esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) (04/10/85)
Odd # of >'s = kjm@ut-ngp.UUCP (Ken Montgomery), even # = me > Accessiblity of evidence is often controlled by the technology of the > times. Does that mean that what one "ought to believe" is controlled > by the available technology? Yes. > Also, precisely what important (to them) loss did the medievals suffer > by believing in a geocentric universe? What would most of us lose? > (Not that I'm advocating geocentrism, but the notion that the medievals > would have "lost" something seems bogus.) They lost, I suppose, the ability to predict the relative positions of the planets (important for navigation); we would lose a lot more of the predictive power of our astronomical theories (we've developed astronomy further). Perhaps more importantly, they lost important evidence indicating the fallibility of the Church; arguably, they wasted a lot of their lives following its teaching (and boy were they upset when God informed them that it was unnecessary! :->). > >... (OK, maybe so much the worse for *us* if there are unknowable > >realities, too. The point is: if something is *ex hypothesi* unknow- > >able it is *ipso facto* uninteresting, i.e. not worth worrying about.) > Until it hits you... My point was that it sounds to me like you think > that an unknowable reality is *itself* worse off because *you* can't > know about it; this idea (if I understood you correctly; if not, please > elucidate) is ridiculous. Pardon my idiom. It's not that the reality is *itself* worse off. What I mean is, so much the worse for any claim that we should worry about it. Why worry about something that you can't know about? It seems the most elementary wisdom to see that such worries are silly. > Your "can't lose" proposition sounds exactly as if you mean that > believing something makes it true. No, I mean that "can't lose" situations settle the issue of rational belief, and inquiry into evidence for truth/falsity becomes superfluous. >>> The alleged "can't lose" nature of believing some proposition does not >>> make that proposition correct. >> It makes it worth believing. That's what counts. > No, it doesn't. The only thing that makes something worth believing > is for it to be true. Not true! How do you decide what to believe? Unless you are a fundament- alist, you don't have a checklist of truths and falsehoods listed in two neat columns... You have to go on the evidence. The evidence rarely gives Cartesian certainty -- logic and math aside, you have to decide that the evidence is "strong enough" -- strong enough to make belief a better strategy than suspension of belief. For can't-lose propositions, that's any amount of evidence whatsoever. >> ... the medievals were wrong about what we ought to believe. > But how can you know, at any given time, what you are wrong about? Well, in the medievals' case, for example, they could have (should have) known they were wrong by examing the evidence Copernicus et. al. presented. > >Which proves that there are better and worse decisions. So what else is > >(cough!) new? > But how to tell the difference? Your "can't lose" proposition seems > to me to *obscure* the very difference (in the possible choices) in > which you claim to be interested! Huh? A "can't-lose" proposition is always a better decision; a "can't-win" always worse, and a "can go either way" depends on the evidence. > > --YAWNING in Ken's general direction, > Maybe you should get more sleep? :-) And just where do you suppose I'd find the time to post news? :-> -- Dick Naugle Says "o PREPARE FOOD FRESH o SERVE CUSTOMERS FAST o KEEP PLACE CLEAN"