Talk:Problem of induction

Old Stuff

This statement seems out of left field. I find it kinda crazy and even offensive to respectable scientists and maybe even philosophers.:

"The problem calls into question all empirical claims made in everyday life or through the scientific method."

It most certainly does NOT apply to modern science. In fact, the modern scientific method only uses induction purely to reinforce and balance the resulting outcome. I think it could be debated that the scientific method as it's used today does not include inductive reasoning at all and in fact exists partly to prevent it from influencing the results (see falsifiability and other comments below). And what the heck are "Empirical claims made in everyday life?" Not scientific, I'm sure. This sentence sounds like "Scientific Method Denial" if such a thing exists. I'm posting this in the discussion page instead of taking a hatchet to the text because I'm just a humble research scientist and I don't "have a background in philosophy" and I'm still new at this. If I've miss something big here, lemme know. Otherwise, I'm going to axe this whole statement.Swiftek (talk) 09:26, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This sort of nonsense is not helpful in this article:

"Induction regarding the laws of nature is justified in practice by the fact that we would cease to exist if they change significantly. In addition, to a great extent they are based on a few symmetries, each of which can be broken only once."

If you don't have a background in philosophy, particularly epistemology or the philosophy of science, please do not waste other wikipedians time by posting sophmoric crap like the material above in a technical article like this one. It is hard enough for a well-versed philosopher to write a good article on this topic. B 02:37, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Do we need this page? I suggest it be re-directed to inductive reasoning. It adds no content that is not better explained in the longer article. The stuff on Nelson Goodman is useless until someone writes an article on him worth linking to. Banno 08:35, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Banno, there is much more to be written on this article as well as on the related inductive reasoning article. The article on inductive reasoning should briefly refer to the problem of induction, but the problem of induction should not be confused with inductive reasoning itself. Both terms, "problem of induction" and "inductive reasoning", are also fixed phrases for their distinct issues, and folks who are looking for info on one would be surprised to find it tucked in under the heading of another and have to wade thru the article to get info on the subject matter they are looking for. We don't merge articles on wikipedia just because they are stubs... —B 13:56, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, B. I see your point. But you will have to help me here. What content will be included in this article that would not be appropriate in the other? A quick look will show that the inductive reasoning article is, as it should be, a discussion of the problem of induction. In what way do you see the problem of induction as being a "distinct issue" apart from the justification of inductive reasoning?Banno 19:11, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hey, Banno. Inductive reasoning isn't a discusion of the problem of induction. Otherwise it would need to be retitled from "inductive reasoning" to the "problem of inductive reasoning". It is or should be an article on: what inductive reasoning is (or as some call it, "inductive logic"). Along with its encyclopediac definition, it would include examples of it (written in formal logic, not just plain english); how it is or isn't used in science or philosophy; who recognized it; how it differs from deductive logic and whatever else I cant think of at the moment. It should make a brief reference to the justification of inductive reasoning with a link to the article that discusses the "problem of [justifying] induct[ive reasoning]" usually referred to as the problem of induction. —B 20:10, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)

I still can't see a clear difference; Unless there is a loud protest, I'll move the stuff from inductive reasoning to here in a few days. Banno 10:36, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'm sorry if you can't distinguish Inductive reasoning and the problem of induction: one obviously is an article on what induction is and the other is an article on the philosophical problem of induction. Don't merge them or I will revert. What is inane, however, is your recent creation of the hypothetico-deductive method article as if that material is supposed to differ somehow from what should be in the article on deductive reasoning. What you need to do is move the material from the hypothetico-deductive method with a redirect and merge it into the article on deductive reasoning. B 16:59, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)

All of what you describe would be equally at home in problem of induction. But I have no intention of getting into an rv. war with someone who thinks hypothetico-deductive method is the same as deductive reasoning. Thanks for demonstrating such an open and cooperative attitude.Banno 19:58, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I erred regarding my comment on hypothetico-deductive method. It does deserve its own article separate from deduction. My apologies. B 05:33, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks. Banno 10:43, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Look at me change my mind and compromise some more: go ahead and merge problem of induction into induction if you please. I think it is possible that the material under the problem of induction may eventually become too large and unwieldy in the induction article and will need to be spun off into an article of its own again. However, after some more thought and given the practices on other wikipedia articles, I no longer object at this point. B 21:51, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

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Note that I have moved Inductive reasoning to Induction where it should be. B 21:51, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

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I think the rock-toe example recently added (by BoNoMoJo I believe) should be deleted. It really adds nothing and just clutters the definition. If the example is worth including, it should be placed after the definition. Fairandbalanced 00:15, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Pay attention Fairandbalanced or figure out how to use wikipedia better...then you don't have to speculate who made the changes. Ww made the changes, not me. B 03:56, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)

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The material on falsificationism is not particularly relevant here, namely:

Sir Karl Popper bypassed the 'problem' by noting that science actually does not rely on induction, but developed the notion of falsification as a way around the problem of induction, actually testing possible hypotheseses by experiment. Popper replaced induction with deduction, making modus tollens the centrepiece of his theory. On this account, when assessing a theory one should pay greater heed to data which is in disagreement with the theory than to data which is in agreement with it. Popper went further and stated that an hypothesis which does not allow of such experimental text is outside the bounds of science. This was his doctrine of falsificationism.

Popper's work on falsificationism was not directed at the problem of induction; falsificationism was more of response to the logical positivists' verificationism or confirmationism. B 02:12, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

See my comments in talk:falsifiability on this issue. Popper clearly intended his theory to be a solution to the problem of induction, and says so. Nevertheless, I will re-work the paragraph. Banno 09:07, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Can anyone adjust the Problem of Induction Page? I accidently lost a line at the bottom of the summary while attempting to edit. Any help?

Popper

Karl Popper did in fact claim to have resolved the problem of induction through his deductive approach to science, but I think that as the paragraph appears in the article at the current moment, it is biased toward proponents of Popper's insistence on his having done away with induction. The debate as it actually stands is not so definitively in favor of Popper. Many of his critics have pointed out that induction is implicit in his method of deduction as the falsification of a theory is itself a scientific claim, and as such, for a falsification to be so incontrovertibly accepted as Popper believed it should, it would have to rely on induction since induction would necessarily be the manner of logical inference used to demonstrate the universality of a theory about another theory having been falsified. Batman Jr. 03:52, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I need some help here. Has Salmon's criticism of Popper been addressed? I need more info so I can make up my mind as to where my own world view lies. If someone has any comments that go beyond something fitting to this article, contact me directly at EimacDude_at_aol_dot_com

ThVa 11:26, 18 Dec 2007 (UTC)

Stove

I'm thinking David Stove should be mentioned here, because he marshals arguments against Hume, Popper, and Goodman, all of whom are mentioned in this article. I wish I were able to present his views myself, but his technical writing is beyond me. Two complete topical works of his are available online: [Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Facility/4118/dcs/popper/popper.html], and [Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Facility/4118/dcs/hume/hume.html].

I think that this should be included in the main article as a critique of Popper. Wesley Salmon argues this point very well. The problem with Hempel is that he agrees that falsification says nothing about what is true, just what is not. Corroboration is not confirmation. But what grounds do we have then to trust a corroborated theory over a none corroborated theory? If one uses a corroborated theory to act on he/she is still guilty of induction. Reesebw (talk) 05:27, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Bayesian inference

The following submission was recently placed by ananymous IP user at the head end of page, and I have moved it into normal positioning on the page...Kenosis 03:02, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi all, where's Bayesian inference? It was my (limited) understanding that many philosophers appeal to Bayes to explain why they hold belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. No matter what the initial a priori probability is that the sun will rise, the a posteriori probability eventually converges to 1 after many many dawns. Bayes is referenced and discussed in inductive reasoning. Is there an expert that can help, or tell me that I'm all wet? Thanks.--63.138.93.195 02:25, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Shall we copy some of the content from the Sunrise Problem to here? --winterstein (talk) 14:29, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Inductive Reasoning v Problem of Induction

From the discussion above, and from the reverts that have been occurring, I think we need to be clear on the distinction between Induction and "the problem of induction". So: the "problem" is determining whether or not inductive reasoning can be logically justified.

A good introduction can be found here[1].

If you think this is inaccurate Nox (bot?), please use the discussion page before editing so boldly.

--Gdickeson 14:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Removed original research (Kevin Kirchman notable?)

I removed some material posted by User:Kalexander which seems to be based on his own original research (see the link that had been inserted at the end of the removed section). From what I can tell, this doesn't seem to be an established approach to the problem of induction. flowersofnight (talk) 15:36, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

It has been re-insertered with a link to "Kevin Kirchman", who is not particularly notable. Not in the company of Popper and Goodman, anyway.1Z 15:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Time will tell. 1Z 11:55, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't even appear to deal with the problem of induction at all (as stated by Hume, et al. -- viz., whether inductive inference is a doxastically and propositionally justifiable form of discursion); it rather seems to address, very basically, the possibility of induction and the mechanism by which the mind makes inductive inferences. I'm not aware of any philosophers doubting the possibility or logistics of induction (Hume said on the contrary that he is certain we do make inductive inferences). So I don't see how this section is relevant to the article at all, notability notwithstanding. » MonkeeSage « 17:47, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

No one "notable" among the notable may doubt the existence of inductive process. But the justification of a concept doxastically and propositionally (and now, presumably, notably) was not Hume's issue. His issue was simply how can we justify an idea rationally from its formation as a generalization. All the new terminology tacked on to his original inquiry does not necessarily belong, nor are the newer views a reasonable standard from which to evaluate discussions of his original problem. 1Z 12:14, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

It seems to be int he Randian tradition , and Randians do tend to assume that you can solve problems by giving an account of psychological mechanisms. 1Z 21:20, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

This is an argument method to categorize one persons new idea as another's, in order to discredit the new idea. As the comment below shows, this attempt is unfair and not reasonable.

1Z 12:18, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, I'm not sure about that...as I read Rand, her Objectivism is a form of Realism, which bases justification (at least propositional justification) on reasons, not causes. For example, we may be able to fully describe the psychology, process and context of belief that hens lay eggs because they are possessed by evil spirits, and this can perhaps supply doxastic/personal justification for the belief, but I don't think Randians would argue that it can supply propositional justification for the content of the belief. And as I read Hume and Russell on the problem of induction, that is the crux of the matter: whether our personal beliefs about induction can be propositionally justified -- whether our beliefs can be objectively proven to match the way things really are. So even if we can prove the possibility of induction and describe its logistics, or even provide doxastic justification, this doesn't do anything to solve the main problem of induction as described by Hume and Russell. » MonkeeSage « 10:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

So, is it the case that, on the basis of notability guidelines and standards of relevance, this section should go? » MonkeeSage « 04:26, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Cut material

Kevin Kirchman

To induce facts from the past is part of what we mean when we talk about "reason" (we also are refering to deduction, a distinct mental process). It's meaningless to discuss whether we should "reasonably" trust induction: induction is part of what reason is all about.

The Problem of Induction is fundamentally about 'ideas', and whether or not they are rational. Aristotle established the concept of inductive reasoning, which is really a misnomer, and is one cause for the misunderstanding of the nature of inductive processes.

Concepts are formed by particular mental methods of behaviour. Concept formation is the basic process of forming all ideas, or identifying symbolic representations that have universal applicability.

The discovery of concepts that have universal applicability is not, therefore, a rational process per se. Validating that the concepts are universals, however, is rational, as deduction from concepts is used in the process of scientific validation. One can assert a universal (an inductive concept) by simply asserting a broad spatial or temporal scope of a simple descriptive concept, such as 'this dog has four legs'. By modifying the statement, it is possible to create an inductive concept, which may or may not be valid universally.

If we say 'all dogs have four legs', we have asserted an inductive concept. It remains to be seen whether this concept is valid or not--whether any particular referents of the concept contradict the assertion, for instance, a dog born with three legs. When Karl Popper discussed falsification of theory, he was referring to the identification of evidence which contradicted inductive abstractions.

Returning to the Problem of Induction, asking whether or not it is rational to assert inductive concepts is really too broad a question. The real issue is can we identify some concepts which have been asserted that do have universal validity. If we can, then we should ask more specifically is there a class of concepts which can have universal validity, and what is the nature of that class of concepts.

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Aristotle established the concept of inductive reasoning, which is really a misnomer

Because? You previously said induction was part of reason.

Induction is _generally_ considered as part of reasoning behaviour, largely because of Aristotle's confusion. 1Z 13:00, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

The Problem of Induction is fundamentally about 'ideas', and whether or not they are rational.

You previously said reasoning was a process.

No, I said deduction was a process. 1Z 13:00, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Concept formation is the basic process of forming all ideas, or identifying symbolic representations that have universal applicability.

Why universal? Why not just more general than particular?

Because as human beings we have sought knowledge, which is universal concepts. And your comment presumes the lack of this explanation to be a failing in the rest of the discussion. It wasn't a mind dump. 1Z 13:00, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

The discovery of concepts that have universal applicability is not, therefore, a rational process per se.

You previously said induction was part of "reason".

No, I said Aristotle confused the issue by including induction as reasoning. The philosophic community, of supposed notable persons, still considers that induction is reasoning. For Aristotle, induction and deduction were reasoning.

But induction is a distinct mental process from deduction, therefore it is not intelligent to call it inductive reasoning, when a deductive syllogism is a mental behaviour, while inductive concept formation is a distinct mental behaviour.

My point is that Hume, using Aristotle as a starting point under the presumption that deduction and induction were types of reasoning, attempted to justify inductive concept formation from a deductive standpoint.

His argument, as Bertrand Russel puts it, "Just because the sun rises today, how can we say it will rise tomorrow?"

Well, from the Kirchman perspective (obviously presently failing the epistemological standard of notability), we can assert the inductive concept "the sun always rises" (limited in its temporal scope intelligently given our current knowledge of the Sun's lifespan), validating it by methods of science. Then we can use this concept in a chain of reasoning:

If the sun always rises (with temporal scope limitations).

Tomorrow is a new day.

=> Therefore the sun will rise (with temporal scope limitations).

Because the philosophical 'alchemists' do not want to acknowledge my historically distinct epistemological theory, which includes new theories of validation, induction, deduction, ethics and concepts, that was itself validated in use with commercial applications by many of Global 500 companies, the epistemological standard of "notability" is questionable, if those making the "note" have biases against the advance of human understanding. Mendel was not notable, nor were many other innovators in the history of science.1Z 13:20, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

When Karl Popper discussed falsification of theory, he was referring to the identification of evidence which contradicted inductive abstractions.

In a context where there is a differece between propositions and concepts.

If we say 'all dogs have four legs', we have asserted an inductive concept.

Inductive proposition.

No. Inductive concept, as redefined by my theoretical model. Propositions are only symbolic representations of concepts. And a concept does not have to be subjectively "believed" to be a concept. It can be held mentally without commitment. 1Z 13:24, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Returning to the Problem of Induction, asking whether or not it is rational to assert inductive concepts is really too broad a question. The real issue is can we identify some concepts which have been asserted that do have universal validity.

That's easy We just have to examine the entire universe...

Not true. Do you know how else we might test the validity of a concept of knowledge? 1Z 13:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

If we can, then we should ask more specifically is there a class of concepts which can have universal validity, and what is the nature of that class of concepts.

Ask? Do you have the answer or not? 1Z 22:13, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Of course. Why else would I ask the question. But then, if I am not noteworthy, then how could my knowledge be accepted by those whose standard of knowledge is that which is approved by some group of others, who may indeed be threatened by a chemistry that challenges their alchemy.1Z 13:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Statements of the problem

Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and numerous others up until at least the late 19th century have considered inductive reasoning the basis of scientific method—indeed inductive reasoning is used today, though in a more balanced interaction with deductive reasoning and abductive reasoning.

Of course inductive reasoning is still used today. Even if this gets phrased better, it is unsourced and would belong in inductive reasoning, not here. –Pomte 12:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

References

Goodman

Seems very complex- a triffle clearer please? Larklight (talk) 21:47, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Added Ancient Origins section

I added the section on Sextus and Weintraub. ImperfectlyInformed (talk) 07:34, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

different from/different than

'Different than' is Standard in English. Admittedly, maybe it's not quite as accepted among grammarians as 'different from' -- however, it sounds better. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 17:15, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

That link observes, "Different than has been much criticized by commentators" and concludes, "best advice for Formal and Oratorical levels: stick with different from." "Different than" is rarely used in writing. The List of English words with disputed usage says "different from" is undisputed while "different than" is disputed. Why switch from an undisputed usage to a disputed one? More to the point, "different to" 'sounds better' to some of us -- that doesn't seem like a good basis for deciding. ThisIsMyWikipediaName (talk) 18:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Mathematical induction section

The mathematical induction segment is simply incorrect, and doesn't have anything to do with scientific induction. Mathematical induction is a theorem which holds over natural numbers, and is equivalent to the fact that natural numbers are well ordered (every nonempty subset of natural numbers has a least member) This is a deductive procedure and has the flavor of induction, but it isn't induction.

I didn't write that section, but it says that mathematical induction does not have the same issue that scientific induction does because it is based on deductive reasoning. So I'm not sure what your problem is. II | (t - c) 22:27, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

It's out of place, if mathematical induction is on here then why not epsilon-induction and transfinite induction too? My first impression was that someone was trying to equate the process to scientific reasoning, but even if that were not the case (as you pointed out) it's out of place on this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.111.56.192 (talk) 06:13, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I just checked some of the sources, and they even have mathematical induction on the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. I think it's out of place, but if it's on the major sources then I guess it's okay, my initial thought was that it was just misleading to have something from the realm of mathematics on an article about induction (unless perhaps to speak of the status of axioms). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.111.56.192 (talk) 06:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that it's out of place to mention mathematical induction in an article on (the problem of) induction. Read Polya. Of course there is no "problem" of mathematical induction, but the thought processes are similar. 142.151.170.136 (talk) 15:11, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Mathematical induction is certainly based on statistical recurrence, just as scientific induction is, so there was no reason to remove that section.

"To over-simplify the issue, it could be said that mathematics replaces the question "Why should we use inductive arguments at all?" with "What conclusions do we reach if we allow certain kinds of inductive arguments?"

No inductive arguments are allowed; as said above, math induction is deductive. –Pomte 08:35, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Lewis

Does anyone remember Descartes making that argument somewhere in the meditations sometime after the cogito? I seem to remember him proving god's existence in order to justify the consistency of the world (thus we can rely on our empirical senses w/ god's existence validated). Asking this because maybe he should be included even if he didn't use the precise terminology? --Mr Bucket (talk) 07:56, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Ordinary Language Solution

Why is there no reference to a Wittgensteinian-type solution to the problem? OLP solutions seem to be by far the superior ones in this case, and I think should be mentioned in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.65.124.182 (talk) 12:00, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Relation to "Problem of evil"?

GuyHimGuy, you added a link to Problem of evil in the "See also" section, but I don't understand the connection to the induction problem. Maybe you could explain your reasons? Thanks in advance. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 18:33, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for addressing the matter Jochen Burghardt. Although the article isn't part of the religion portal, the ongoing Atheism-theism debate includes the problem of evil and the problem of induction as arguments for and against religion. I came across the Problem of Induction article while surfing the religion and atheism portals. The reason I surfed the portals was to find valid arguments for the debate. I just felt adding the internal link would make it less of a burden for the Wikireaders sharing the same interests as me. Although Probability theory and the Problem of evil both have nothing to do with the article, the problem of evil differs in that it would actually be useful for readers. I agree; many of the internal links in the "See Also" section should go. However, Apophasis and The Problem of Evil should be kept. They can actually be useful to some Wikipedians; no less so than the Law of large numbers, which was also kept. With a small degree of usefulness, the link is worthy of taking up some space. After all, WP is not paper so 22 extra bytes is no biggie. If the community doesn't mind would it be possible for the two internal links specified be re-added? Thanks. GuyHimGuy (talk) 02:01, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining. If you want to, add a link to this article (and the Problem of Evil page) to a page on the Atheism-theism debate. But this article has nothing to do with the problem of evil (or Apophasis, unless you care to explain), so a See Also link is not appropriate. In contrast, all of the current See also links (including Probability theory and Law of large numbers) are actually related to Induction. By your logic, every Wikipedia article would have hundreds of See also links, which would make it impossible for anyone to find the relevant ones. Please see the guideline at WP:SEEALSO. -hugeTim ^(talk) 02:13, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi GuyHimGuy. I agree with Hugetim: in order to help Wikireaders who share your interest in atheism/theism to find arguments for that debate, a link from there to here (i.e. from some atheism/theism article to problem of induction) would be appropriate, not vice versa. I (still) can't imagine what readers interested in philosophical induction could benefit from being referred to the problem of evil, or to apophasis. - As a side remark: contrary to Hugetim, I think that the notion, although not the article, probability theory has a strong connection to induction; see e.g. the introduction of the publication [Rudolf Carnap (1947). "On the Application of Inductive Logic" (PDF). Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 8: 133–148.] However, the wikipedia article is currently only about the "frequency concept of probability", while induction relates to the "logical concept of probability or degree of confirmation" (quotes from p.133). - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 11:26, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Resolved. Thanks for the responses guys. I'll just leave the article as is for now. I now agree that the problem of evil has little to do with scientific philosophy. I guess readers can simply find this page the same why I did; a Google search concerning the reliability of science. GuyHimGuy (talk) 15:59, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Induction Solves Demarcation Problem

Consider this example of the way induction must work in a particular science, specifically chemistry.

Mendeleev's periodic table was produced by noting the periodicity inherent in the physical and chemical properties of elements. For a long time, the table had weak acceptance, akin to the former pseudoscience of alchemy. Then along comes the particle physicists and Wolfgang Pauli's exclusion principle, which finally allowed a scientific explanation of both the electron configuration of atomic elements, and also the reason for the various groupings into periods, groups, etc.

This is already an example of how induction works in an actual science (where it had previously failed in alchemy). Isaac Newton himself was something of an alchemist. Where he succeeded brilliantly in physics, he failed miserably as a chemist.

The process of scientific iinduction continued with discovery of new chemical and later transuranium elements, always with the solid understanding of the periodic table serving as the foundation.

To throw induction completely out of the scientific method as Hume and Popper proposed is sheer folly. Moreover, a pseudoscience cannot possibly build on itself the way that science does. Induction applied to extending pseudoscience by even a tiny amount results in collapse of the premise(s) on which the pseudoscience is based. So, if Hume and Popper were so interested in the demarcation problem, why would they begin the process by throwing out the best working principle of the scientific method? It's bad enough that so much of science needs to rely on trial and error without throwing out all of the instrumentation that had previously been successful in revealing how the universe works. I suggest that we throw out the ideas of philosophers like Hume and Popper instead. Danshawen (talk) 23:54, 4 June 2014 (UTC)danshawen

Roy Bhaskar and Critical Realism

Y'all need to get Bhaskar and Critical Realism on this page!

Bhaskar says of Hume "[o]ne finds in the Treatise an eminently sensible realist methodology’, but that this description of scientific work is ‘in almost total dislocation from, and certainly lacking any foundation in, his radical epistemology’. (p. 41)

Bhaskar describes the scientific approach to establishing a law of nature:

In the process of the establishment of a law of nature three questions may be asked:

(i) is there an empirical regularity which constitutes a prima facie candidate for a law?

(ii) is there some reason, other than the regularity, why the predicates instantiated in the law-like statement should be conjoined?

(iii) is this reason located in the enduring powers of things and the transfactually active mechanisms of nature?

— Bhaskar p154

He then goes on to note that, "At the Humean level laws just are empirical regularities." (p. 155)

In comparison, science as practiced works on i, ii, and iii:

Most science proceeds by way of a two-tiered method designed to identify invariances in nature, normally under conditions which are experimentally produced and controlled, and to explain them by reference to enduring mechanisms. It is in the movement from the identification of an invariance to the mechanisms and structures that account for it that the logic of scientific discovery must be found.

— Bhaskar p159

In other words, Hume was just saying, you see a bunch of cases X and they have trait Y. Induction would say that the next case of X will also have trait Y, but this is illogical. You could see something else. But Bhaskar is saying that we know more about the world, on a number of different levels, and we're being more exacting about mechanisms.

Hume would say, Just because of all of your experience with ice cubes melting in the heat, you can't logically say that an ice cube in the sahara desert on a hot day will melt because, well, you know, maybe it won't! Nyah Nyah Nyah!

Bhaskar would say, well, we know rather a lot about ice cubes on hot days, not just from repeated experience (although that is pretty strong) but from our knowledge of different mechanisms. And so (to simplify, Bhaskar does tend to rather go on and on) the ice cube will melt -- or if it doesn't, there will be a good reason (it's in a freezer!).

All references are to Bhaskar, Roy. "A Realist Theory of Science." (2008). Pigkeeper (talk) 22:54, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

References

Kant

Shouldn't he get a mention? Straw Cat (talk) 03:48, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

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Induction& deduction

WP DEPENDS ON INDUCTION & DEDUCTION. THEIR MEANING SHOULD BE FIRM. This encyclopedia accepts the premise of enumerative induction that the more editors who agree on the content of an article, the more accurate and useful that content. Induction is practiced on every TALK page. Editors generalize from a few observations, and deduce concrete conclusions from their generalizations.

WP contains 4 repetitive and fragmentary articles on induction: Inductive reasoning, The problem of induction; New riddle of induction, Inductivism. I would like to rectify this chaotic situation by rewriting and merging these 4 articles, retaining only the reasoning title. I ask you—a participant in relevant TALK pages—to judge my rewrite/merge project: SHOULD I PROCEED? Below is the current proposed outline:

Definitions. Induction generalizes conceptually; deduction concludes empirically.

David Hume, philosopher condemner.

Pierre Duhem, physicist user.

John Dewey, philosopher explainer.

Bertrand Russell, philosopher condemner.

Karl Popper, philosopher condemner.

Steven Sloman, psychologist explainer.

Lyle E. Bourne, Jr., psychologist user.

Daniel Kahneman, psychologist user.

Richard H. Thaler economist user.

Please respond at Talk:Inductive reasoning. TBR-qed (talk) 15:58, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Limited description of Popper's position on induction

This excerpt does not present all aspects of Popper's position on induction:

According to Popper, the problem of induction as usually conceived is asking the wrong question: it is asking how to justify theories given they cannot be justified by induction. Popper argued that justification is not needed at all, and seeking justification "begs for an authoritarian answer". Instead, Popper said, what should be done is to look to find and correct errors.

It does not incorporate Popper's organic view of science. To appreciate the importance of this organic view of science, another question must be considered, which is also a wrong question in Popper's view: how do we explain the inductive success of science, if induction is not valid logically? Popper argued that we do not have to explain this, because it's not happening that way. It's not only that justification is not needed, because this is compatible with the belief that there is an inductive process in science to be justified or not. Popper says that there is actually no inductive process in science, which is a much stronger statement. If there is no inductive process at all, of the Hume's kind or of any other kind, how can we explain that we have laws to put to the test? This is where Popper's organic view of science is important. A key point here is that an organic process does not have to be inductive at all, it does not even have to be a mental process. Yet such organic process is responsible for how amoebas evolved, etc. For Popper, scientific conjectures are the result of an organic process. Does it follow laws? Of course it does, but trying to understand this is beyond the scope of epistemology in Popper's view. It involves too many irrational aspects of the mind, etc. Therefore, one cannot even argue about the role of observations in that process and an induction process assumes that we start from observations. A very strong argument proposed by Popper against the idea that we start from observations is that observations are theory-ladenned and therefore there is no such a thing as an observation without first a theory. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:29, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Related bias in the article

In my view, the entire article is biased and makes Wikipedia affirms that there is an inductive process in science and in common reasoning. This bias shows up right at the start in the following excerpt (though it attributes it to Broad, putting this view at the start is a bias) :

The problem calls into question all empirical claims made in everyday life or through the scientific method, and, for that reason, the philosopher C. D. Broad said that "induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy."

It also shows up in the picture of the raising sun and its caption (in this case, it is not attributed):

Usually inferred from repeated observations: "The sun always rises in the east."

I suspect that it shows up at other places in the article.

Usually corroborated by repeated observations: "The sun always rises in the east."

Usually not corroborated by repeated observations: "When someone dies, it's never me."

Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:04, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Dominic Mayers: You could just go ahead and delete the sentence with the C. D. Broad quotation. Anyone who objects can raise their objections here. According to wikiquote:C. D. Broad, the quotation is a paraphrase anyway.

As for the picture caption that you mentioned, I could be wrong but both picture captions in the article strike me as a little tongue-in-cheek. I don't think you're supposed to draw any conclusions from the rising sun picture caption by itself; you're first supposed to read the caption of the rising sun picture, and then read the caption of the funeral picture, and then realize what the problem is with the reasoning in the first caption. It's illustrating the problem of induction through a visual joke. Biogeographist (talk) 19:07, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

We don't want to take joke too seriously. So, I can only answer by, in my opinion, an even funnier joke (see pictures on the left). Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:27, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

I approve! Biogeographist (talk) 23:46, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

I address this issue in my suggested revision. See below.TBR-qed (talk) 21:03, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Is this article obsolete?

In the near future, I intend to revise the article Problem of induction. I am motivated by the 2005 article with that name by Sloman and Lagnado in the Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, edited by Holyoak and Morrison. That article, it seems to me, makes this article obsolete in 3 ways. It eliminates detailed history of induction, easily available in descriptions of philosophical schools. It distinguishes kinds of inductive methodologies that are rarely noted. And it provides examples of current work on the topic, which is not elsewhere available. I ask editors interested in this topic to read Sloman and Lagnado and respond on this talk page whether they share my judgment of obsolescence or not.TBR-qed (talk) 15:02, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

This proposed revision may be related to what TBR-qed proposed at Talk:Inductive reasoning § WP DEPENDS ON INDUCTION & DEDUCTION. THEIR MEANING SHOULD BE FIRM. Editors should read that discussion, where there was some opposition to TBR-qed's ideas.

Regarding the article by Sloman and Lagnado, note that the authors are psychologists, and most of their chapter is focused "exclusively on the psychology of categorical induction" (p. 101) as part of a "descriptive account of inductive reasoning" (p. 99) as opposed to the "justificatory" concerns of many philosophers (p. 96). It seems to me at first glance that some material from Sloman and Lagnado's chapter would be appropriate both in Problem of induction and in Inductive reasoning, but to limit the scope of this article to the scope of Sloman and Lagnado's article would likely be controversial since the "justificatory" concerns that Sloman and Lagnado consider less interesting or even obsolete were nevertheless important to many philosophers' understanding of the problem of induction. That's my first impression. Biogeographist (talk) 00:52, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I have just discovered your extended discussion, which I shall carefully study. Below is my response to your earlier comments. Thank you both for your acute observations. S&L are indeed psychologists who focus on the “psychology of categorical induction.” But their first 2 sentences—framing of the problem with Hume and the “fact” of sunrise— connects them directly to the WP article example of sunrise & its broader concern for justification. That is why I suggest relating 4 more scholars to S&L’s sample to show how modern scholars superficially adopt Goodman’s formalized knowledge while ignoring philosophical concerns—with negative results. I add Duhem & Dewey to show long-standing rejection of enumerative induction. I add Popper (who accepted the validity of sunrise) to support Hume & to critique S&L “induction as scientific methodology,” that conflates method of Duhem & Dewey with modern social science methods, including economist Thaler. I would leave [Inductive reasoning] & [Inductivism] unchanged to report more traditional treatments of induction. I have posted 2 sections of my draft revision in my sandbox, which I hope you can access and tell me your thoughts.TBR-qed (talk) 21:26, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Discussion where one participant did not read the chapter

I share the same view as Biogeographist. I will add that the main assumption underlying the Sloman and Lagnado article or any part of this article that is controversial would have to be attributed to the authors: we cannot make Wikipedia states a controversial point of view as if it was a general consensus. The main assumption of this article is that there exists a psychological induction principle, which needs to be explained. This assumption is never put in question in the article. For Popper, this assumption is non sense. Just sharing my personal understanding of Popper's argument. Human beings don't think with two categories of languages, one of them being specifically psychological. We have English, French, etc., but as far as reasoning is concerned these different languages are for the essential equivalent. There are, of course, some psychological, physiological, etc. processes behind the reasoning that is expressed in a language, but these are like different aspects of reasoning. Logic is just a formalization to explain our normal way of thinking. Of course, formally we can do whatever we want. We could have some inference rules that we qualify as "psychological" and others as (strictly) "logical", but all these rules have to interact, for example, the psychological rules might provide conjectures. All these rules together are just like a single logic with a psychological truth (with the obvious rule that logical truth implies psychological truth). All the well known arguments against induction would apply to that logic. Whether the truth is "psychological" or whatever makes no difference. It's just a new name for what we call truth. Here, let us recall that logic is a formalization for our normal way of thinking, that is, it always has been a model for our reasoning about real life. I share my understanding of the literature, because I am convinced that it's utopian to assume that editors can work together without a minimal shared understanding of the literature. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:08, 5 May 2020 (UTC) Since the 19th century, what differentiated psychologists such as Sloman and Lagnado from philosophers is that the psychologists did empirical research (experimental, quasi-experimental, survey, etc.): they gave tasks to subjects (humans, or animals in the case of animal psychology) and recorded how the subjects performed the tasks. (By the way, the disciplinary separation of psychology and philosophy had an effect on how many philosophers conceived of philosophy, as Martin Kusch explored in his 1995 book Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. That is a very interesting history, somewhat tangential here, but it relates to what Dominic Mayers said above about the relation between "psychological" and "logical". Catarina Dutilh Novaes has written some interesting things about this, for example in her 2012 book Formal Languages in Logic: A Philosophical and Cognitive Analysis.) In the 1990s, some philosophers began doing empirical research too (experimental philosophy), but philosophers typically are not engaged in original empirical research (experimental, quasi-experimental, survey, etc.) with human (or non-human animal) subjects. When Sloman and Lagnado focus their chapter on a "descriptive account of inductive reasoning", it means they are summarizing empirical studies that have given inductive reasoning tasks to subjects with the goal of trying to describe how people perform the tasks and what this tells us about their cognition during such tasks. But this "descriptive account of inductive reasoning" does not address many of the "justificatory" questions that have been posed (and answered) by philosophers about whether or to what degree or how inductive reasoning could lead to reliable knowledge. Biogeographist (talk) 18:38, 5 May 2020 (UTC) Actually, it's not entirely true that philosophers typically are not engaged in original empirical research. Most philosophers of science, certainly Feyerabend, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Popper have considered history as if it provided some kind of empirical basis. It is at a different scale and perhaps the laboratory scale is more scientific than the history scale, but the study of the growth of knowledge through history share some fundamental issues with the study of learning in a laboratory. In particular, the issue whether we use induction or not is similar in both cases. Lakatos hoped to find some form of inductivism where a measure of validity based on observed corroborations and falsifications would be correlated with verisimilitude, more than a measure based on falsifications alone can be. Why? Because he wanted to explain the growth of scientific knowledge, which falsifications alone cannot explain. Again, induction was the natural explanation. The same story repeats itself again and again. I will have to read the research in laboratory, but I would be surprised if it is fundamentally different. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:34, 5 May 2020 (UTC) Well, when researchers are asking subjects to do inductive reasoning tasks, it's different from behavior "in the wild" where people are not artificially constrained by the researchers' instructions! And the spatio-temporal scale of the world "in the wild" is vastly different. So it's very different indeed. Each time I used the term "empirical research" above, I qualified it with a parenthetical set to indicate that I meant a subset of empirical research, not historical or case study research. That may not have been clear because the "etc." that I used made the set indefinite. The subset of empirical research to which I was referring did not really characterize philosophy before the 1990s, and is still rare in philosophy as far as I have seen. I remember reading an article by philosophers of science, writing in the 1980s, who complained about the lack of empirical research in their discipline: Laudan, Larry; Donovan, Arthur; Laudan, Rachel; Barker, Peter; Brown, Harold; Leplin, Jarrett; Thagard, Paul; Wykstra, Steve (November 1986). "Scientific change: philosophical models and historical research". Synthese. 69 (2): 141–223. doi:10.1007/BF00413981. JSTOR 20116337. Nothing resembling the standards of testing that these very authors insist upon within science has ever been met by any of their theories about science. Those of us who claim some modest expertise in the logic of empirical inference have been notably indifferent about subjecting our own theories to empirical scrutiny, even though our own philosophies of science suggest that without such scrutiny we might well be building castles in air. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Biogeographist (talk) 21:01, 5 May 2020 (UTC) I understood what you meant. I still maintain that the fundamental issue of induction is similar in both cases, because it is very basic and universal. I might add that there are some aspects in the large scale of the history of science that is lost in the laboratory scale, but this is another story. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:20, 5 May 2020 (UTC) Just to be clear, what do you mean by "the fundamental issue of induction"? Biogeographist (talk) 21:24, 5 May 2020 (UTC) The same fundamental issue that existed between Lakatos and Popper. Zahar described it in these terms: Thus Popper and Lakatos differ only over the levels at which they locate non-rationality in science: Lakatos at the level of an inductive principle which justifies technology, and Popper at the lower-level of technology itself. — Zahar, THE POPPER-LAKATOS CONTROVERSY... In my words, Popper explained progress in science as the result of a connection with nature (at the level of the technology) whereas Lakatos adopted an irrational induction principle, which Popper considered as non sense. I disagree with Zahar that a connection with nature is irrational. On the contrary, it's the most natural thing possible, because obviously the laws of nature created human rationality and the thesis that at some point in evolution human rationality got severed is not so natural. When did it get severed? When life was created? When some part of the brain was created? When? What is most natural is that it never get severed, but only human rationality became more and more elaborated and thus appeared more and more independent, but there is no reason why it should be severed. Note that Zahar makes a mistake in analyzing Popper's position. He assumes that nature is like a provider of random numbers (the mutations) and this is why, he says, that it does not work, but obviously that is an incorrect model. You might not see the link with laboratory experiments. The link is that once we see that in science the most natural explanation is not induction, then it starts to be weird to consider that we use induction in smaller tasks. My guess is that there is no induction in the laboratory experiments and, most likely, the process can be explained using a simple probabilistic approach, which is consistent with logic. They must simply confuse ordinary statistical inference with induction. Dominic Mayers (talk) 00:07, 6 May 2020 (UTC) As I see it, the issue in your first paragraph is unrelated to the scope of Sloman and Lagnado's chapter, which is focused on how people deal with categorical induction problems that have been given to them by psychologists, and what the psychological research says about how people tend to think about such problems when psychologists pose those problems. The authors don't claim that induction is the engine of scientific progress. Despite the grand philosophical background in the first few pages of their chapter and the references to philosophy of science, the scope of the psychological research that they review is quite modest. Sloman and Lagnado claim at one point that induction is "one of the main activities of science" (while also citing "opposing views"): "According to one common view of science (Carnap, 1966; Hempel, 1965; Nagel, 1961; for opposing views, see Hacking, 1983; Popper, 1963), scientists spend much of their time trying to induce general laws about categories from particular examples" (p. 107). But this claim is not central or necessary. And since the psychological research that Sloman and Lagnado review shows "the apparent plurality of procedures and mechanisms that people use to make inductions", it seems to me this implies that what is called induction in philosophy of science is also a "plurality of procedures and mechanisms" (p. 111). They say: "We believe that the bag of tricks describes most completely how people go about making inductive leaps" (p. 112). If we were to make an analogy to philosophy of science, that sounds like Feyerabend, not like inductivism as traditionally understood! That didn't occur to me when I wrote my first comment above. Still, I think the scope of Sloman and Lagnado's article is narrower than what the scope of this article should be, even with my Feyerabendian analogy added. Biogeographist (talk) 01:47, 6 May 2020 (UTC) I am not sure that I understand what you wrote, but if the chapter "The problem of induction" final goal is not about induction as in the problem of induction (in science), but only about a related concept, then it does not seem a good source for this article and it does not have a good title. Dominic Mayers (talk) 02:13, 6 May 2020 (UTC) Sloman and Lagnado begin the article with a summary of Hume on the problem of induction, but as I said in my first comment above, the rest of the article is "descriptive" and not directly related to the "justificatory" concerns that many philosophers understood as the "problem of induction", so the title does seem to be like a bait-and-switch, and this Wikipedia article would be the same if it were modeled on Sloman and Lagnado's article. Controversial indeed. Biogeographist (talk) 10:15, 6 May 2020 (UTC) I realize that I had not understood your first comment. I assumed that the chapter was a form of support for inductivism. I am guilty of not having read carefully the part after the switch. Dominic Mayers (talk) 15:14, 6 May 2020 (UTC) I think there is a conflation in the literature of (description of) learning with (description of) induction, the latter being very difficult to distinguish from the former. I schematize the situation as follows. Let H be the current knowledge, O be the observation. H + O might allow an ordinary statistical inference of C. That's not induction. It is only induction when C cannot be logically and statistically justified by H + O. The problem is that it's very difficult to determine H. What is the original "knowledge" of a rat in a laboratory experiment? So, it's hard to describe an induction process and, most likely, there is no induction. In the history of science, we naively assume that it's different. We assume that before the discovery of Einstein's theory of general relativity H did not contain it at all. So, naively, we assume that there is an induction process when we move from H + O to C, where C includes Einstein's theory. Popper's answer is that, as in the case of a laboratory experiment, it's hard to define the initial H in the history of science, because we must include natural processes. Ultimately, H is all the "knowledge" in nature. So, Popper says, induction is a myth. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:27, 6 May 2020 (UTC) As I see it, Sloman and Lagnado's chapter does not make the assumption (call it the "inductivist assumption") that all learning is induction. (Not that you implied that it did.) Any psychologist today knows about many kinds of reasoning and learning. The statement that it's a myth that all learning is induction is irrelevant to people who have never assumed that all learning is induction! Perhaps Sloman and Lagnado did their bait-and-switch with the problem of induction because they don't subscribe to the assumptions that led to the problem of induction in the first place. (Something like this seems to be implied when they bid adieu to Hume on their second page: "we might accept that no reflective reasoning can justify our inductive inferences, but this does not entail that reflective reasoning cannot be the actual cause of some of our inferences.") For them categorical induction is just a kind of task that some psychologists have given to their subjects (and not a kind of task that could be given to rats, since it requires language) with the purpose of trying to explain their subjects' performance in those tasks. Biogeographist (talk) 19:04, 6 May 2020 (UTC) Perhaps some other kind of induction task could be given to rats, but not the tasks described in Sloman and Lagnado's chapter! Biogeographist (talk) 19:07, 6 May 2020 (UTC) The myth is not all learning is induction. The myth is that some learning can be inductive. One might define "induction" as learning that cannot be explained deductively, but this is the wrong definition and is another way to conflate induction with deductive learning but where the original knowledge is unknown. The correct definition of induction is a learning process that is explained with inference rules that are not deductive, which we would call inductive rules. The distinction is important, because the most natural thesis is that any occurrence of induction in valid learning is a myth and the only reason why we cannot explain a process deductively is simply that we don't know the original knowledge. I was not specifically concerned with the experiments described in Sloman and Lagnado's chapter. I was concerned with a conflation of these two concepts in general, in a context where we discuss induction. Only an absence of a distinction between these two forms of learning would be already problematic. There would be no problem if the distinction between these two forms of learning and the fact that one of them is a myth was folk's knowledge, but obviously it is not. Note that, if we only speak of learning and don't mention induction, I have nothing to say. My concern is bound to the standard use of induction to refer to non deductive inference rules. (Personally, I always felt that learning is a process that brings out knowledge that somehow I already have within and it's the common experience.) In general, I believe the confusion is related to the idea that the laboratory experiments are necessarily fundamentally different from the situation in the history of science. There are certainly differences, but this is another story. As far as inductionism is concerned, the situation is very similar in both cases. It's naive to think that a scientific discovery is not influenced by what occurred in the many million years of evolution before the discovery. It's almost impossible to define the original knowledge H, say before the discovery of Einstein's theory. This is the same problem as we have when we try to determine the original knowledge of a rat in a laboratory experiment. Dominic Mayers (talk) A couple of thoughts: (1) Learning requires memory, so any time we talk about learning we're talking about something more than inference; we're talking about a complex material system. So even just to say some learning is inferential or can be explained by inference alone, even deduction, would be incorrect. "All learning is induction" is just a special case of the incorrect claim that "all learning is inference". (2) You said that any occurence of induction in valid learning is a myth, but validity implies deduction, so by definition "valid learning" would exclude induction! And as noted in point 1, learning is more than inference, so we shouldn't speak of "valid learning", but instead "valid inference" in a learning process. In the real world, people make invalid inferences, sometimes as part of their learning. This is partly (though not only) why people behave irrationally. Biogeographist (talk) 21:11, 6 May 2020 (UTC) Regarding point (2), you can take out the "valid" before learning and move it after as in "learning valid knowledge". We meet the issue of what is valid knowledge, what is truth, etc., but this has been taken care by the study of logics. Yes, induction can be used and it's called a fallacy in logic. What is a myth is an inductive learning, i.e. the use of a rule that is not deductive and that would not be a fallacy. In the years 1930, logic was not as advanced as today. Nowadays, we have studied so many different kind of logics and the goal was exactly to model ways to get valid knowledge in mathematics and in science. None of them are inductive. (Perhaps still today some propose inductive logics, but it's the same old story: the belief that different kind of logics are valid outside science). Inductive learning is a myth. Popper has proposed a valid replacement that makes so much sense. I don't see why there is even a need to even discuss this. I agree with point (1), but it was implicit in what I wrote. Obviously, besides deduction and in fact perhaps even more important than deduction, we need the process that brings out from the hidden H a formal conjecture that can be used deductively. Yes, thinking more about it, fallacies might be involved in this process. Why not, it's a complex process that is mixed with many things. The key point is that this process cannot be modeled as purely inductive and there is a need to assume a resource H that is unknown. The fact that you say that fallacies might be involved is consistent with Popper's view that it can hardly be made rigorous. We could guess a model, but a model where H is unknown will be difficult to test, even to conceive. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:30, 6 May 2020 (UTC) I would just point out again that of course ways to get valid knowledge don't include induction, because by definition validity excludes induction! But psychologists such as Sloman and Lagnado have still investigated induction, not because they are trying to show that induction is valid, and not because they are trying to justify induction, but because they want to explain what people are doing when psychologists give them induction tasks. I keep coming back to that chapter because the question that started this section is about the implications of that chapter for this Wikipedia article. If further discussion would help answer that question, then we should continue; if not, we should stop. Biogeographist (talk) 22:09, 6 May 2020 (UTC) If the chapter is not about gaining valid knowledge, then it does not fit in this article. Otherwise, there is an implicit assumption in the chapter (at the least in the way that you describe it) that people use induction as a part of gaining valid knowledge. Yes, I agreed that induction might be involved in some hidden process, but I don't see how we can possibly detect it, not to mention how to study it. That's why, if they say that they describe the learning process, fine, if they say that they describe an induction process, I will have to read the details, but I am pretty sure there must be a very strong assumption, perhaps simply the direct assumption that it is induction. If really, they have strong arguments (without too strong assumptions) that there is a use for induction in gaining valid knowledge, it is certainly related to this article. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:20, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Using the chapter (subsection added for easy editing)

After having read the chapter and related sources, I agree with Biogeographist that the distinction between "descriptive account of inductive reasoning" and the "justificatory concerns of many philosophers" is important. My understanding, and perhaps also the understanding of Biogeographist, is that, if this distinction is understood and taken into account in the way the chapter of Sloman and Lagnado is used, this chapter, especially the part after the history, can be used as a main source for the article as suggested by TBR-qed. Yes, in this perspective, the current article is obsolete, because it is too much about history.

But, if we don't see this basic distinction, the content of this chapter (and perhaps of many other sources that adopt the same descriptive approach) can become the source of a false controversy. Clearly, when Popper wrote that induction is a myth, he did not mean to say that the processes studied by Sloman and Lagnado are a myth. He only meant that, though these processes can be described as inductive rules, which relate premises to conclusion, what truly is going on is different and involves other "knowledge" perhaps not yet formalized.

We can schematize the situation as follows. Let B denotes the non formalized knowledge, P denotes the premises and C the conclusion. Because, B is in the background, what is observed is that P is used to infer C. So, we say that we have observed the inductive rule P |= C, but what truly happened is B Λ P |= C. This is an important distinction, because the inductive rules P |= C are well known in logic to be fallacies, but the hidden processes B Λ P |= C are most likely not fallacies.

It's very obvious that the chapter of Sloman and Lagnado refers to the way people normally think using their background knowledge. There is an implicit assumption that there is some uniformity among people in the way they think, i.e, some uniformity in this background knowledge. This is not at all opposed to Popper's view. On the contrary, it is a support for Popper's view. I agree with Biogeographist that we need to make a link with the philosophical perspective and that some other sources will be needed to make the link. However, I might be wrong, but I feel that not much needs to be added to the chapter to accomplish that.

There is a terminological issue here, because we refer to these processes as "inductive reasoning" and yet there is, hopefully, no claim that they are inductive fallacies. This can be taken care easily by making a little bit clearer that "inductive reasoning" refers to the description of observed processes, not to rules to rationally justify these processes. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:58, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

I have just discovered your lengthened comments, which I will carefully study. Below is my response to the earlier comments:

Thank you for your acute observations. S&L are indeed psychologists who focus on the “psychology of categorical induction.” But their first 2 sentences—framing of the problem with Hume and the “fact” of sunrise— connects them directly to the WP article example of sunrise & its broader concern for justification. That is why I suggest relating 4 more scholars to S&L’s sample to show how modern scholars superficially adopt Goodman’s formalized knowledge while ignoring philosophical concerns—with negative results. I add Duhem & Dewey to show long-standing rejection of enumerative induction. I add Popper (who accepted the validity of sunrise) to support Hume & to critique S&L “induction as scientific methodology,” that conflates method of Duhem & Dewey with modern social science methods, including economist Thaler. I would leave [Inductive reasoning] & [Inductivism] unchanged to report more traditional treatments of induction.

The lead could be simplified

I propose to replace

The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge understood in the classic philosophical sense, highlighting the apparent lack of justification for: ...

by

The problem of induction is the philosophical question how to rationally justify inductive reasoning processes, which are observed, such as: ...

I would also propose to remove the following sentence:

The problem calls into question all empirical claims made in everyday life or through the scientific method, and, for that reason, the philosopher C. D. Broad said that "induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy."

This sentence presents a false controversy. It does it, because it conflates two different things: the requirement for a rational justification of observed processes and these processes per se. The correct sentence (not that I propose that we use it) would be:

Induction processes are seen in everyday life and through the scientific method and, for that reason, C. D. Broad famously said that induction is the glory of science, but, if that is the case, Popper who found the way to rationally explain these processes must be the glorious hero of the philosophy of science.

— Dominic Mayers, This talk page

Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:12, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

References

The new section on David Harriman's book

First of all, it's clear that the content is not verified. It's a favorable evaluation of the book and an interpretation of its scope made in the voice of Wikipedia, which breaks WP:NPV. Even if it was sourced in and attributed to some secondary source, a review of a book, even a brief one, is not in the scope of the current article.

That does not mean the content of the book is not acceptable in Wikipedia. I don't want to enter into the question whether the content is acceptable, because this would require a search for secondary sources that verify the same content (in respect of WP:NOR) and I am not going to do that now. However, I could not stop myself from looking at the main thesis of the book, which has 30 citations in Google scholar and thus is a good candidate. The book starts by doing a good job at describing the distinction between deduction and observed induction in science. It brings out a key point: deduction requires that there has been some previous induction, which, of course, is well known and understood. The main thesis of the book starts with this excerpt:

The problem is to identify the method of induction, not to seek its “justification.” One cannot ask for a justification of induction, any more than for a justification of deduction. Inducing and deducing are man’s means of justifying anything. Their validity as cognitive processes, therefore, is an unchallengeable given. Aristotle did not ask: Is deduction legitimate? but rather: How should it be performed so as to reach valid conclusions? Similarly, our question regarding induction is not: Is it legitimate? but rather: Given the validity of induction, how should one perform it so as to reach a knowledge of facts?

— Harriman, David, The Logical Leap (p. 8). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This is not the problem of induction that most people try to address. Harriman argues that people try to address the wrong question, but his argument can be criticized. It is based on a similarity between deduction and induction: they are both a way to do inference. He says "One cannot ask for a justification of induction, any more than for a justification of deduction." But induction and deduction are more different than they are alike, so one cannot conclude that we can proceed with induction as we do with deduction. An important distinction is that induction is ampliative, i.e., it generates information that is not implied in the premises. So, as Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and thus induction requires extraordinary evidence. The most important distinction, though, is that deduction has almost never been put in question, whereas induction has always been put in question. So, the natural question is given that we accept deduction as a valid mean of inference, because it is very ordinary, how can we justify induction, which appears extraordinary.

In contradistinction, the book denies from the start any form of justification for induction. I have not read the book, but it's possible that it provides a valuable description of recent induction processes in science and try to extract from this an observed scientific methodology. If it is that, it can hardly claim any novelty. It is exactly what Lakatos argued that should be done. Yes, Lakatos rejected, as did Popper, inductivism but only as a rational justification, not as an observed phenomena that follows rules. Only a small glance at Lakatos work shows that he wanted to find the inductive rules that are followed in the history science. He was explicit about that in his book "The methodology of scientific research programmes" (pp. 162-165). Most of this book concerns the history of science and the observation of these inductive phenomena. The only difference is that Harriman denies any chance of justification, whereas Lakatos did not. Popper, we can say, also denied a rational justification for these observed rules, that is, he never tried to turn them into rules that can justify steps of inference or to find such rules that would justify them.

In this manner, Popper might seem close to Harriman, but there is a big difference. Popper did not deny a rational explanation for these observed induction processes and, in fact, he offered a very natural explanation. Zahar presents this as the fundamental difference between Popper and Lakatos. This rational explanation makes a big difference, because otherwise one is tempted to interpret these observed rules as if they were some kind of ampliative rules of valid reasoning, which we should follow. Why not? If they are observed and they are successful, why not use them as rules of inference? Popper's explanation explicitly rejects this interpretation. Popper offered methodological rules, which were prescriptive, but they were not inductive. By the way, Lakatos proposed descriptive inductive rules, but these rules were either deprived of any form of inductivity or rewritten so that they could not be prescriptive before they found their way in his proposed methodology. Here is an excerpt that illustrates the first case (emphasis mine) :

Musgrave in a letter containing some major constructive criticisms of an earlier draft, in which he demanded that I specify, for instance, at what point dogmatic adherence to a programme ought to be explained 'externally' rather than 'internally'. Let me try to explain why such objections are beside the point. One may rationally stick to a degenerating programme until it is overtaken by a rival and even after. What one must not do is to deny its poor public record. Both Feyerabend and Kuhn conflate methodological appraisal of a programme with firm heuristic advice about what to do. It is perfectly rational to play a risky game: what is irrational is to deceive oneself about the risk.

— Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1. p. 117

Here is an excerpt that illustrates the second case:

"It is very difficult to decide, especially since one must not demand progress at each single step, when a research programme has degenerated hopelessly or when one of two rival programmes has achieved a decisive advantage over the other. In this methodology, as in Duhem's conventionalism, there can be no instant − let alone mechanical − rationality. Neither the logician's proof of inconsistency nor the experimental scientist's verdict of anomaly can defeat a research programme in one blow. One can be 'wise' only after the event."

— Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1. p. 113

So, at the end, Popper's and Lakatos' methodology were both non inductive and consistent one with the other.

Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:32, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Implicit assumption that no background knowledge is involved

The following sentence suggests that no background knowledge is involved in observed induction processes:

In inductive reasoning, one makes a series of observations and infers a new claim based on them.

Some thinking is needed to find a better way to describe the problem, but the description must clearly distinguish between a rule to describe observed processes, which usually involve some hidden background knowledge, and an ampliative rule to infer new knowledge. By definition, the ampliative rule does not use any background knowledge that, if made explicit, would allow to deductively infer the "new knowledge".

Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:37, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

I think my proposed revision addresses this issue. Please see below.TBR-qed (talk) 20:57, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Plan suggested by TBR-qed

These are explanations of TBR-qed for his plan:

S&L are indeed psychologists who focus on the “psychology of categorical induction.” But their first 2 sentences—framing of the problem with Hume and the “fact” of sunrise— connects them directly to the WP article example of sunrise & its broader concern for justification. That is why I suggest relating 4 more scholars to S&L’s sample to show how modern scholars superficially adopt Goodman’s formalized knowledge while ignoring philosophical concerns—with negative results. I add Duhem & Dewey to show long-standing rejection of enumerative induction. I add Popper (who accepted the validity of sunrise) to support Hume & to critique S&L “induction as scientific methodology,” that conflates method of Duhem & Dewey with modern social science methods, including economist Thaler. I would leave [Inductive reasoning] & [Inductivism] unchanged to report more traditional treatments of induction.

I have no opinion, because I don't have yet a clear understanding of the plan. So, I will only mention points that come to my mind.

Regarding S&L are indeed psychologists who focus on the “psychology of categorical induction” I am guessing that the key word here is "psychology", because I don't see what would be an example of a "non categorical induction", except the cases where we have difficulty to make the induction because we are uncertain about the category. Therefore, in a way, it's always categorical. Collections in which the similar elements are distinguished by space-time coordinates are special kind of categories, but I don't see that the arguments to reject induction are specific to this kind of categories.

Regarding But their first 2 sentences—framing of the problem with Hume and the “fact” of sunrise— connects them directly to the WP article example of sunrise & its broader concern for justification I should point out that the example of sunrise in the article is biased. There is an implicit assumption that there is an observed induction and, moreover, that this observed induction is explained by the use of an ampliative rule, which thus need justification. As editors, we do not have to start the article by making a big assumption with no basis. No matter what the sources say, our terminology and our way to organize the article is our choice as editors. A source makes this assumption or it does not make it and it must be used accordingly in our article. But, I don't think that you had that aspect in mind when you wrote that sentence. Your point, I believe, is that you agree that we should have a link with the philosophical concern for justification.

Regarding That is why I suggest relating 4 more scholars to S&L’s sample to show how modern scholars superficially adopt Goodman’s formalized knowledge while ignoring philosophical concerns—with negative results I did not know much about Goodman, but I just read [2] and I found it very interesting theoretically, but also a very good example of a source that makes the big assumption that induction exists as a set of ampliative inference rules, not only as observed processes. So, he goes into a very interesting (but useless) argument how these inference rules can be "justified", just as we "justify" deductive rules. But, there is no evidence at all that ampliative inference rules are used. We only have evidence that inductive processes occur, which is completely different. These observed inductive processes do not need to be justified, as many pointed out. They only need to be explained and the simplest explanation is the use of an hidden background knowledge together with normal non ampliative rules.

Regarding I add Duhem & Dewey to show long-standing rejection of enumerative induction this seems to suggest that only this particular form of ampliative inductive reasoning is ruled out. That is a big claim. Of course, (observed) inductive reasoning does not need justification, because it is observed. However, I would say that any form of ampliative rule is ruled out and I would be very surprised that no argument was provided in the literature to reject the extraordinary claim that an ampliative rule, i.e., a fallacy, can be useful.

Regarding I add Popper (who accepted the validity of sunrise) to support Hume & to critique S&L “induction as scientific methodology,” that conflates method of Duhem & Dewey with modern social science methods, including economist Thaler I think the main contribution of Popper on the problem of induction is his very natural proposal that the use of ampliative rules is a myth and that the observed inductive processes are more naturally explained by an evolutionary process that created the required hidden background knowledge. He used a different terminology. What I call "ampliative rules" here, Popper called it "induction" and, what I call "observed induction processes" here, Popper called it "growth of knowledge".

Regarding I would leave [Inductive reasoning] & [Inductivism] unchanged to report more traditional treatments of induction, yes let us focus on this article.

Dominic Mayers (talk) 01:52, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I hope you will be able to access my sandbox which outlines my plan. Your first paragraph above comes close to my main concern: uncertainty about the category. I find endless disagreement about operations called inductive and about their consequences. Your next paragraph says the sunrise example is biased, which is precisely why I discuss its widespread use as demonstrating the inseparability of description and justification. I think I agree with your point about editor choice, but do not understand "an ampliative rule, which thus need justification." Does your next paragraph saying "induction exists as a set of ampliative inference rules" identify operations, or conclusions of operations, or explanation of operations? TBR-qed (talk) 14:53, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Subsection for easier editing

Please relate your answers to Popper's practice and to my section on sunrise. Thanks.TBR-qed (talk) 14:53, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

After having read your sandbox and considered your questions here, I think my paragraphs could have been clearer, but the main issue is with the terminology. We must first clarify the terminology before I can discuss Popper's practice, the section on sunrise and answer your questions about my paragraphs.

There is an important difference between an observed process in which some conclusion is drawn given some premises and rules of inference that can be used to explain this process. I could replace "explain this process" with "justify this process", which is what we say when inference rules explain a process, but I prefer the term "explain" because it brings out the notion that these processes are like other natural processes that need to be explained.

extra explanation

Consider the following incorrect argument from the observed q="here is a white swan" to the universal p'="all swans are white". Seeing this argument, one might conclude that the fallacy ∃x α(x) ⊧ ∀x α(x) was used (I made up that fallacy, but it more or less corresponds to what is some times called Hasty_generalization). However, the person who draw the incorrect conclusion p' might say, no I used the rule p → q, q ⊧ p, which is the fallacy affirming the consequent. Indeed, if we take p= p'∧q, then we have p → q. So, from the observed q, using the fallacy, we can infer p and then logically infer p' (because p= p'∧q). The details are not important, we could have many other examples, to illustrate that there is an important difference between an observed process in which some conclusion was drawn given some premises and the actual rules of inference that were used. We cannot know what were the rules, unless the person writes in the margin the rules that were used. Even this can be misleading, as illustrated by Newton's famous claim that he used inductive inference rules to infer his theory from observations alone, which we know cannot work. (On purpose, I have not respected the terminology used by Newton, because there would be a cyclic issue if I tried to explain a terminology by using a different and non consistent terminology.)

There are two distinct concepts: the processes that need to be explained and the rules that can explain them. A confusion between these two concepts might arise from the use of the expression rules of induction by S&L in sentences such as:

... normative rules of inductive inference that are generally accepted in the scientific community. One such rule is that properties that do not vary much across category instances are more projectible across the whole category than properties that vary more.

These are rules to classify observed processes, not to explain them. They are not basic inference rules similar to the deductive rules of inference. They exist at a completely different level.

extra explanation

These rules have not much to do with the deductive or inductive explanatory rules that could explain them, just as we have illustrated before. The explanatory inference rules are hidden and they cannot be justified by these observed rules, because there are a lot of things behind these observed rules, a lot of background knowledge, etc. To put it in another way, the inductive method of reasoning considered in S&L are emerging methods. They emerge from a background knowledge, which includes some fundamental empirical or perhaps metaphysical laws that are assumed. They are not basic inference rules similar to the deductive rules of inference. They exist at a completely different level. Some of these rules could be theorem based on some properties assigned to the categories, but that would be almost the same thing: we would need laws to verify that these properties hold.

I did not prove my previous claim and I cannot formally rule out the possibility that inductive rules might constitute a different logic for truth in science, but if it was the case it would be a very very important new branch of logic. In any case, S&L cannot prove that they have such a logic and it is a big assumption. The terminology should make clear from the start that there is another option: they are just rules used to classify observed processes and there is an explanation for these processes that do not require a new logic, which, in my view, is much easier to believe.

extra explanation

The point here is that, if someone has discovered a new inference rule that is ampliative, that is a big big deal. Let's keep in mind that we are talking about the "truth" of scientific laws, after corroborations. If we have a new logic with ampliative rules for this kind of truth, it is a big big deal. So big that it should totally change the face of logic. In fact, historically, logic has always been the logic of the practical truth used in science. Mathematics itself is only a tool for science. So it should lead to a new branch of mathematics based on this new logic of science. So, I am sorry, but S&L have not proposed that. I am aware that Goodman proposed a very interesting way to "justify" such a new logic using a notion of equilibrium, but this does not mean that we have found this new logic and, even if we have found such a new logic, it does not mean that it is the one used in science. Again, it would be a very big deal. In any case, our article cannot be written under this assumption. So, it should be only an option and the terminology should make it clear, from the start, that there is another option.

Given that the explanatory rules are abstract, not observed and not uniquely determined, should we ignore them as possible explanation for what is observed? Of course not. We have the same problem with the question what law is used when an apple falls from the branch of an apple tree to the ground. We cannot say that it is Newton's law, because one could rightfully reply that it could also be Einstein's law. Nevertheless, we do not abandon the question what law explains an observed phenomena. In the same way, inference rules are like laws that can explain observed reasoning processes. So, in our terminology, it is important to distinguish between observed inductive reasoning and (explanatory) inductive rules. Otherwise, the problem of induction cannot even be formulated correctly.

In contradistinction, if we use the correct terminology, then the problem can be formulated in one short sentence. The problem is how to explain observed inductive processes without using (explanatory) inductive rules or else how to justify these (explanatory) inductive rules. It can even be shorter : how to rationally explain the observed inductive processes. This is because justifying the (explanatory) inductive rules simply means arguing that they can be rationally used to explain the observed reasoning processes. Here, we see a closely related terminological distinction that is also important: explaining observed reasoning processes and justifying hidden inference rules are two different things, simply because hidden inference rules and observed reasoning processes are different things.

Here is the first paragraph in your sanbox:

The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether knowledge humans gain by inductive reasoning can be as warranted as knowledge they gain by deductive reasoning—the alternative method of human reasoning.[1] How can one infer that observing a unique sample of an object or event is evidence of an unobservable universal kind or class of object or event?

I don't see in this paragraph where (ampliative) inductive rules enter into play. I don't see the two options: justifying these inductive rules or explaining the observed inductive processes without using these inductive rules. My personal opinion is that Popper is right that the first option is pointless, because there is a much simpler explanation that do not require the inductive rules. In any case, the problem of induction is certainly not how to do the first option only.

extra explanation

I am guessing that the paradigm in your first paragraph is simply that we can ignore or at the least not refer to inference rules as a way to explain observed reasoning processes. The suggested paradigm is that we have different kind of observed processes that we classify in terms of rules, the inductive ones and the deductive ones, but these rules are only ways to classify processes, not some kind of hidden laws to explain them. The question then becomes how the (descriptive) inductive rules can be as warranted as the (descriptive) deductive rules. This is confusing. It hides the possibility that the inductive rules (as description of observed processes) can be explained without using inductive inference rules (as laws used to explain observed processes). A better paradigm is that we simply want to explain what is observed using rules of inference and we accept that these rules interact and must be considered as one set of rules. It is fine to consider the option of adding inductive rules to this set, but it must be only one option. Another option is that we don't need to do that, because there is another way to explain what is observed.

I am not attach to any particular terminology as long as we use a terminology that does not conflate different concepts and that we use it consistently from the start. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:57, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I think we are now down to cases. I don't understand "(ampliative) inductive rules." I think it involves your effort to distinguish between explaining processes and explaining rules, which are both distinct from observing processes. But I think the inductive method means the following: 1)WE have a conjectural proposition--the sun [object assumed known in unspecified conditions] rises. 2)We ask whether observation [test statement] is true or false. Will it rise again [a conjectural universal predicate]? 3) Popper claimed we can't answer TRUE, but may be able to answer FALSE if it does not rise. 4)Absence of failure to rise temporarily confirms both conjectures as best tested theories.Objective Knowledge:10,20,26.

If determining what predicate is to be observed be excluded from inductive method, then Popper's purely logical conclusion follows. Duhem & Dewey show the error of this method, and sunrise instantiates it. My sandbox tries to set this scene. Do I fail, or am I mistaken?TBR-qed (talk) 13:39, 10 May 2020 (UTC)