🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct05.202904.62326@Cookie.secapl.com>, frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
> In article <1992Oct3.105750.43545@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>>     One of the conditions for a felicitous *assertion* is that the
>>speaker have evidence for its truth at the time of utterance. 
>>Since a testable, non-obvious and therefore non-trivial scientific
>>hypothesis is supported or falsified or revised for years after it
>>is stated, it seems to me that a scientific hypothesis cannot be an
>>assertion.  This works out empirically: if the hearer of an
>>assertion later discovers a single counter-example, (s)he concludes
>>that the assertion was false.
> 
> Not really.  If I assert, "I saw the man come in.  He was tall, thin,
> brown-haired, wore glasses, and smoking a cigar.", and it turns out his hair
> is actually black instead of brown, you don't necessarily conclude that my
> assertion was "false".  It *do* conclude that it was not correct in every
> detail.
> 
> Scientific hypotheses are like this; they have a lot of detail, and some of
> the detail can be wrong without falsifying the assertion as a whole.

I disagree on the ground of elementary logic: the assertion you give
here is a simple conjunction of six propositions; the falsity of any
one of them makes the conjunction false.

Since I am claiming that scientific hypotheses are not assertions, I
do not disagree with what you say about scientific hypotheses.
-- 
-Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> {Sometimes you have to look reality straight
 OPINIONS ARE MY OWN            {in the eye, and deny it. - G. Keillor