AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - A model of the brain, & quick-switch

wrote:
wrote:
Mark DeBellis wrote:

Do you mean we'd need evidence in order to have reason to look at
whether the paradigm is limited, or we'd need evidence in order to
decide that it is in fact limited?

The former, and it is up to you to supply that evidence, if you think
the theory is incorrect.

What you seem to mean by that statement is that you personally won't
change your mind until someone else supplies you with some new
evidence, and that you aren't interested in criticisms of your methods.
Mark and I are perfectly free to discuss the limitations in your
methods from a more introspective or philosophic point of view, whether
or not we happen to be independently wealthy people who have the
resources to conduct large-scale experiments.

You're perfectly free to say anything you please. And I'm perfectly
free to point out its pseudoscientific character. Discussing the
"limitation in your methods," while offering no evidence that such
limitations exist, is pseudoscience. Offering evidence of those
limitations would be science, but that's not what you're doing.

If the former, that sure looks
circular. Isn't Mike's point that the reason why we haven't seen
countervailing evidence is that it hasn't sufficiently been probed for?

In other words, we cling to the theory that elephants can't fly because
we haven't expended the effort to find elephants that can fly.

It is more like you have decided there is one way to find out if
elephants can fly. Say, push them off a cliff. When they all go splat,
you decide they can't fly. When it would be more correct to say they
can't fly under those conditions.

Do try to read ahead before you hit the "Reply" button. I've already
rebutted that point inthe following paragraph.

But we have many reasons to believe that elephants can't fly, beyond
the lack of immediate examples. And, as has been pointed out to you ad
nauseum, we have many reasons to believe that certain sonic differences
are inaudible.

Well correct me if I am wrong, but the main reason to believe that
certain differences are not audible is that we have a model of the ear
and brain. But how was this model validated?

In a variety of ways, actually. That's why we're reasonably confident
that the model is correct. Our ability to make predictions that stand
up to testing is at the heart of this.

snip

That's why the burden of proof rests with the elephant-flight partisans
and their golden-eared equivalents to come up with some evidence. (And
it is not circular reasoning to demand this as a first step.)

I don't think it is a matter of "burden of proof." What you are saying
is that, in your mind, the "other side" has the burden of proof. From
my perspective, I'm just trying to determine what's true, and I'll take
evidence from either "side".

So will I, but only one side seems to be supplying any.

But
you'll notice that the partisans are not expending a whit of effort to
come up with that evidence.

What makes you think that?

I'm not blind.

Instead, you wave your arms and make
pseudoscientific arguments like the one above.

What exactly does this phrase "arm-waving" mean? What is
pseudoscientific about these statements?

Evidence-free challenges to scientific theory are pseudoscience. I
would compare you to the Intelligent Design folks, but that would sell
them short. At least they make an effort to identify questions that
evolution cannot yet explain. You are making so such effort.

bob