Combining Texts

Ideas for 'General Draft', 'The Concept of a Person' and 'Either/Or: a fragment of life'

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15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 4. Other Minds / b. Scepticism of other minds

5662	Maybe induction could never prove the existence of something unobservable [Ayer]
	Full Idea: Some people hold that no inductive argument can give us any reason to believe in the existence of something which could not even in principle be observed.
	From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §I)
	A reaction: I see nothing illogical in inferring the existence of a poltergeist from the recurrent flight of objects around my lounge. Only an excessive empiricism (which used to afflict Ayer) could lead to this claim.