If you claim that “a good and proper life” is evidence that a woman is a witch, then an evil and improper life must be evidence that she is not a witch.
To clarify for myself and/or others: my understanding is that the specific issue with the witch-hunter reasoning isn’t that they treated both of the opposing observations as confirmation (which might be implied to some readers); the issue is that there were no alternatives to either of those two opposing observations, and as a result, their hypothesis was not falsifiable.
It's not always the case that opposi... (read more)
To clarify for myself and/or others: my understanding is that the specific issue with the witch-hunter reasoning isn’t that they treated both of the opposing observations as confirmation (which might be implied to some readers); the issue is that there were no alternatives to either of those two opposing observations, and as a result, their hypothesis was not falsifiable.
It's not always the case that opposi... (read more)