Quote:
Originally Posted by SMadsen
Dilettante, the claim that Bob Hope was the first President has no ingredients of anything else than what is found in our natural world, in our reality. It does not presuppose divinity, alienship, immortality or time-travelling. This case is only about finding evidence of the person Bob Hope and of the premises for attaining presidency of your country at the given time and with those finds in hand use deductive reasoning to construct a truth for all practical purposes (this will not be an absolute truth - just to be clear on that).
If the history books were wrong then that is hopefully what you'll find out during your quest. Perhaps Bob Hope only exists as a myth and then you might come to that conclusion. Perhaps you will even come to the presupposition that Bob Hope must have been a time-traveller if he was to be the first President of USA. Then your quest will stop for the exact same reason as your Zeus' lightning bolt: No evidence available. And since that's the case then you will for all practical purposes conclude that Bob Hope was not the first President of USA. And in who-knows-how-many-years that truth will perhaps be revised. So what?
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The bolded text above represent precisely the sort of
a priori assertions this whole process is meant to avoid.
You aren't saying that you've never seen any evidence that Bob Hope could travel through time; you're saying that such evidence
does not exist and therefore anyone who looks for it
cannot possibly find it. You are effectively ending the process of
a posteriori resolution with an
a priori assertion as to what the final resolution will be.
The entire
point of attempting an
a posteriori resolution is that
you don't already know what you will find. The Greek who goes searching for evidence of Zeus and his lightning bolts is pursuing an
a posteriori resolution. The man who declares
a priori that there is no such evidence to be found is not.
As it happens, I suspect you're right in that these searchers will not find evidence that
you or I would find persuasive. The point is, even if the Greek finds no persuasive evidence for his claim Zeus' wrath, he can certainly go about looking for it in a manner just as logical as the as the one I would use in pursuing my more mundane Bob Hope question.