Timeline for Are "if smoke then fire" arguments deductive or inductive?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 26, 2017 at 2:55 | history | edited | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 26 characters in body
|
| Sep 26, 2017 at 2:48 | history | edited | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 42 characters in body
|
| Sep 20, 2017 at 20:03 | comment | added | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | @PhilipKlocking, an important limit of realism to acknowledge is the cosmological view of knowing the whole of reality. It causes totalitarianism. Descriptions of abstractions of the whole can be certain enough for science and knowledge to exist. | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 13:56 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | Imho, 'best metaphysicians' could be e.g. Kant, Wittgenstein, Quine, Putnam, MacDowell. My impression is that most people are more or less naive realists. There are very good reasons for challenging any conceivable position of realism. Most of them can be found in The Limits of Realism by Tim Button, Oxford UP, 2013. The main argument is that we cannot intelligibly speak about what we claim to speak about (i.e. ontological entities), but at the same time we do not want to say that all is just subjective. We may have to conclude that we simply cannot know for sure. | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 12:37 | comment | added | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | @PhilipKlocking, who are the best metaphysicians you are referring to and when did they consider whether it makes sense? Seems I am missing something you refer to. I am trying to not be pedantic in philosophy, because "every man is a philosopher", or something like that. | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 12:31 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | And it has an ontological meaning, which normally is exactly what is meant in syllogisms using modal logic. Speaking of logical forms always involves abstraction. Btw: It does not help arguing against common usage of terms in a specific field by using a quite obscure metaphysical distinction that has nothing to do with the problem at hand. You continue throwing in 'cosmological vs ontological' as it pleases you, while even (or: especially) the best metaphysicians are not quite sure how to make the difference in every case, or if it does make sense at all. | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 12:21 | comment | added | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | @PhilipKlocking a problem with "abduction" as explained in the site you linked, is, it refers to syllogisms, which usually use the word "all", which is a rather cosmological word. It is cosmological because no person can perceive "all". | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 12:06 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | Perhaps you would have been better off by googling "abduction logic", since that is what we're talking about. E.g. Merriam-Webster's doesn't list the logical meaning of the term under its entry, just like the Oxford, but has this useful explanation at the same time. As you can see, @Dennis pretty much nailed the very common usage (in logic). Dictionaries mirror common usage, not specific, and certainly not all meanings, of terms. | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 8:52 | comment | added | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | @Dennis I see you put much emphasis on Truth. The idea Truth causes honesty and is more true than corresponding truths. Do you agree? It relates to deduction because sometimes empiricists think, right deduction is the highest form of truth. | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 8:43 | comment | added | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | @Conifold used "abduction" in a way, which does not appear in the Oxford Dictionary of English. Is his use cosmological or ontological? Comparing it to the current Oxford definition, it looks ontological, because the current Oxford definition looks rather cosmological. | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 7:12 | comment | added | Dennis | I should have qualified that the terminology is uncommon within academic philosophy and the study of logic. Much of philosophy's terminology has other, non-technical uses in everyday speech ("valid" being a chief example). I would add an answer but I think Conifold has already given a good answer, there's not much to add imho. | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 6:13 | comment | added | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | Creative conclusions are usually "contained" in premises, acknowledged by people reaching creative conclusions. Others who did not reach creative conclusions did not see all the premises. Deduction and induction are thus relative because it depends on who the thinkers are. | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 5:55 | comment | added | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | @Dennis, as far as I remember the explanation and example for deduction was given in "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance". It was published in 1974 and initially 5 million copies were sold. "Nothing .. except", means creative doesn't it? Your explanation makes sense to me. How about putting your explanation in an answer, I will up vote it. | |
| Sep 19, 2017 at 2:05 | comment | added | Dennis | I'm afraid that all of your terminology here is rather uncommon. Deductive inference is essentially non-probabilistic and requires that the premises (if true) necessitate the truth of the conclusion. What is known and to what probability is irrelevant -- it's all about truth preservation. Inductive inference is the probabilistic one of the pair you discuss. It renders the conclusion likely to the degree that the sample size is representative of the whole class of entities under discussion. Nothing to do with creativity, except insofar as the conclusion isn't "contained" within the premises | |
| Sep 18, 2017 at 21:27 | history | edited | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 89 characters in body
|
| Sep 18, 2017 at 21:21 | history | answered | Marquard Dirk Pienaar | CC BY-SA 3.0 |