all the indices of age
could be restored in detail, and particularly not in that half hour.

    But note; these are all "arguments from silence". They are based on
what DIDN'T happen, and on what ISN'T present based on what OUGHT to have
been the case if an elephant indeed had invaded my house.

    Applying this to Polycarp, Origin et al and Josephus's work the
situation is this: there is information in the work of Polycarp, Origin,
and the others that indicates that they used Josephus for some of there
information about events they could not themselves have had any personal
knowledge. They were also "in the business" of making apologetics for
Christianity. If there were information in the copies of Josephus (of
which they seemed to have otherwise been quite familiar) that would have
bolstered their case for Christianity -- like actual references to Christ
-- then it simply exceeds the bounds of credulity that they would not have
used it.

    This is not a deductively certain argument, but then little about
history (if anything) can be known with deductive certainty. It IS
however, a very powerful _inductive_ argument.

    That's all I have time for right now, if anyone has any further
questions post them and I'll try and get to them.

    Ciao.


--
       Michael Fisher, ET1/SS USN ret., law student

 >>NEW->http://www.infidels.org/library/humor/lioaca.html

       http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html

       http://home.aol.com/Mfish6994

        *               *               *

        ". . . a very LONG discussion is one of the most
        effective veils of Fallacy: . . . A Fallacy which
        when stated barely . . . would not deceive a child,
        may deceive half the world if diluted in a quarto
        volume"
               Richard Whately, "Elements of Logic", p. 151

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