Does inductive reasoning lead to knowledge?
in [Logic]
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From: John Stafford on 1 Jan 2010 21:37 Aldoraz, someone just wrote to me "Go to google and type in 'john stafford winona'" There be me in the second photo. Just so you know I am corporeal. Sleep well.
From: Patricia Aldoraz on 1 Jan 2010 23:31 On Jan 2, 1:30 pm, John Stafford <n...(a)droffats.ten> wrote: > Now, shall we return to the subject or do you wish to continue playing > on this silly see-saw? You have never been on the subject and never shown you have the slightest clue about it.
From: John Stafford on 1 Jan 2010 23:42 In article <3754c3cd-4f92-4e5f-9648-8a04b7c19b5c(a)l30g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>, Patricia Aldoraz <patricia.aldoraz(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Jan 2, 1:30�pm, John Stafford <n...(a)droffats.ten> wrote: > > > Now, shall we return to the subject or do you wish to continue playing > > on this silly see-saw? > > You have never been on the subject and never shown you have the > slightest clue about it. Your claim has no relation to reality. For over a couple dozen posts you have preferred to insult rather than address the question and issues, so I must believe you have exhausted your intellectual resources. So be it. Bye.
From: Patricia Aldoraz on 2 Jan 2010 01:17 On Jan 2, 3:42 pm, John Stafford <n...(a)droffats.ten> wrote: > In article > <3754c3cd-4f92-4e5f-9648-8a04b7c19...(a)l30g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>, > Patricia Aldoraz <patricia.aldo...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Jan 2, 1:30 pm, John Stafford <n...(a)droffats.ten> wrote: > > > > Now, shall we return to the subject or do you wish to continue playing > > > on this silly see-saw? > > > You have never been on the subject and never shown you have the > > slightest clue about it. > > Your claim has no relation to reality. > > For over a couple dozen posts you have preferred to insult rather than > address the question and issues, so I must believe you have exhausted > your intellectual resources. So be it. > > Bye. I really hope so. You have made this promise before but you are just another lying usenet guy. Your contributions have been obscure shitty little statements like "Deduction depends on induction" and stuff like "Go read Hume" and "induction is well known to be used to gain knowledge". This sort of limp nonsense. Compare this with people like me who say make continuous and genuine attempts to explain (whether they succeed or not is not quite the point, the point is to try) with: "In the context of a discussion on induction, it is a reasonable thing to ask what a piece of inductive reasoning looks like. What is it about it that specifically makes it appropriate to call it "inductive"? This argument: This A is B, This A is B, ..... ----------------- All As are Bs or even This A is B, This A is B, ..... --------------------- Probably As are Bs is, at least, some sort of recognizable pattern of an argument that can be called *inductive* to contrast it with a deductive argument like This A is a B This A is a B --------- Some As are Bs "The idea here is that people think there are perfectly good arguments like the above that are not deductive and so let's call them inductive! "But they are not *good* arguments at all, they never are, no matter how many cases are piled up in the premises. It is not just that they are not deductive, it is that they do not seem to have any *reasoning power*, there seems not even a *weak* force between the premises and the conclusion. "Reasoning power? I refer to the power that avoids The Gambler's Fallacy. You see, no matter how many times a penny comes up tails, it does not follow in any way at all that it will come up tails on the next throw. It is not even probable! Nor is the likelihood of heads any better. There is no reasoning connection between the premise data and the conclusion. "Some people say that there is a more sophisticated idea of induction that does not involve the above simplistic patterns. OK. I am listening. What are these more sophisticated ideas that identify something aptly to be called induction? It is no use merely pointing to the various things scientists do because they do too many things! The inductive bit gets lost in the haze! "Some people have thought to say that scientists *induce* things by thinking up patterns that the data in the premises of so called inductive arguments suggest to their minds. But the trouble with this is that this does not make for any actual argument. Patterns are sometimes ten a penny. Any finite set of data points, any number of so called inductive premises likely fit an infinite number of possible patterns. It is often a remarkable achievement for humans to even think of one! But that act of thinking up a pattern, a possible theory, is not any kind of persuasive *argument* in itself. That may well be called part of a man's efforts to think through a scientific problem, it might even loosely called reasoning. But that bit in itself is not any persuasive forceful reasoning. "That scientist X thinks up one pattern and scientist Y thinks up another contrary pattern can be described as both of them inducing different things from the data. But there is nothing in this kind of psychological induction to say the least thing about whether one is good *reasoning* and the other bad. "It is just a psychological trick that trained and gifted scientists get up to! The testing of theories is the main game but that game is a game of deduction." You are a fool Stafford and considering your rudeness I will not miss you if you stop following me about. You are not getting or understanding the least thing so do what most people here do and ignore me. At least Zinnic was starting to ask a few pertinent questions. You are such a sad lot!
From: jmfbahciv on 2 Jan 2010 08:30
M Purcell wrote: > On Dec 31 2009, 8:37 pm, John Stafford <n...(a)droffats.ten> wrote: >> M Purcell <sacsca...(a)aol.com> wrote: >> >>> Sometimes approximations are good enough and necessary to arrive at >>> timely decisions. Even if our idealized mathematical models were >>> accurate, the measurements used to verify them are imprecise. Science >>> is practiced by imperfect human beings with limited prior knowledge >>> and imagination. And the standard to which both are compared is a >>> nature knowable by virtue of our limited senses, thus the Uncertainty >>> Principle and an Universe expanding beyond our powers of observation. >>> I believe our knowledge is based on comparisons with ourselves and >>> fundamentally anthropomorphic. >> The human being navigates life largely by the process we call Inductive, >> and most often at an automatic behavior level. >> >> Induction at the highly focused and critical level (not automatic), is >> how one builds towards a thesis. >> >> Induction does lead to knowledge in that it is shown to be reasonable >> (to use Patricia's term) or it does not weather scientific methodology. >> >> Regardless, each outcome does lead to knowledge. >> >> It is truly that simple. > > I was simply trying to move on to a definition of knowledge although > I'm sure that has also been endlessly debated. Although a critical > compairson of inductive conclusions with observations does determine > thier validity, I doubt the invalidity of an inductive conclusion > would be considered knowledge. But that's the most valuable piece of knowledge...what doesn't work. /BAH |