Of course the limited amount of knowledge available to the primitive tribe doesn’t rule out the existence of George, but neither does it do much to justify the theory of George. What they know is that the ground shook, but they have no reasonable explanation of why.
There are, for them, many possible explanations they could dream up to explain the shaking. Preferring any one above the others without a reason to do so is a mistake.
At their postulated level of sophistication, I don’t think they can do much better than “The Earth shook. It does that sometimes.” Adding the bit about George and so forth is just unnecessarily multiplying entities, as Ockham might say.
Of course the limited amount of knowledge available to the primitive tribe doesn’t rule out the existence of George, but neither does it do much to justify the theory of George. What they know is that the ground shook, but they have no reasonable explanation of why.
There are, for them, many possible explanations they could dream up to explain the shaking. Preferring any one above the others without a reason to do so is a mistake.
At their postulated level of sophistication, I don’t think they can do much better than “The Earth shook. It does that sometimes.” Adding the bit about George and so forth is just unnecessarily multiplying entities, as Ockham might say.