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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Heliocentricism (Re: THE PURPOSE OF LIFE Defined & Gaia)
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Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 18:13:42 GMT
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In article <3g0otg$jam@ccshst05.cs.uoguelph.ca> bmyers@uoguelph.ca (Brendan P Myers) writes:
>jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu wrote:
>: But not the argument, "if P then Q, Q, so let's suppose P for the
>: time being."  This is abduction, and it's used all the time.
>
>	I think the point Jeff was trying to make is that only a 
>deduction *must* be true; inductions and other forms of reasoning are 
>only *likely* to be true but not nessisarily so.

I was trying to indicate that it's not just the benighted "theologians
and others" that Galileo had to deal with who think there's something
wrong with arguments of that form: we modern folk think so too.

Moreover, if this (

  "If the solar system is heliocentric, Venus will show moon-like
  phases".  Galileo observed that Venus shows moon-like phases;
  therefore, the solar system is heliocentric.

) really was Galileo's argument, then we, like the theologians
and others, might point out that "there could be another reason".

If, OTOH, we're engaged in inference to the best explanation, it
can help to have some reasons for supposing the explanation we're
arguing for _is_ the best available.  Now, what were the alternatives
to Galileo's views?  The received alternative may well have had it
that Venus would not show phases.  Supporters of that view might
be able to patch it up in various ways, and people might or might
not find those patches convincing.  If you thought there were good
reasons for concluding that the Earth was at the center, you might
prefer the patched received view to Galileo's alternative.

Anyway, I find this sort of account more plausible than the one
I was responding to which (to my mind) made it too much a matter
of "backwards logic" being something "the learned world wasn't used
to".

-- jd
