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From: brianc@daedalus (Brian Colfer)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: [David E Demers: Re: free will]
Message-ID: <2236@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu>
Date: 24 Jul 89 16:48:09 GMT
References: <334@ucl-cs.UUCP> <425@berlioz.nsc.com> <1842@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> <2230@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> <438@calmasd.Prime.COM>
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Reply-To: brianc@daedalus.ucsf.edu (Brian Colfer)
Organization: UCSF Dept. of Lab Med
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In article <438@calmasd.Prime.COM> wlp@calmasd.Prime.COM (Walter Peterson) writes:
>> Brian Colfer >>> Robin Faichney
>
>[... various parts of the discussion deleted...]

>>>Just because something cannot be proven, is no reason not to believe in it.

>> Why believe something if you cannot prove it?  

>Sometime there is no choice in the matter. I will grant that proof is
>a very desirable thing to have, but as Godel's Incompletness Theorem
>shows, in any system that is complete there will be unprovable true
>statements. Axioms are also accepted without proof.

I always thought that Godel proved that there will always be incompleteness
in deductive systems.

Also, I was suggesting inductive rather than deductive proof.  I
probably should have said,  "Why believe in something if there is no
publicly validated evidence for it?"  

Are there inductive axioms?
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