Re: naked bipeds
Phil Nicholls (pnich@globalone.net)
Sun, 29 Oct 1995 03:57:40 GMT
clarke@longwood.cs.ucf.edu (Tom Clarke) graced us with the following
words:
>pnich@globalone.net (Phil Nicholls) writes:
>>The parsimony argument only holds IF THERE IS REASON TO BELIEVE THEY
>>OCCURRED AT THE SAME TIME.
>No. If you have such a reason, there is not need to appeal to parsimony
>or Occam's razor as it is sometimes called. You invoke parsimony
>when you are at a loss for data or lack another argument. (It gives
>you something to write another paper about :-)
>But since true-blue PAists don't discuss that for which there is no
>evidence, it sounds like they would have no use for Occam's razor.
>Tom Clarke
No. You invoke Occam's razor when you have two or more explanations
for a given set of data. The most parsimonious explanation is
presumed to be the correct one. Now if we believed that hairlessness,
bipedalism and all the rest occurred at the same time then
attributing them to the same adaptation would be parsimonious.
Phil Nicholls pnich@globalone.net
"To ask a question you must first know most of the answer"
-Robert Sheckley
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