--- tgpedersen <
tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > > 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?
****GK: Hardly. On a combination of factors:
historical, archaeological, linguistic, religious,
cultural, and anything else which may count as
evidence. One examines the lot as carefully as one
can and then one estimates what is more or less likely
(sometimes as in OIT vs. AIT considerably so.
1,000,000 to one is poetic license (:=))*****
> In Popper's version, a theory should be falsifiable,
> and the
> falsifiabler it is, the better. I prefer that
> criterion.
****GK: I have no objection to this. Particularly
since it very elegantly jettisons Popper's own views
on Plato ,Hegel, and Marx.****
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.
****GK: As long as you want to use such analogies
("dead/alive") I would suggest a variant. Before a
theory can be "killed" it must at least be "alive".
Right? And alive scientifically, not just verbally.
Much as I might deplore this there is no scientific
proof for the existence of God. Yet God is alive and
hugely meaningful to countless people. But we are in a
different zone here. I think that OIT is in such a
non-scientific zone of its own. It is certainly
"alive", but not scientifically alive. AIT is not
established beyond all doubt. But is has a tremendous
amount of scientific data in its favour. And the
doubts do not result, scientifically, in an argument
in favour of OIT. Flogging dead horses is not
scientific argumentation. One has to have something
more positive to even begin a scientific conversation.
Mere "propositions" won't cut it. As in the case of
the "eastern origins" of Germanic (:=))), still alive
in your head, as your obiter dicta frequently
indicate,but scientifically quite dead...*****
>
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection.
Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta.
http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/features_spam.html