Questions tagged [induction]
The induction tag has no usage guidance.
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Can all inductive arguments be written as deductive arguments?
Whenever I see inductive arguments being used, it seems as though they can be redone by simply making certain assumptions and rephrasing the argument as a deduction from those assumptions.
For ...
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Can the conclusion of an inductive argument be that there is only one exception to the list of evidentiary claims?
Can this be an example of an inductive argument?
Premise 1: Country A rejected idea Z.
Premise 2: Country B rejected idea Z.
Premise 3: Country C rejected idea Z.
Premise 4: Country D rejected ...
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How do I operate with philosophers if I reject deductive reasoning?
Deductive reasoning is the one that takes premises for granted. I never do it. Therefore I never do deductive reasoning.
Well, enough jokes. It is safe to assume that deductive reasoning never should ...
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If nature is inherently imprecise, how is it so easy for us to conceptualize mathematical certainties?
In modeling any real physical system, we are required to employ inductive reasoning. We can never be completely certain about the state or properties of any system or of any future observation we will ...
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Inductive and deductive arguments and mathematical induction
I started reading Paul Teller's A Modern Formal Logic Primer. In the first chapter, the book presents the inductive and deductive arguments with the following examples:
The inductive argument:
...
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Can inductive arguments be made in first order logic and, if not, why not?
After reading a question by rus9384 Why is faulty generalization called an informal fallacy? I wondered whether induction can be part of any argument in first order logic (FOL).
rus9384 symbolized ...
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What's wrong with the following argument regarding temporal limits?
Let us suppose there is a limit: you cannot buy something after 10:00PM. From the position of law, of course "cannot" must be taken directly. But from the position of common thinking, people are less ...
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348 views
How did Aristotle define induction so incorrectly?
From: Philip Johnson-Laird BA PhD Psychology (UCL), Stuart Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton. (Author isn't a logician.) How We Reason (1st edn 2008). p. 431, for Ch. 1.
The ...
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Questioning determinism (example)
Questioning the world's deterministic behaviour, I shall present an example which seems to defy any certainty about the recurrence of events and is (obviously) a result of faulty logic, but I would ...
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Is actual infinity physical infinity? Or just the axiom of infinity?
I've always been a little confused on this point.
My (second-hand) understanding of Aristotle's difference between potential and actual infinity is this:
We all have an intuition of the counting ...
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Swinburne's solution to Grue
In the new riddle of induction, Swinburne proposes the idea that there is a genuine distinction to be made between the predicate 'green' and the predicate 'grue' in that 'green' is a qualitative ...
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How does a Bayesian respond to the Grue-hypothesis?
According to Bayesian inference/confirmation theory, your confidence in a hypothesis increases as you observe more and more evidence predicted by that hypothesis (according to bayes theorem and the ...
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On the circularity of induction
Hume's problem of induction is that any attempt to justify induction would lead to a circular argument. Can someone give an example to illustrate this and maybe explain the problem more?
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Hume's problem of induction
Hume argued that assuming A causes B isn't the same as arriving at a truth of logic. However, even though Hume cautioned the "the mental habit" of induction should be used carefully he still believed ...
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1answer
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Help me understand Earman and Salmon's pragmatic vindication
"Hume showed convincingly that, if nature is uniform, inductive reasoning will work very well, whereas, if nature is not uniform, inductive reasoning will fail. This much is pretty easy to see. [Some ...
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Need of philosophy experts! [closed]
I am a beginner philosopher and I have to explain Hume's "Doubts concerning the operations of the understanding" as part of a short exercise for my class. Would anyone be willing to give their honest ...
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How does Hume justify his account of the origin of causation to a general sense?
Hume's account of causation explains why we think specific things have causes and explains them in terms of their constant connection in our minds such that we associate them by "habit". Hume brings ...
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Does Popper's falsification view of the problem of induction have any implications for the NEW riddle of induction?
Popper claims to solve Hume's problem of induction by explaining that science does not use induction at all, but rather science can be described by the process of putting forward hypotheses and then ...
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Does Hume's skepticism about induction extend to his treatise?
Can we extend Hume's skeptical conclusions to the treatise itself? How far reaching is Hume's skepticism, and if it is all-encompassing, then what is (as he sees) the purpose of his work?
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Is Goodman's new riddle of induction a restatement of Hume's problem of induction?
I was reading Goodman's [Facts, fictions and forecasts] and was confused by the new riddle of induction. I don't really see what's new about it, it seems to me like a restatement of Hume's problem ...
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Is there a deduction analog to the problem of induction?
Aren't deductive and inductive reasoning equally unjustified? So, inductive reasoning is going from specifics to general, whilst deductive reasoning is going from general to specific. But in deductive ...
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How applicable is the problem with induction to real life?
I am an engineer and know nothing about philosophy, my friend is an economist who argues that the problem with induction invalidates all predictions based on induction.
I can understand this on a ...
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Goodman's projectible predicates in the new riddle of induction
Is "is a trouser" a projectible predicate?
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Do Hume’s Problem and Zeno’s Arrow Paradox have the same solution?
Both Hume’s Problem and Zeno’s Arrow Paradox freeze an observation in time. Do they have the same solution?
To show that the future may not be predicted from the past, the test that David Hume ...
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What is an appropriate way to solve a Mill's method table, if it exists?
I'm being asked to determine the cause of a phenomenon using Mill's methods and a table of relevant factors. Below is the table:
A B C D E Event
* * *
* * ...
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Why can't uniformity of nature (in principle) be proven deductively?
I've been reading about the problem of induction and I have trouble understanding the argument for nature's uniformity being impossible to prove deductively.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on ...
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Are “if smoke then fire” arguments deductive or inductive?
I'm new to philosophy and have a question regarding deductive vs. inductive reasoning:
I'm told that "John ate a strange plant in the forest and got sick. Clearly, the plant made John sick."
I ...
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Does reliabilism fall to the problem of induction?
From what I've gathered, reliabilism states that epistemic justification occurs when someone forms a belief via truth-conducive methods. However, doesn't this fall to the problem of induction? Isn't ...
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Based on evolution, do we arrive at deductive principles inductively?
If our knowledge of deductive principles is a result of evolution... doesn't this mean that we arrive at deductive principles inductively?
Assuming deductive principles are beneficial for survival, ...
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1answer
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Is this an inductive or a deductive argument?
Two flowers of the same cultivar were planted in adjacent plots .
The first was fertilized with Miracle-Gro and it flourished (2); The second was not and it din't(3) .
Therefore , Miracle-Gro ...
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2answers
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What skeptical arguments do not use induction?
What skeptical arguments do not use induction? I haven't yet found anything which says these do not exist, so doubt that they don't. But I'm still intrigued, as SEP says that
[a] way to motivate ...
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What are the modern views on the problem of induction? [closed]
The problem of induction was postulated by David Hume more than 200 years ago. I know that Karl Popper tackled the issue by using "innocent until proven guilty" approach. However, I would like to know ...
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Is this inductive or deductive?
The fact that we know we have a great great grandfather. Is the reasoning we use for this inductive or deductive?
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What is the name of the fallacy that denies inductive generalization based on emphasizing exceptions?
I am looking for the name of a logical fallacy that denies validity of induction based on an observed and repeated pattern (AKA statistics) by citing exceptions to the pattern which are outliers of ...
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Induction and prejudice
Is there any difference between prejudice and inductive reasoning (not mathematical induction)?
If so, what is the difference?
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What sort of knowledge has been retained through theory change?
The wikipedia article on the PMI says
When we develop a new theory, the central ideas of the old one usually
become refuted. Parts of the old theory, however, we carry over to the
new one
This ...
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In what way does induction concern itself “entirely with justification”?
Karl Popper was "opposed to induction when it came to science", in the words of one of his reviewers, because
Induction concerns itself entirely with justification – with establishing theories and ...
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1answer
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Is logic based on uncertainty the fundamental logic?
Most formal logics are based on certainty, but certainty is only one probability among others, so a logic based on uncertainty and probability should be considered as the fundamental logic from which ...
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New riddle of induction; does the observer know the arbitrary time t?
Wikipedia, in "New riddle of induction", sets out Nelson Goodman's paradox as follows:
Goodman defined grue relative to an arbitrary but fixed time t as
follows: An object is grue if and only if ...
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What are the critiques of the “we might as well assume it” solution to the problem of induction?
I'm curious whether the following proposed solution to the problem of induction has ever been discussed in the literature:
Either the future resembles the past or it does not resemble the past. If it ...
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Inductive conclusions go beyond the content of the premise(s)
In my textbook A Concise Introduction to Logic, the author states this:
In general, inductive arguments are such that the content of the conclusion is in some way to "go beyond" the content of the ...
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Propositional Logic: How to prove the contraposition in the Fitch system?
Given that:
p ⇒ q
prove that:
¬q ⇒ ¬p
using the Fitch system.
(This being the proof of the Contraposition)
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Why is “similarity” not a logical relation? (from “Natural Kinds” by Quine)
I have two questions regarding Quine's paper “Natural Kinds”:
Why isn't similarity a logical relation?
Why is our ability to recognize similarity so fundamental?
These two things are explained in ...
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1answer
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Kant's Solution to Uniformity of Nature
I am aware that Kant addressed Hume's skepticism on causality, but I don't see anything in his CPR that solves the problems of induction and uniformity of nature in other contexts like everyday life, ...
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What are the Consequences of Rejecting Induction?
It seems to me that the rejection of the validity of induction would cause a deep skepticism in pretty much everything but most prominently in perception. If we can never assume uniformity of nature, ...
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Is this a fallacy: no argument against X, therefore X?
Recently I was talking to a friend of mine, a vegan. Here's what she said: "I was talking to a vegan philosopher once, and he said that he is a vegan because there is no good argument against veganism"...
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Is this type of induction a problem?
I can understand how the verification of hypotheseses based on inductive reasoning can be problematic, and I understand that a lot of prominent figures in philosophy are in opposition to this (Popper, ...
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How does a mechanism reduce 'the number of independent assumptions we need to make'?
The book only italicised; I added the majuscules.
Source: pp 226-227, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (1 ed, 1999) by Simon Blackburn
[...] As with Boyle's law, we can say that ...
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How can a false premise still produce a Strong Inductive Argument?
For brevity, I abbreviate:
FP = False Premise,
SIA = Strong Inductive Argument.
Source: A Concise Introduction to Logic (12 Ed, 2014) by Patrick J. Hurley
[p 46:] These four examples show that ...
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What aspects of the problem of induction are simplified if you employ the B-theory of time?
What aspects of the problem of induction are simplified if you consider the problem using the B-theory of time?
A rough idea why this might be relevant:
First consider an urn with a finite number of ...
