I speak now as someone who spent years studying mathematics. I am very familiar with what it takes to really prove anything. You cannot prove that you exist. You cannot prove that arithmetic is consistent. You cannot prove that the Sun will come up tomorrow. You cannot prove that the world is round.
In short if you are unable to learn anything until it is proven to you, then there is very little that anyone will be able to teach you. If your ability to think about the process of learning ends with solid demonstrations, then you will be unable to achieve even the level of sophmoric philosophy, let alone appreciate or participate in something like the scientific process.
Therefore most of our knowledge about the world is provisional. That does not make our knowledge useless, and it does not mean that all knowledge is equally weak. For instance I believe, but cannot prove, that there is such a thing as gravity. I am very confident in that belief, to the point that if I was threatened by being dangled out of a tall window by my ankle, I would scream in terror. I also believe, but cannot prove, that AMD's 64-bit strategy is a better bet than Intel's. That is a rather weak belief, based on a leaning tower of opinions, suppositions, and third-hand information. I am not at all confident in that conclusion and would hasten to add that nobody should go out and short Intel stock or buy AMD stock based on my thinking that.
So I am faced with the need to operate based on provisional information and provisional beliefs. I have no proof and know (ie I am quite certain) that proof is not generally going to be available. My solution to that is to understand and analyze my beliefs so I know what assumptions they depend on, and why I believe them. Then when I talk to people I attempt to indicate not only the statement I believe to be true, but also the degree of certainty I have and (if it seems appropriate) something about my sources so that they can form their own opinions. Furthermore I attempt to test my beliefs. I state them, let people correct me. I try to learn more about the subject. I try to analyze the same situation from different points of view and compare conclusions. I develop my own understanding of what factors are likely to matter more than others.
This is all a good deal less certain and solid than anything you might call "proof". But certainty is cheap - every fanatic is certain. At the opposite extreme, solid facts are often unavailable, by the time you know for sure what the answer is, that information has become useless. Therefore there is real value at being willing to accept, evaluate, and work with ideas, even without having absolute proof of them.
But you like to see proof and examples. So I will give you a concrete example.
Your assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, absolute
proof is by no means regarded as necessary in true academic
debate. As proof I offer you two examples from math, often
supposed to be the ultimate example of absolute proof. The
first example in math, look up the debates on
constructivism versus formalism early in this the last century. This was a key debate about how to do math, and yet the ultimate conclusions were achieved by rhetoric, not by proof. The second example is the classification of finite simple groups. This is one of the most important proofs of the last century. It was finished in 1983. However within a short time key players in the original proof, notably Daniel Gorenstein, became dubious about their own proof. The current status now, nearly two decades after the proof, is that it is not satisfactorily proven, and there is an active research effort (which involves key players in the original proof) to produce a satisfactory proof. This is despite the fact that there is absolutely no concrete evidence that the original proof is wrong, and nobody has any indication that the result is inaccurate!
Now I don't pretend to know where you aquired your misapprehensions about what makes up true academic debate. But most certainly real academics have a more sophisticated understanding of what makes up academic debate than your simplistic demand for proof. This is true even if you stick to mathematics, which is often cited as the paragon for absolute proof.
UPDATE
Brouwer, Hilbert, et al were debating constructivism in
the early 1900's and not a few months ago. (Thanks
ar0n for teasing me about it publically.)
In reply to This is one of the silliest things you have said.
by tilly
in thread does anyone else use Parse::FixedLength;?
by cmilfo
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