Re: "Logic" in Tolkien's Universe

Larry Swain <theswain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
William Cloud Hicklin wrote:
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 10:14:09 -0500, Dirk Thierbach

BTW, "the sun will rise tomorrow" is actually a good non-mathematical
example why one cannot rely on experience, or a limited number of
examples, to make a universal conclusion: We actually *know* that
after a finite amount of time, the sun will burn out and not rise any
longer.

To react to Dirk, applying his own rules here: we actually then would
not *KNOW* that after a finite amount of time the sun will burn out and
not rise any longer.

"Know" in the sense "can be confident with near certainty". Sorry, I
was imprecise.

5 Billion years give or take allows a lot of time for all manner of
things to happen and that remain POSSIBLE and so can not be ruled
out.

That's possible, but in this case, we happen to have a way to measure
our confidence: If the sun doesn't burn out, then everything we have
so far assumed about thermodynamics must be severely wrong. So,
according to this measurement, the hypothesis "the sun will burn out
eventually" is consistent with what we have observed so far, while
"the sun will always rise" is not.

Or to state another way, Dirk has just done what he took such
exception to: used the available evidence to draw a conclusion and
rule out other possibilities that have insufficient evidence as
likely scenarios.

Nice try, but no cigar :-)

Perhaps our analog to analyzing Tolkien's world shouldn't be that of
the hard sciences, but (ancient) history (with its associated fields
of archaeology and palaeography):

I'd say not just history but the study of literature, ancient and
medieval in particular.

But these kinds of study are not concerned with the "inner workings"
of a subcreated alternative world.

A literary text so clearly dependent on those ancient and medieval
literary texts is probably best studied as a piece of literature.

Yes, please. That especially means it's much more important to look
at features like "what's the impression of the lack of physical
description on the reader?", instead of trying to fix one single way
of how the subcreated world "is".

Such being the case, there are no absolutes, there is only what the
current state of the evidence can demonstrate and lead one to
conclude,

The problem is that very often the current state of evidence doesn't
lead to a clear conclusion.

with the caveat that there is a nearly constant state of
reevaluation.

Which is part of what I am trying to say. If you already assume
that every theory may be reevaluated later (in other words, it may
turn out to be wrong), then it doesn't make a lot of sense to say
things like "the evidence only allows one conclusion, namely ...".
If that conclusion turns indeed out to be wrong, then it's just not the
case that only one conclusion is possible. So the best one can do
is to clearly say "here's ony explanation that seems a good fit,
but it may not be the only one. If you have a different explanation,
then maybe yours is right and mine is wrong. We cannot say right now."

- Dirk
.

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