2007-01-31 14:01:34 · 14 answers · asked by drunken pumpkin 6 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
You will hear two different sorts of answers, depending on whether you're talking to a philosopher or a scientist. Amateur philosophers will tell you that "you can't prove a negative." The idea is that you'd have to search the entire universe before you could prove that something does not exist. So if I say "there exists a firebreathing unicorn with forty-seven nostrils" you can't PROVE that it doesn't exist, because you haven't looked everywhere. But, as academic philosophers know, there is a way to prove a negative, to prove that something does NOT exist, and that's to show that the concept is self-contradictory. I KNOW for certain that there are no four-sided triangles anywhere in the universe, and I don't even have to get up from my seat to be sure, because the concept of "triangle" entails the adjective "three-sided."
On the other hand, scientists will usually tell you that you can never confirm a hypothesis, only that you can disconfirm it. It doesn't matter how often you confirm a hypothesis, because it can never acquire the status of complete proof. It can be 99.999999% certain, but not 100%. Whether you call 99.999999% certainty "proof" or not is really just debating about word choice. On the other hand, you CAN disconfirm a hypothesis with only one experiment, provided that the experiment was performed correctly.
2007-01-31 18:42:06 · answer #1 · answered by Leon M 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
the same way youre going to try and prove to me that something DOES exist!
2007-01-31 16:48:49 · answer #2 · answered by jkk k 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
by mathematical induction. First prove that it exists. The prove that the method followed was flawed and so the result was wrong.
2007-01-31 14:09:33 · answer #3 · answered by Sid 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If we could answer that question, people would figure out that there is no god.
There are always people on both sides of the fence who will be throwing you their own answers. Isn't that what this site is for?
Just like whatever drug company has the cure for cancer.... There is no money to be made in the "cure"..... only the fight!
So they keep getting richer as we keep giving them more money to find the cure that they simply say "does not exist".
damn the man!
2007-02-05 08:30:23 · answer #4 · answered by Creepy Uncle Bob 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Thats a hard one.There is no way of proving something does not exist without concrete evidence.
2007-01-31 14:09:21 · answer #5 · answered by darlene100568 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You can't. There is no proof if there is nothing to leave proof. Others would say that the skeptics have nothing to disprove it, so benefit of the doubt. Only a loss of faith in something's existence can rid the belief in it.
2007-01-31 14:09:15 · answer #6 · answered by Somebody Real 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No proof is necessary. It does not exist therefore nothing can be proved.
2007-01-31 15:41:46 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
By proving that sometthing else exists in it's exact space, time and dimension. e.g. The sahara ocean does not exist...
2007-01-31 14:10:54 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You cannot prove anything in the negative
2007-01-31 14:16:40 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You can't.
The fact that there is no physical evidence to prove existence is proof enough that it does not exist.
2007-01-31 14:09:13 · answer #10 · answered by GeneL 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋