Scientific Conclusions

[_Aristotle Smith]

by the way, the tendency for a logical paradox to bring me to my intellectual knees decreased somewhat after I read Hofstadter's GEB and had Zeno explain why Achilles could never, ever, ever win a race against a tortoise, as long as you gave the tortoise a head start, no matter how small. Why should a layman like me ever consider these type of arguments as anything other than smoke and mirrors?

Point #1. I hate to break it to you beefcalf, all of the supposed evidence against the claims of the LDS church are just smoke and mirrors. You have no way of showing otherwise. It's best if you just march your butt right back into the LDS chapel this Sunday. People smarter than you have figured out the logic of it and you would do best as a layman to realize that all evidence to the contrary is just smoke and mirrors.

Point #2: If you understand limits then you will see the flaw in Zeno's reasoning. Zeno only analyzed the change in distances as that change in distance approached zero. He neglected to analyze what was happening to time differentials as well. This is not valid since the time differential is related to the distance differential. When you properly analyze the change in both together and take the limit, Achilles passes the tortoise. But then again, the limit procedure of differential calculus is all smoke and mirrors.

[_beefcalf]

Point #1. I hate to break it to you beefcalf, all of the supposed evidence against the claims of the LDS church are just smoke and mirrors. You have no way of showing otherwise. It's best if you just march your butt right back into the LDS chapel this Sunday. People smarter than you have figured out the logic of it and you would do best as a layman to realize that all evidence to the contrary is just smoke and mirrors.

The paradox here, it seems, is that despite your advice, you clearly hold as much respect for LDS truth claims as I do.

[_Sethbag]

It reminds me of arguments asserting that a God must exist because they were able to set up some sort of linguistic paradox.

[_beefcalf]

The Zeno's Paradox issue is important to me.

Even though some two and half thousand years have trudged by since it was first published, a rigorous method of exposing the flaw of Zeno's argument has yet to be found.

Yet, for all of us uneducated lay-folk, we find it extraordinarily simple to walk right past that tortoise; and in so doing, instantly form unflattering opinions about the utility of logic in our daily lives.

[_beefcalf]

It reminds me of arguments asserting that a God must exist because they were able to set up some sort of linguistic paradox.

Or the patently ridiculous ontological argument for the existence of God... "If I can imagine him, he must exist"

I tried the ontological argument with regard to having a big wang, but it didn't work.

[_Sethbag]

It reminds me of arguments asserting that a God must exist because they were able to set up some sort of linguistic paradox.

Or the patently ridiculous ontological argument for the existence of God... "If I can imagine him, he must exist"

The real argument is a little more nuanced than this, and as we all know, asserting nuance is the key to spinning gold out of BS. The real argument goes something like this, as I recall:

God is a being that is greater than any other being.
I can imagine God.
A God which existed only in my imagination would not be greater than beings which actually exist.
Therefor God must exist.

And some people imagine that this kind of mental masturbation exerts some compulsion on the universe, requiring things to exist or not, for real, as a result of our clever linguistic trickery.

Of course the answer to this is that the universe doesn't give a crap about the definitions we humans create, and the definition in step 1 of this "proof" is clearly made up in our mind to suit the proof, not an observed fact of nature.

[_marg]

The challenge is that Stak is supposed to illustrate how ignorant Beefcake is on topics he posts…and Stak uses this quote as the example.

"A scientific conclusion is holding something to be true because of strongly corroborated evidence which does not allow for an alternate interpretation."




For brevity reason I won't repost Stak's post. See above with respect to Staks' (P1) to (P6)

So the above (P1) to (P6) are premises and whatever conclusion can be reached is based upon the premises stated. But the above does not map onto how science works, nor does it illustrate how philosophy is superior to science or that science is inadequate.

Then Stak concludes: "So according to Beefcalf, there can’t be any scientific conclusions, because it would be easy to come up with a massive (but denumerable) list of alternative theories that on the face of it, appear silly, but in fact marshal just as much evidence as the accepted conclusions."

What beefcake mentioned was corroborating evidence. That is evidence which warrants a particular scientific conclusion..he was not referring to any evidence nor evidence for any claim. Beefcake could have worded his statement better but he didn’t appreciate at the time it would be under close scrutiny. The gist of what is entailed by science is correct. With hindsight and greater care in wording it could be improved upon such as rephrasing ie. ‘..a peer reviewed consensus accepted scientific conclusion is holding something to be true because of strongly corroborated evidence which does not allow for an alternate conflicting interpretation.’ But overall beefcake's sentence is legitimate and stak's argument which is supposed to show how ignorant Beefcake is..doesn’t succeed.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Thankfully, the OP isn't about inductive reasoning:

To be kind, I’m going to skip all the problems with inductive reasoning and assume for argument’s sake that there is genuinely legitimate inductive reasoning without all the hoo-ha.

It's about evidence.

[_MrStakhanovite]

although I do not agree that P5 is absurd.

Really? It's totally cool that a Coca Cola can is an important piece of evidence concerning the color of ravens? You don't see a problem with that?

So where does P6 come from? Why are we inventing an adjective? What is the justification for introducing the conditions of 'examined' and 'non-examined'. You've made a leap here that I haven't been able to make.

It's called making a generalization (all adjectives are invented by the way), there is no leap made.

[_Aristotle Smith]

It's about evidence.

True. I'm guessing my highly cogent initial comment threw everyone off.

To be exact, Stak is using the paradox of the ravens first put forward by Carl Hempel to tease out problems in the instantial model of what constitutes evidence.