(March 17, 2017 at 7:07 pm)Jesster Wrote: I'm personally not entirely convinced by the idea that "absence of evidence is evidence of absence", if that makes you feel any better. I've tried to work with it and it still seems a bit shaky to me.
"Absence of evidence" is not "evidence of absence".
The former is saying that evidence for it is simply absent.
The latter is saying that if the claim is true a certain evidence should be present, and it is not. This requires a deductive arguement.