Talk:Argument from ignorance

Conspicuous Lack of Citations

In reading the various sections, there seems to be an abundance of material but with few references. It would be better to be able to be certain that this article isn't just a diatribe by an obsessed person, but a scholarly synopsis with back-up. How can anyone rely on this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.89.229.157 (talk) 16:16, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Confusion around presumption of innocence

There is a section in the article on the presumption of innocence which is apparently all original research as it presents no citations. I believe some useful discourse around the presumption of innocence could come into play in the context of the argument from ignorance, but the existing text is opaque on this point. It seems to confuse notions of factual guilt with legal guilt on the one hand, and factual innocence and lack of proof on the other. In factual terms we might say a person is "guilty" in the sense that "he did it" or "innocent" in the sense that "he didn't do it." But the choice in law is between "guilty" and "not guilty", not "guilty" and "innocent." Regardless of issues of burden of proof, a legal finding of guilt is not dependent solely on whether the defendant "did it" but also application of legal categories such as intent. "Guilt" is a legal finding, not a factual finding. This is why in some systems the verdict of "not guilty" is instead referred to (more accurately) as "not proved."

In short, I will DELETE this section but encourage replacement with a more focused discussion - with sources. Zagraniczniak (talk) 15:42, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Definition

This edit introduced a level of abstraction that made the intro more difficult to read. The previous version was simpler and more direct, not broken, and hence not in need of repair. I have now twice returned it to status quo ante. Please discuss here instead of edit warring. Just plain Bill (talk) 23:27, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Violation of Laws of Logic

Claiming "This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes the possibility that there may have been an insufficient investigation to prove that the proposition is either true or false." is a clear violation of the Law of the Excluded Middle.

In other words, the possibilities can only be true or false. Insufficient information is not one of them.Magnetic Flux (talk) 03:39, 15 February 2019 (UTC)