[lit-ideas] Re: Back to Popper (and further back to Hume)
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 13:53:56 -0800
Donal, for reasons that are not obvious, writes:
> There is nothing phony about this and only a phony would think this a phony
> "set up".
> To be clear I am:
> a) inviting people to defend, articulately, inductive probability;
> b) taking the position that there is no such thing.
As for (a), you did no such thing. The way to get people to defend inductive
probability (of which there are at least two versions) is to lay out what you
mean by it and ask them to defend it. Why you assume they would want to is
another matter. As for (b), if you took a position on anything I doubt anyone
on the list noticed it--(b) certainly doesn't follow from (a).
> There is nothing inherently "phony" about this.
There is nothing phony about asking people to defend 'inductive probability' if
they've suggested they believe there is such a thing, but there's something
weird about asking someone to defend something before you know whether they
understand what you mean by it, and before you know if, given that, they'd even
want to defend it. Your set up, which I won't rehearse for you again,' is such
that it contained no argument, only a vacuous challenge--vacuous because
anything and nothing would have counted as a response to it.
> What is truly phony is to reply to the argument offered without giving any
> articulate defence of "inductive probability".
The argument offered! No more invisible arguments, please. If you're serious
about discussing anything, let's have the argument spelled out. If you're just
fucking around, avoiding the responses to you people have bothered to
give, and replying to them by name-calling, then I'm done.
On inductive probability, see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-inductive/
Here's an account of 'inductive probability.' What's wrong with it? What's it
have to do with anything Hume said or didn't say? Did Popper go to New Zealand
during the war or to Australia? If he went to either place did he see any black
swans? Was this an epiphany for him?
> It's not very funny either.
You set the tone of this discussion as soon as someone responded to you. Sorry.
Robert Paul
shutting down the Mutton logic camp for the winter
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