Well, the raven paradox is part of it, as were the fallacies noted by Yoshie:
1. Argument from Ignorance/Appeal to Ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam) -- a fallacy
2. Shifting the Burden of Proof
And thanks to Chuck Grimes for the mathametical proof demonstrating the issue of proving a negative, since all logic, by definition, can be reduced to a math proof.
Folks can look up the raven proof paradox using a search engine. It actually is quite clever and easy reading. The raven proof paradox was part of "Studies in the Logic of Confirmation" by Carl G. Hempel. The raven proof leads to the idea that all proofs in science are actually arguments for what is more likely rather than less likely, not anything that can be considered definitive.
The brilliant (but notoriously obnoxious) Richard Feynman wrote about another fallacy common in conspiracy theory:
=========================
PROOF BY SELECTED INSTANCES
Richard Feynman: "Many years ago I awoke in the dead of night in a cold sweat, with the certain knowledge that a close relative had suddenly died. I was so gripped with the haunting intensity of the experience that I was afraid to place a long-distance phone call, for fear that the relative would trip over the telephone cord (or something) and make the experience a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, the relative is alive and well, and whatever psychological roots the experience may have, it was not a reflection of an imminent event in the real world. After my experience I did not write a letter to an institute of parapsychology relating a compelling predictive dream which was not borne out by reality. That is not a memorable letter. But had the death I dreamt actually occurred, such a letter would have been marked down as evidence for precognition. The hits are recorded, the misses are not. Thus human nature unconsciously conspires to produce a biased reporting of the frequency of such events. If enough independent phenomena are studied and correlations sought, some will of course be found. If we know only the coincidences and not the unsuccessful trials, we might believe that an important finding has been made. Actually, it is only what statisticians call the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances."
====================
This is where we get the lists of "mysterious deaths" compiled by conspiracy fans. As in the scores of people "connected" to the Kennedy assassination who died violent deaths. These lists are only mysterious if someone is oblivious to statistical probability and actuarial tables.
-Chip "logic Stasi" Berlet
----- Original Message ----- From: "ravi" <gadfly at home.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2001 6:28 PM Subject: Re: A note to the exorcists
> budge wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 22 Nov 2001 at 2:51pm Hakki Alacakaptan wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Ken, if you want to know where I'm posting from paste my
> >>IP into http://where-is.info/ or some other similar
> >>server.
> >>
> >
> > And this site, http://where-is.info/, is a laff riot!
> >
>
>
>
> hakki: try http://www.arin.net/ for IP lookups. there are billion
> dollar companies in existence today that claim to predict your
> geographic location based on your IP address but they are not
> very accurate (anything beyond continental accuracy cannot be
> guaranteed, at least for an end-user without access to additional
> network information). second, to determine your IP address from
> your messages is not possible in some cases and not foolproof in
> all cases.
>
> proving a negative: isnt the issue highlighted in these examples
> at worst a problem of proving an infinite proposition (in CNF, no
> negation in sub-terms) to be true (not possible), or at best a
> complexity issue: can i complete the empirical proof in some
> finite (hopefully <= polynomial) time? the problem with showing
> that hakki is not a spy or whatever (it seems to me) hinges on
> whether there is a finite unambiguous definition of what a spy is
> (wears trenchcoats during the night, has a suspicious friend
> named boris, etc) or is not (posts 17 msgs a day to lbo-talk ;-))
> that is susceptible to empirical verification. seems a bit
> unnecessary to start worrying about hempel's raven paradox w.r.t
> induction, no? or perhaps i am confused in associating this
> debate with the raven paradox...
>
> --ravi
>