On 7/3/2014 7:19 PM, LizR wrote:
On 3 July 2014 05:16, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 01 Jul 2014, at 21:16, meekerdb wrote:
On 7/1/2014 9:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
But you don't have to prove something doesn't exist to reasonably fail to
believe
that it does. I don't have proof that there is no teapot orbiting Jupiter,
but
that doesn't make me epitemologically irresponsible to assert I don't
believe
there is one.
Careful as "I don't believe there is a teapot" is different from "I believe
there
is no teapot".
Personally, I don't believe that there is teapot orbiting Jupiter, but why
would I
believe that there is no teapot? I have no real evidences for that too. I
have
only a speculation extrapolated from my limited knowledge of teapot and
Jupiter.
I might *bet* that there is no teapot, but then I can easily conceive
losing the
bet, by the usual "bad luck".
How you would bet and at what odds is the real measure of belief. I think
you
believe there is no teapot.
I think that the presence of such teapot is highly implausible. But I can't
be sure.
I think the presence of my own teapot at home is highly plausible, but I can't be
completely sure about that either.
For all we know the solar system may be littered with teapots left by visiting aliens. I
wouldn't give the idea house room if designing the shielding on a space craft, and if
pressed I would work out the chances of it being true using the Drake equation (with the
Arthur Dent modification) and no doubt end up with the probability being exceedingly low.
But I don't believe "there is no teapot". I do believe it is highly unlikely that there
is one (or more).
I was careful. I wrote, "I don't believe there is one." In exactly the same sense, I
don't believe there is a theist god and hence am an a-theist.
Brent
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