Instead of saying “we should believe that the Earth is round because it looks round when seen from the space”, just say “the Earth is round because it looks round when seen from the space”. The latter sentence is clearer and doesn’t lack anything important which the former has.
The latter sentence parses as either malformed or false, to me. The earth appears to be round from space because it’s round, not vice versa; the earth is round because of the forces that were involved in its creation.
I do agree that the ‘should’ needs to go, but I think the formulation should look something like ‘it is rational to believe [thing] because [evidence]’ or ‘I/we believe [thing] because [evidence]’.
Fair enough. “Because” itself isn’t perfectly transparent word: X because Y may mean that
(etymologically) Y is a cause of X: “I have been arrested because I have robbed a bank.”
Y is a purpose for X: “I robbed the bank because I wanted the money.”
X is logically deducible from Y: The apple fell down because of the laws of gravity.
(and I believed that also) X is probabilistically deducible from Y. I have used the word “because” in this sense, as a shorthand for “and the evidence for the previous claim is that”, which after all may be ungrammatical.
The latter sentence parses as either malformed or false, to me. The earth appears to be round from space because it’s round, not vice versa; the earth is round because of the forces that were involved in its creation.
I do agree that the ‘should’ needs to go, but I think the formulation should look something like ‘it is rational to believe [thing] because [evidence]’ or ‘I/we believe [thing] because [evidence]’.
Fair enough. “Because” itself isn’t perfectly transparent word: X because Y may mean that
(etymologically) Y is a cause of X: “I have been arrested because I have robbed a bank.”
Y is a purpose for X: “I robbed the bank because I wanted the money.”
X is logically deducible from Y: The apple fell down because of the laws of gravity.
(and I believed that also) X is probabilistically deducible from Y. I have used the word “because” in this sense, as a shorthand for “and the evidence for the previous claim is that”, which after all may be ungrammatical.
In any case, should is redundand.
This is a good way to formulate it. I’ll implement this now.