Something wrong with the WSC?

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Sat, 2006-02-25 at 19:22 +0200, Plamen Gradinarov wrote:

> To my knowledge, the idea of Nyaya inference being intensional and
> inductive rather than extensional and deductive is as new as wrong.

I'm not sure how old something has to be not be considered new, but this
debate has been around for the last fifty years or so. What puzzles me
is how people can still be debating this. By no stretch of the
imagination can an Indian inferential schema qualify as deductive. It
can at best offer evidence that a conclusion is probable, which is what
makes it conform perfectly to the standard definition of inductive
argumentation. Oetke and Taber and others have established this so well
that the question will now be pretty much closed, at least until people
forget their work.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico