I agree that there’s an asymmetry here, and that it’s possible to confirm, in the usual sense, the all-ravens-are-black hypothesis in a finite universe but not an infinite universe. I think the Bayesian approach “resolves” this in the sense that it treats this confirmation as a special case of general evidence-gathering, with no particular special status.
An intuition pump: suppose that, instead of infinity ravens, there were merely a trillion of them for every atom in our visible universe (stored in the next universe over, of course). Clearly this is an important difference conceptually, with implications for physics at the very least. But what difference could it make for a human who has so far seen a mere thousand black ravens, and wants to predict the color of the next raven they see? Should they make different predictions, using different reasoning processes, in these cases?
If the ravens in question are in the next universe over, then we’ll never see them, regardless of their number or color.
That having been said, I think I get what you mean to say (sort of?), but it doesn’t seem to me to bear on the point. Consider these scenarios:
Scenario 1: There are a trillion ravens, and all are black.
Scenario 2: There are a trillion ravens, and all but one are black.
In both cases, if I’ve seen a mere thousand black ravens so far, I predict that the next raven I see will be black.
But in one case, “all ravens are black” is true, and in the other, it is false! So I am just not convinced that “what do you predict will be the color of the next raven you see” is even a relevant question, w.r.t. this paradox.
I agree that there’s an asymmetry here, and that it’s possible to confirm, in the usual sense, the all-ravens-are-black hypothesis in a finite universe but not an infinite universe. I think the Bayesian approach “resolves” this in the sense that it treats this confirmation as a special case of general evidence-gathering, with no particular special status.
An intuition pump: suppose that, instead of infinity ravens, there were merely a trillion of them for every atom in our visible universe (stored in the next universe over, of course). Clearly this is an important difference conceptually, with implications for physics at the very least. But what difference could it make for a human who has so far seen a mere thousand black ravens, and wants to predict the color of the next raven they see? Should they make different predictions, using different reasoning processes, in these cases?
If the ravens in question are in the next universe over, then we’ll never see them, regardless of their number or color.
That having been said, I think I get what you mean to say (sort of?), but it doesn’t seem to me to bear on the point. Consider these scenarios:
Scenario 1: There are a trillion ravens, and all are black.
Scenario 2: There are a trillion ravens, and all but one are black.
In both cases, if I’ve seen a mere thousand black ravens so far, I predict that the next raven I see will be black.
But in one case, “all ravens are black” is true, and in the other, it is false! So I am just not convinced that “what do you predict will be the color of the next raven you see” is even a relevant question, w.r.t. this paradox.