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I think my example was too detailed, and the analogy gets lost. The TLDR is that Russell's teapot and Sagan's dragon are ontologically different concepts. And you can have anecdotal data of the former which can be used to diagnose lack of formal observation, but you cannot have it in the latter.
I am not trying to equivocate qualitative and quantitative research. But qualitative research can observe phenomena that that existing quantitative research may be unable to effectively construct, generalize, or have enough power to measure.
Your default to no, he loses, circumvents my entire point.
You're missing my distinction. The classic form of Russell's teapot is that it is completely unobserved, but not materially unobservable, while Sagan's dragon is both. They only both look the same when they are both speculative. Russel's teapot can be qualitatively or anecdotally observed while Sagan's dragon cannot. If Megan's argument is that she's never actually seen the damage of prostitution, but is convicted it exists based on her ethical assumptions, then yes, it matters not whether it's a teapot or a dragon.
But if her conviction is based on cases, then it's more like, yes I have seen dishware in outer space, even can't give you the coordinates, so I'm not going to take your inability to find it with current satellite tech as proof it isn't there. except the analogy fully breaks down here so this last paragraph is more confusing than enlightening, so why am I even still typing, I'm not even using periods anymore, just commas,
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