Refuting the idea of something with no tangible evidence and saying it doesn't exist are of course two different things, but with Unicorns at least, the animal can be defined somewhat.

Hence I shall go ahead and put
Unicorn: A horselike animal with a single horn on its head

When the chances of us being wrong are incredibly tiny, and given the amount of absence of evidence for Unicorns in pretty much everywhere we have looked on the planet is huge, should we then go ahead and claim evidence of absence by saying they aren't real?

Another somewhat related point is how, unless you're speaking about a differing view to your own, you can almost always add on "I think" (because you may not actually 'know' with much certainty) to whatever you are about to say, yet obviously people don't. Perhaps the answer to the question is different between social settings when saying something you believe to be true but can't support without stating so and more formal settings, when you are trying to be explicit and not make unsupported leaps.

And finally, if we go ahead and say you shouldn't say "Unicorns don't exist" in order to be not making leaps of judgement, given there is no evidence of absence for animal life, and indeed, every animal discovered was once lacking in evidence for it to exist, and plenty of life has been found in places that it was thought inhospitable, sulphur environments for one, then by that logic shouldn't we also avoid saying anything solipsism points to as impossible to verify to again avoid claims of evidence we don't have?

I don't think "unicorns don't exist" is a claim of evidence we don't have, it's a confirmation of a lack of evidence supporting their existence.

That and it's a fictional creature, so the fact that life can survive in seemingly inhospitable environments doesn't really support an argument for why they might exist. Same with undiscovered animals, no one was saying "sloths don't exist" before we found one, so again the scenario doesn't seem to relate.

but yeah, I guess you could say that we can't say with absolute certainty that they don't exist, but whether or not that's interesting enough to warrant a discussion about it is up to you. personally I don't.

My point about the inhospitable environments was to try and highlight how previous life thought not to exist (there) was found to be. People were saying "nothing exists in this level of sulphur".
Should have made that more clear xD

So you'd simply go and put "exist" / "not exist" to mean evidence / not evidence for claims about Unicorns rather than "exist" / "not exist" to mean evidence for/against?

My point was that saying 'nothing lives in this environment' and 'a fictional, man-made character doesn't exist in reality' aren't comparable claims. The fact that one was eventually invalidated doesn't make the other any less likely to be true.

You might want to check this . We've found skeletons of plenty more amazing creatures than the 'unicorn'. I won't be surprised if it actually existed in the past.

Quote from 420Ace Drake

You might want to check this . We've found skeletons of plenty more amazing creatures than the 'unicorn'. I won't be surprised if it actually existed in the past.

Is a skeleton decent proof of a horse with a horn though? I'd want carbon dating evidence that the horn and the body are the from a very similar time period, and even then I wouldn't be that convinced. Guess for the sake of knowing I should go check.

This is like me asking "does Santa Claus exist?" as opposed to "are there overweight in Africa?".

Asking about a creature completely man made is nothing like asking about something from the grounds of reality.

In saying it is completely man made you make a huge leap from evidence. In all likelihood it is, but there's still always that possibility they did exist once and there were legitimate sightings or that they exist even now and just haven't been seen. Under any reason there's no point saying they do exist because we can't be sure and never have verified it, but saying they are man made leaps past that to 'evidence of absence' that we don't have.

Quote from Skeletonxf

In saying it is completely man made you make a huge leap from evidence. In all likelihood it is

Then it's not a "huge leap" to say that it is. A unicorn in the modern sense is a fictional creature with magical abilities, it exists only in works of fiction. There's a remote possibility that a horned horse-like animal existed in antiquity and that's where the origin of the unicorn comes from, but as we understand it today it is purely a fictional character. It's not a "huge leap from evidence" to acknowledge that fact.