Re: Grimm's Law is about to expire (Collinge 1985, p. 267, Thundy 1

> > Apart from the inadvisable in attempting to violate a razor,
> > Occam's wasn't about improbabilia, but about the number of entia.
> > Appealing to the a priori sense of improbability of any scientific
> > community will make its field forever sterile.

> ****GK: Thus, if we have 2 or more hypotheses
> concerning some issue,each of which is "viable" in the
> loosest sense of the term, one would be expected to
> opt, other things being equal, for the most "viable",
> least "improbable" etc.as the case may be. OIT may be
> in the ballpark, but it is so far behind AIT (say a
> million -to-one as compared to 2-to-one or better)
> that wasting time on it, in the absence of any more
> potent support than desperate subjective wish, is
> practically a scientific crime.*****

But on what would you base that estimate of probability? Gut feeling?
In Popper's version, a theory should be falsifiable, and the
falsifiabler it is, the better. I prefer that criterion. It is the job
of an opponent, not of the proponent to kill a theory. And as a long
as a theory hasn't been killed, it's alive.


Torsten