🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <20271@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> kube@cogsci.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Paul Kube) writes:
>cf.  Hartry Field's _Science without Numbers_).  But some people
>(maybe Ockham himself) wanted to say that one should always pick the
>simpler theory *because it's more likely to be true*, and I have
>been wondering what reasons there are for believing *that*.

Are we still talking about scientific theories? What does it mean
to say that a scientific theory is more likely to be true?

Do you mean more likely to fit observation, over a wider range
of phenomena? That's the only possible explanation I can see.

As I've said, I think it is a mistake to use the word "true" with
respect to science. It has too many absolute connotations that
science just doesn't deal with.

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Bob Myers                                         myers@tybalt.caltech.edu
			 {rutgers,amdahl}!cit-vax!tybalt.caltech.edu!myers