In a message dated 1/2/2001 7:22:33 PM Pacific Standard Time,
dfsiemensjr@juno.com writes:
<< Since ad ignorantiam is a fallacy, which you overlook or deny, and since
my second post on the topic showed that you demand impossible standards,
I have to classify you in the "true believer" category, that is, one
immune to any evidence against your view. Hence I see no point in
continuing the discussion. I regret that this is the case.
Dave >>
Again you did not show any flaw in the basic logic I presented. You pointed
out that I demand impossible standards, but this is a point that I
acknowledge in the past and most recent notes that in most cases all
hypothesis except one cannot be ruled out. I did not consider it a critic of
the logic just an acknowledgment that it is often impossible to meet this
standard.
A problem is there are critics that will just claim this standard can never
be met so all arguments for the supernatural are not valid. Then there are
critics who will claim any argument that does not use this standard is not
valid Becuase it is not based on logic because PE is the really required to
make a logical argument for a truth claim about reality. So if I don't
mention this PE standard or I do either way critics have comments they can
make to appear to dismiss any argument, valid or not.
I think it is evident that PE is a key logical principal science attempts to
use as scientist go through the process of eliminating hypothesis getting
closer to the correct hypothesis. There are some issues as I mentioned where
the argument can be reduced to finite number of hypothesis which can be dealt
with. You did not address this point specifically but just broad brushed them
all into to many hypothesis. I am aware that according to Godel
incompleteness theorem much of mathematics cannot be completely proved true
logically. I suspect you agree that scientist have had great success in
understanding reality with using math that was not completely proven true but
can be proven true assuming the fundamentals of set theory which cannot be
proven true according to Godel incompleteness theorem.
Rather than just complaining that there are many cases where this perfect
standard cannot be met, I think it is more constructive to investigate if
there are cases where this perfect standard can be met. Also, it is
reasonable to consider unbiased assumptions such as the fundamentals of set
theory or others. Scientist do this all the time when they investigate the
natural world and it is just as justified for scientist that are interested
in the supernatural world. So I think scientist that are genuinely interested
in determining the truth about the supernatural world if it can be done would
move on from bickering about the many cases where the perfect standard cannot
be met, to discussing practical unbiased criterion. For example, discussing
appropriate criterion for falsifying natural hypothesis, procedures for
determining all possible hypothesis and identify types of issues where the
number hypothesis are few enough to possibly address all of them. This would
be more constructive than dead ended criticism.
You called my position one that is immuned to evidence but my articles
present valid criterion for falsifying my positions and you have not even
been willing to carrying on the discussion to get to these points so I think
my articles make it evident that your discussion deserve this criticism more
than my articles do.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 03 2001 - 09:11:55 EST