RE: A very clever alien..
December 29, 2020 at 8:46 am
(This post was last modified: December 29, 2020 at 8:50 am by Aristocatt.)
Maybe I am just missing the point here, but I'm not really understanding what this hypothetical is intending to elucidate. I have an idea about it that I write out below...it just seems...dumb.
So the example, if I am understanding it is to figure out how to prove the kids ate the meal with only deductive logic...any attempts at empirically solving the problem will have some extraordinary hypothetical attached such that it isn't a viable way to infer the actions of the children.
Out of curiosity, what happens if the man can't deductively prove that his kids ate his meal? What do you think this implies?
I'm a little confused why an atheist, or anyone for that matter, would find it troubling to discover that the truth statement of a particular temporal event is not solely deductively provable.
As an aside, you mentioned your own solution to the problem, but it required empirical inferences...
"He knew that his children were the only other people in the house"
Isn't really functionally different than...
"He knew that his children's stool samples had trace amounts of the dinner cooked for him".
If we can infer things about the mans experience, than it isn't solely deductive.
If we can't infer things about the mans experience with relation to the great dinner mystery, than you haven't adequately solved your own problem.
In fact, the entire premise of this argument seems to rest on that single empirical inference being available. If he hadn't been able to infer that his children were the only two people in the house(which also rest on all sorts of other inferences like -- his wife was not home, no intruders were in the house, his wife made dinner), he wouldn't have any reason to believe his children ate the meal. He would have to ask himself "what evidence to I have that my children at this meal".
So the example, if I am understanding it is to figure out how to prove the kids ate the meal with only deductive logic...any attempts at empirically solving the problem will have some extraordinary hypothetical attached such that it isn't a viable way to infer the actions of the children.
Out of curiosity, what happens if the man can't deductively prove that his kids ate his meal? What do you think this implies?
I'm a little confused why an atheist, or anyone for that matter, would find it troubling to discover that the truth statement of a particular temporal event is not solely deductively provable.
As an aside, you mentioned your own solution to the problem, but it required empirical inferences...
"He knew that his children were the only other people in the house"
Isn't really functionally different than...
"He knew that his children's stool samples had trace amounts of the dinner cooked for him".
If we can infer things about the mans experience, than it isn't solely deductive.
If we can't infer things about the mans experience with relation to the great dinner mystery, than you haven't adequately solved your own problem.
In fact, the entire premise of this argument seems to rest on that single empirical inference being available. If he hadn't been able to infer that his children were the only two people in the house(which also rest on all sorts of other inferences like -- his wife was not home, no intruders were in the house, his wife made dinner), he wouldn't have any reason to believe his children ate the meal. He would have to ask himself "what evidence to I have that my children at this meal".
