(no subject)
I'm waiting on coding for something..so I thought I'd think/talk about paradoxes..
Some of the paradoxes I find annoy me..but maybe I'm not seeing something (which happens alot)
Hempel's paradox goes like this:
[Hempel gives an example of the principle of induction: the theory that all ravens are black. Suppose that we go out and examine a million ravens, and observe that they are all black. After each observation, our belief in the theory "all ravens are black" will rise slightly. The principle of induction looks reasonable here.
Now comes the problem. The statement "all ravens are black" is logically equivalent to the statement "all non-black-things are non-ravens". If we observe a red apple, which is a non-black, non-raven, then this observation should increase our belief that all non-black things are non-ravens and therefore that all ravens are black!]
Am I the only one who doesn't see those two statements as logically equivalent? They'd only be equivalent if the first statement were something like "all black things are ravens."
If someone saw a black non-raven object, how would it logically follow that not all ravens are black? It wouldn't, because non-raven objects don't play into the statement that "all ravens are black"
Arrrgh..Wikipedia says that Philosophers debate over it..why? whhhhy? someone help me understand
Some of the paradoxes I find annoy me..but maybe I'm not seeing something (which happens alot)
Hempel's paradox goes like this:
[Hempel gives an example of the principle of induction: the theory that all ravens are black. Suppose that we go out and examine a million ravens, and observe that they are all black. After each observation, our belief in the theory "all ravens are black" will rise slightly. The principle of induction looks reasonable here.
Now comes the problem. The statement "all ravens are black" is logically equivalent to the statement "all non-black-things are non-ravens". If we observe a red apple, which is a non-black, non-raven, then this observation should increase our belief that all non-black things are non-ravens and therefore that all ravens are black!]
Am I the only one who doesn't see those two statements as logically equivalent? They'd only be equivalent if the first statement were something like "all black things are ravens."
If someone saw a black non-raven object, how would it logically follow that not all ravens are black? It wouldn't, because non-raven objects don't play into the statement that "all ravens are black"
Arrrgh..Wikipedia says that Philosophers debate over it..why? whhhhy? someone help me understand