It is a lazy form of argumentation coupled with very egocentric thinking:
- By foisting the BoP on every challenger, you get to avoid doing any work yourself provided they accept the BoP
- In the event the challenger denies the BoP, you get to just spout off attacks like “oh so I guess you just have to believe EVERYTHING ANYONE TELLS YOU” and other incongruous nonsense to imply or outright state that the challenger is intellectually stunted or a coward or both
- Baked into this BoP shifting is the presumption that your own position is the default, or the neutral, or the “correct and accepted” position, and thus you enjoy the benefit of being right by default unless people can overcome your presumption
Not everyone that recites Hitchen’s Razor is doing this mind you, and I don’t know if Demoneye is or not, because it is so commonly repeated that people just take it for granted. All of the razors (or more visceral guillotines) are only rules of thumb, not hard-and-fast laws of logic. Occam’s Razor isn’t actually a logical rule, just a good way to organize solutions and possibilities by order of complexity since simpler explanations take less time and moving parts to prove or disprove. Some aren’t even very good, like Hume’s Guillotine, which is self-defeating, much like Hitchen’s Razor.
It isn’t always in bad faith, but some people definitely use it as such.
Again, you’re talking about protocol, not a rule of logic.
“I won’t be convinced if you don’t prove it to me” is a statement of persuasion, not proof, not logic, not rules one must follow. Protocols and persuasion are deeply ingrained with how much we TRUST and KNOW someone. I don’t really question my mom’s sense of cooking or taste, but I’ll definitely question yours, so as a matter of protocol I would put the burden on myself to disprove my mother’s claims about some food, but I would put the burden on you to prove up your claims.
My point was to point out that your statement here:
…is an unproven claim. By your own rules, you should feel compelled to prove that the burden of proof falls on the claimant, otherwise no one really needs to take your demand very seriously, and instead people should come prepared to both prove their own positions and disprove challenging positions. As a matter of protocol, you can’t really expect people to always abide by your personal local rules of who has the initial burden.
See Socratic Logic by Prof. Peter Kreeft
Shifting the Burden of Proof
The “burden of proof” or “onus of proof” is a matter of protocol, or interpersonal rules in debate. The one who has this “burden of proof” has to prove his case: if he does not, he loses the debate.
Who has the burden of proof? This varies with the situation. Sometimes it is the one who denies, sometimes the one who affirms. Sometimes it is the one who is the first to speak, sometimes the second.
In science, an idea is “guilty until proven innocent,” so to speak: a crucial principle of the scientific method is to accept no idea until you have adequate proof for it. (What counts as “adequate proof” also varies with the situation.) But in ordinary conversation, an idea is “innocent until proven guilty,” so to speak: we believe what our friends say until we have good reason to disbelieve it. If a physicist says he has discovered how to make cheap cold fusion, or if a theologian says he has discovered the date of the end of the world, the burden of proof is on him, and our rightful reply is “Prove it!” But if Aunt Harriet says the dirty little diner downtown serves the best apple pie you’ve ever tasted in your life, or if your brother says he saw a police car crash into the front door of the city library, you don’t say “Prove it.” The burden of proof is on you if you doubt it. This is not a matter of logic but of personal protocol.
It becomes a matter of logic when, in debate, the original strategy is implicitly changed. E.g. in court a prosecuting attorney may badger the defense to prove its case as if the accused were guilty until proved innocent rather than innocent until proved guilty; or a moralist crusading for a prohibition may demand proof that alcohol contributes to the health of bodies or societies. In a debate about a controversial practice that used to be illegal or unavailable, such as cloning or surrogate motherhood, the one who attacks the new procedure often assumes that the burden of proof is on the “new kid on the block,” on the new permissiveness, while the one who defends it often assumes that any practice, like a person, is innocent until proved guilty. Who has the burden of proof here is itself a matter of serious argument, but this should be agreed on before argument proceeds, and whoever assumes the burden of proof should not “cop out” on giving such a proof (i.e. proving his case) by simply accusing his opponent of not proving his case.