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Full Idea
Two well know slogans (popularised by Carl Sagan) are 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence', ...and 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'.
Gist of Idea
Absence of evidence proves nothing, and weird claims need special evidence
Source
Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Absence')
Book Ref
'Routledge Companion to Epistemology', ed/tr. Bernecker,S/Pritchard,D [Routledge 2014], p.64
A Reaction
[Sagan was a popular science writer and broadcaster] The second one is something like Hume's argument against miracles. The old problem of the 'missing link' for human evolution embodied the first idea.
Related Idea
Idea 2229 To establish a miracle the falseness of the evidence must be a greater miracle than the claimed miraculous event [Hume]
| 19687 | Absence of evidence proves nothing, and weird claims need special evidence [McGrew] |
| 19684 | Does spotting a new possibility count as evidence? [McGrew] |
| 19683 | Narrow evidentialism relies wholly on propositions; the wider form includes other items [McGrew] |
| 19688 | Every event is highly unlikely (in detail), but may be perfectly plausible [McGrew] |
| 19686 | Criminal law needs two separate witnesses, but historians will accept one witness [McGrew] |
| 19685 | Falsificationism would be naive if even a slight discrepancy in evidence killed a theory [McGrew] |
| 19682 | Internalists are much more interested in evidence than externalists are [McGrew] |
| 19680 | Maybe all evidence consists of beliefs, rather than of facts [McGrew] |
| 19681 | If all evidence is propositional, what is the evidence for the proposition? Do we face a regress? [McGrew] |
| 19689 | Several unreliable witnesses can give good support, if they all say the same thing [McGrew] |