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Thinking Tools: You can Prove a

negative

Steven D. Hales

Think / Volume 4 / Issue 10 / June 2005, pp 109 - 112

DOI: 10.1017/S1477175600001287, Published online: 22 July 2009

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abstract_S1477175600001287

How to cite this article:

Steven D. Hales (2005). Thinking Tools: You can Prove a
negative. Think, 4, pp 109-112 doi:10.1017/
S1477175600001287

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 THINKING TOOLS: YOU CAN PROVE A NEGATIVE
Steven D. Hales

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces tips

and pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously.

A principle of folk logic is that one can't prove a negative.

Dr. Nelson L. Price, a Georgia minister, writes on his website —i
that 'one of the laws of logic is that you can't prove a nega- g*
tive.' Julian Noble, a physicist at the University of Virginia, *"
agrees, writing in his 'Electric Blanket of Doom' talk that 'we c
can't prove a negative proposition.' University of California at 3
Berkeley Professor of Epidemiology Patricia Buffler asserts 3
that The reality is that we can never prove the negative, we -«
can never prove the lack of effect, we can never prove that o
something is safe.' A quick search on Google or Lexis-Nexis §
will give a mountain of similar examples. •
But there is one big, fat problem with all this. Among profes- ^
sional logicians, guess how many think that you can't prove «
a negative? That's right: zero. Yes, Virginia, you can prove a
negative, and it's easy, too. For one thing, a real, actual law
of logic is a negative, namely the law of non-contradiction.
This law states that that a proposition cannot be both true
and not true. Nothing is both true and false. Furthermore,
you can prove this law. It can be formally derived from the
empty set using provably valid rules of inference. (I'll spare
you the boring details). One of the laws of logic is a provable
negative. Wait... this means we've just proven that it is not
the case that one of the laws of logic is that you can't prove a
negative. So we've proven yet another negative! In fact, 'you
can't prove a negative' is a negative — so if you could prove
it true, it wouldn't be true! Uh-oh.
Not only that, but any claim can be expressed as a negative,
thanks to the rule of double negation. This rule states that any
proposition P is logically equivalent to not-not-P. So pick any-
thing you think you can prove. Think you can prove your own
existence? At least to your own satisfaction? Then, using the
exact same reasoning, plus the little step of double negation,

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 you can prove that you aren't nonexistent. Congratulations,
you've just proven a negative. The beautiful part is that you
can do this trick with absolutely any proposition whatsoever.
Prove P is true and you can prove that P is not false.
Some people seem to think that you can't prove a specific
sort of negative claim, namely that a thing does not exist. So
it is impossible to prove that Santa Claus, unicorns, the Loch
Ness Monster, God, pink elephants, WMD in Iraq, and Bigfoot
don't exist. Of course, this rather depends on what one has in
mind by 'prove.' Can you construct a valid deductive argument
with all true premises that yields the conclusion that there
are no unicorns? Sure. Here's one, using the valid inference
procedure of modus tollens:

1. If unicorns had existed, then there is evidence

in the fossil record.
2. There is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil
record.
3. Therefore, unicorns never existed.

Someone might object that that was a bit too fast—after all,
I didn't prove that the two premises were true. I just asserted
that they were true. Well, that's right. However, it would be a
grievous mistake to insist that someone prove all the premises
of any argument they might give. Here's why. The only way to
prove, say, that there is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil
record, is by giving an argument to that conclusion. Of course
one would then have to prove the premises of that argument
by giving further arguments, and then prove the premises of
those further arguments, ad infinitum. Which premises we
should take on credit and which need payment up front is a
matter of long and involved debate among epistemologists. But
one thing is certain: if proving things requires that an infinite
number of premises get proved first, we're not going to prove
much of anything at all, positive or negative.
Maybe people mean that no inductive argument will con-
clusively, indubitably prove a negative proposition beyond all
shadow of a doubt. For example, suppose someone argues

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that we've scoured the world for Bigfoot, found no credible
evidence of Bigfoot's existence, and therefore there is no
Bigfoot. A classic inductive argument. A Sasquatch defender
can always rejoin that Bigfoot is reclusive, and might just be
hiding in that next stand of trees. You can't prove he's not!
(until the search of that tree stand comes up empty too).
The problem here isn't that inductive arguments won't give
us certainty about negative claims (like the nonexistence of -H
Bigfoot), but that inductive arguments won't give us certainty =j#
about anything at all, positive or negative. All observed swans *"
are white, therefore all swans are white looked like a pretty c
good inductive argument until black swans were discovered 3
in Australia. J
The very nature of an inductive argument is to make a ->
conclusion probable, but not certain, given the truth of the o
premises. That just what an inductive argument is. We'd better §
not dismiss induction because we're not getting certainty out •
of it, though. Why do you think that the sun will rise tomorrow? ^
Not because of observation (you can't observe the future!), —
but because that's what it has always done in the past. Why
do you think that if you turn on the kitchen tap that water will
come out instead of chocolate? Why do you think you'll find
your house where you last left it? Why do you think lunch
will be nourishing instead of deadly? Again, because that's
the way things have always been in the past. In other words,
we use inferences — induction — from past experiences in
every aspect of our lives. As Bertrand Russell pointed out,
the chicken who expects to be fed when he sees the farmer
approaching, since that is what had always happened in the
past, is in for a big surprise when instead of receiving dinner,
he becomes dinner. But if the chicken had rejected inductive
reasoning altogether, then every appearance of the farmer
would be a surprise.
So why is it that people insist that you can't prove a negative?
I think it is the result of two things. (1) an acknowledgement
that induction is not bulletproof, airtight, and infallible, and (2)
a desperate desire to keep believing whatever one believes,
even if all the evidence is against it. That's why people keep

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 believing in alien abductions, even when flying saucers always
turn out to be weather balloons, stealth jets, comets, or too
much alcohol. You can't prove a negative! You can't prove
that there are no alien abductions! Meaning: your argument
against aliens is inductive, therefore not incontrovertible, and
since I want to believe in aliens, I'm going to dismiss the
argument no matter how overwhelming the evidence against
CN aliens, and no matter how vanishingly small the chance of
[H extraterrestrial abduction.
• If we're going to dismiss inductive arguments because they
-p2 produce conclusions that are probable but not definite, then
0 we are in deep doo-doo. Despite its fallibility, induction is vital
*Z> in every aspect of our lives, from the mundane to the most
.c sophisticated science. Without induction we know basically
"c nothing about the world apart from our own immediate per-
!c ceptions. So we'd better keep induction, warts and all, and
«o use it to form negative beliefs as well as positive ones. You
— can prove a negative — at least as much as you can prove
1 anything at all.

Steven Hales is professor of philosophy at Bloomsburg

University, Pennsylvania.

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