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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (222371)	4/21/2013 12:07:07 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 545116

<<Scientists don't include "believe" in their vocabulary in the same way lay people do. In the movie "Contact" the character played by Matthew McConaughey, asks Jody Foster's character if she believes her father loved her. She says yes, and is then asked to prove it. This is to show that some propositions are not subject to proof.>> I don't think Sagan thought deeply enough about it. She said she believed it. That does not require proof. Knowing requires proof. She believed it because she had evidence. We put people in jail for life without proof, using circumstantial evidence. <<I can not prove what minerals are stable near the core of the Earth because I can't go there. Maybe one day but today it is unknown, and largely speculative based upon what we know from meteorite fragments and indirect mineralogical and seismic study. SETI is based upon a type of faith - there is no evidence that drives us to monitor radio beams from space looking for intelligent life. It is a belief that because there is life here that life is probably elsewhere. If you are to ask me about alien life>> There is inductive logic and deductive logic. Scientists do think in terms of probablility. Probability could cause one to say: "using deductive logic I believe the above things, or there is a probability it is true. <<- I'm agnostic - I don't know so therefore until there is evidence of absence, that is not the same as absence of evidence. It is entirely reasonable to expect that the universe is populated but I don't believe it or not believe it until the matter is settled. In my opinion it is less reasonable to believe in God because I have not seen Gods here, let alone filling the universe. My bias is that having life in hand opens the door to life being elsewhere, but does not necessitate it. Having penguins in Antarctica does not necessitate them in Arctic regions. Having no God here doesn't prohibit it from existing in a form that we don't comprehend. There is no probability function that governs either one. There are mental models (biases) that govern the choice of what to "believe" (meaning scientifically to be more likely than not).>> Sure probability. But Pierce would have said you have no choice. You are going to be in one of the three states of mind and there is nothing you can do about it. If you are an agnostic then you are in a state of doubt. But are you really in a state of doubt?