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"Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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stahrwe

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"Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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In a recent discussion I went on a merry jaunt through the magical land of enchanted reasoning also known as INDUCTION with another BT member. The merriment was the serving up of various fallacies as attacks and the volleying back and forth, or not. I suppose my inductive reasoning skills and appreciation of the fallacies of inductive reasoning are a bit wanting. BUT after university classes which dealt with the subject and some reading on my own, especially Stanley Jaki, which led to Pierre Duhem*, Karl Popper, and Paul Feyerabend among others, I decided that I agree with Feyerabend when he says, "Induction is a sham." (Killing Time, The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend, p. 89)

There is much more in the Feyerabend Autobiography, which strikes at the very heart of the beloved SCIENTIFIC METHOD but at present I don't have the time or stomach to engage in the inevitable spiral of BT discussion - maybe someday after I get a few projects launched. But I want to make the point that it is ILLOGICAL to enumerate the fallacies which will render an inductive argument invalid when the whole process is a sham.

*Pierre Duhem's story is a great one about a scientific genius and the derailing of a career by the scientific establishment because his ideas conflicted with its.

The Problem of Induction
n=Infinity
Sum n = -1/12
n=1

where n are natural numbers.
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Re: "Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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Inherent in Science is the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
There is no other way of overcoming this other than induction. Which of course as you've pointed out, is riddled with issues as well.
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Re: "Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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Stahrwe wrote:There is much more in the Feyerabend Autobiography, which strikes at the very heart of the beloved SCIENTIFIC METHOD but at present I don't have the time or stomach to engage in the inevitable spiral of BT discussion - maybe someday after I get a few projects launched. But I want to make the point that it is ILLOGICAL to enumerate the fallacies which will render an inductive argument invalid when the whole process is a sham.
Feyerabend is a great thinker, and has helped science tremendously. I don't ever remember reading that induction was a sham, but he did a good job of promoting an anarchist view of science. Induction is only a sham if you expect certain answers. Certainty is foolish, as are certain answers. As long as we understand the limitations of induction, there is no issue.

I think a lot of it is a misconception on the strength of knowledge. Even at it's very best, our knowledge is heinously difficult to justify and never certain. There are very very few ways to acquire knowledge that is reliably truthful. This applies to all human knowledge, not just that knowledge acquired from the scientific method. Explain what a more effective method would look like if you doubt me. The thing I see is that many people are astonished or perhaps crestfallen when they realize science doesn't give certainties. When they dig deeper and see the flaws, they become disillusioned. This is a healthy step, but it is also healthy to maintain perspective. Despite it's flaws, the scientific method is the best we can do at present.

What's better than inductive reasoning in acquiring knowledge? The issues with inductive reasoning apply to the entire universe of human knowledge. Consider forming a deductive argument, and the very first step is to acquire a general premise. Well, that premise must be true, and it must be supplied somehow. In almost every case I can think of, deductive reasoning requires induction to develop the general premises. This is the case mainly with synthetic premises, but perhaps not analytic ones. We can play with definitions all day long and not worry about induction. But really, how does playing with definitions help us acquire knowledge?

Regarding the other thread, all of this is irrelevant. I was not using inductive reasoning in a positive sense to make an argument. I was instead pointing out flaws in GKC's argument, then again in your assessment of my criticisms. It is one thing to point out the flaws of inductive reasoning. It's something else to make discrete, independent flaws and hope that pointing a finger at induction will save face. None of this absolves GKC, but I give you the benefit of the doubt. I think you were intending a heuristic, but worded it wrong. BTW - I think the spiral of BT discussions is healthier for you than any college course.
ant wrote:Inherent in Science is the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
There is no other way of overcoming this other than induction. Which of course as you've pointed out, is riddled with issues as well.
Here is Mike Lin discussing science and affirming the consequent. Judging by our past discussions, it's stuff you already know. He's a clear writer though, helpful.

Read especially the two paragraphs ABOVE the "final words" section down low.
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Re: "Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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Practiced with determination and without subterfuge, the doctrine of falsifiability would wipe out science as we know it. - Paul Feyerabend,
Killing Time - p. 90.

Also see
Against Method
Feyerabend is styled As an anarchist by his critics as a way of sweeping him away but he is not an anarchist - he is a critic of the assumptions of and lack of candor about science.

There are others than Feyerabend, some of whom I have mentioned - Duhem, who challenge the basic assumptions of induction.
n=Infinity
Sum n = -1/12
n=1

where n are natural numbers.
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Re: "Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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Stahrwe wrote:Feyerabend is styled As an anarchist by his critics as a way of sweeping him away but he is not an anarchist - he is a critic of the assumptions of and lack of candor about science.

There are others than Feyerabend, some of whom I have mentioned - Duhem, who challenge the basic assumptions of induction.
Actually, I meant anarchist in the sense that Feyerabend himself meant it - as an epistemological anarchist. That's not an insult or negative, it's a good thing. People start thinking in trenches and get too set in paradigms. We should always take everything with a grain of salt.

As always, there is wisdom in the middle ground. Feyerabend was rather extreme, where a Postivist stance is toward the other extreme. Somewhere in the middle is healthy, where we're skeptical of science itself, but not to the point of inaction or anti-scientific distrust. Personally, I think the best position is closer to Feyerabend's end than Popper's. Err on the side of anarchy, but keep it all in perspective.

Lakatos and Kuhn are also good to read if you tend toward Feyerabend's end of the spectrum.
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Re: "Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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One last thing: it certainly sounds pretty bad to be guilty of a logical fallacy, and in fact there are those who believe that "affirming the consequent" is a devastating criticism to level at scientists. Since I've just quoted Darwin, I'll bet you can guess who. That's right: creationists. Also, climate science deniers. Et cetera. This is a bread-and-butter argument for all of them.
I recall having run into this article while surfing the net a while back. Maybe it was you that shared it with me before.
Lin writes really well and certainly flaunts his scientific credentials.

Lin taints his piece, in my opinion, by making presumptuous comments about who it is that normally presents arguments against science (ie by discussing the AC fallacy) His comment above is an example of that.

Part of the discussions that took place between the scientific and philosophical intellectual communities during the "Science Wars" of the 90's included epistemic justification and fallacious reasoning like the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Those people were not creationists or climate change deniers.

Ongoing discussions about science and epistemology go back even further than that. The Logical Positivists blip should be included here as well. "Criticisms" (that's what Lin wants to call it, probably because he's just feeling defensive about scientific knowledge because, hey, he's a scientist) like these are not the favorite of creationists and climate deniers.
Lin is trying to attribute them as belonging to "crazies." Hence, they should be devalued. That's a chicken-shit rhetoric.

I am not familiar with climate deniers using the AC fallacy as a gottcha argument against global warming.
Off the top of my head, I'd think it would be more of a correlation does not equal causation discussion.

This isn't an all-or-nothing issue. Meaning, to point out considerations like "the problem of induction" or affirming the consequent, or the tyranny of scientific paradigms does not also mean we must reject provisional knowledge generated by method (which method is a different discussion). I dont think men like Feyerabend, Hume, or Kuhn have ever argued that. That's an imbecilic strawman.


Here is Lin (emphasis mine);
Deductive reasoning is a rigorous mathematical theory. If you're going to attack others explicitly in the terms of that theory, your argument had better be defensible on those same grounds. In my opinion, anyone with a modern understanding of scientific inference just shouldn't level the criticism of "affirming the consequent" in those terms, because that criticism is itself definitely bogus. It seems valid, if you don't think about it too carefully - which is why it's popular among creationists and other science-deniers - but it logically commits you to absurd consequents

I'm not going to assume too much about Lin's worldview. I may be reading too much into this piece by assuming it is a scientific worldview he holds.
What I don't hear very often is how scientists who feel the need to defend provisional knowledge (which they admit it is. but so what??) seem to be an echo of the long dead and debunked school of Logical Positivism. The school of LP dismantled itself with its own line of reasoning. Stephen Hawking is one example of a living logical positivist relic (ie "philosophy is dead").

I'm not going to assume everyone knows that the reasoning of science is based primarily on inference to the best explanation. Explanadum arrived at inductively can not be verified deductively. It can only be verified by more inference.

If Lin believes that only cognitive meaningful statements are those that are proved deductively, by logical and empirical evidence, then he'd better be able to defend that very statement in the same manner.
Wish him luck.


Finally, "relaxing the laws of deductive logic to enable us to reason about degrees of belief" destroys the essence of what deduction actually is supposed to be - air tight validity.

Mathematical proofs need not be "relaxed" to prove abstracts.
They do need to be relaxed when they are meant to serve as models for natural phenomena.
That leads us back to induction.
We aren't relaxing deductive reasoning. We are reasoning in an entirely different manner.


I am more of a Kuhnian than anything else.
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Re: "Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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Feyerabend was rather extreme, where a Postivist stance is toward the other extreme. Somewhere in the middle is healthy, where we're skeptical of science itself, but not to the point of inaction or anti-scientific distrust. Personally, I think the best position is closer to Feyerabend's end than Popper's. Err on the side of anarchy, but keep it all in perspective.

Lakatos and Kuhn are also good to read if you tend toward Feyerabend's end of the spectrum.

You've said you studied these philosophers. What that means I do not know.
It may mean you have some type of formal credential signifying you have.

I read Against Method, for leisure.
It's a book I'l have to read again.

You're saying he was extreme:
What specifically are you talking about? His idea that there isn't (nor will be?) one best method because history provides the evidence we need to see there isn't?
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Re: "Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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ant wrote:You've said you studied these philosophers. What that means I do not know.
It may mean you have some type of formal credential signifying you have.
I have no formal credentials. I'm completely without credentials.
ant wrote:You're saying he was extreme:
What specifically are you talking about? His idea that there isn't (nor will be?) one best method because history provides the evidence we need to see there isn't?
No, the point you mention I agree with, but I think it's best understood with a bit more perspective. Consider the half-truth conclusion that you can formulate if the above is taken as a starting assumption. Because there is no single best method (and because Feyerabend champions a democratic approach) therefore many various methods are equally valid in arriving at the truth.

One negative consequence of this in practice is that corporations pay think tanks to find results that support their interests, and in defense of their work, the scientists on bankroll at the think tanks cite Feyerabend in defense of their "novel" methods. I don't have a reference here and my memory might be off a bit. But the example was more or less as I mention. The scientists in question were climate change denialists, coincidentally.

While there may not be any single best method, we must be equally critical(or perhaps even more critical) of new methods, due to the hazard of capitalist motivations. I don't know if Feyerabend disclaimed this point, but his work all seems to be a well thought out accounting of only one side of the spectrum. Leaving the other side unspoken leads to faulty conclusions and hazards. That is what happens when the discussion only contains half the truth. I'm not saying Feyerabend is wrong(I'm not qualified), but that his position can easily lead one astray. The position from the middle ground is the healthiest.

That doesn't mean we ignore Feyerabend. You can't have a middle ground without either extreme. They are vital, required, and mixing things up as Feyerabend did was one of the best things to happen to the philosophy of science.

The problem is picking a champion and refusing to leave their camp.
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Re: "Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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I think you're way out in left field with Feyerabend, Interbane.

The idea is not that because one best method does not exist, therefore, we can present the findings of each as equally valid.

Feyeraband's main thesis was (from what I remember!) because history indicates there exists no stringent adherence to ONE particular method, we should not perhaps ever agree on one method as being THE method of science. If we did, it would hinder progress.

Your interpretation seems very narrow and particularized.

I don't have the book here with me. But you've definitely made me want to reach for it again.
I think you're wrong.

If my perspective re Feyerabend's thesis is relatively correct (total bare bones), I can't see how that could be an extreme position to hold.

EDITED:

You'll have to give me an example of some vested interest scientist that cites Feyerabend's Against Method as justification for something like climate change denial.

I'd be almost certain he's characterizing Feyerabend's thesis.

Thanks
Last edited by ant on Tue Mar 10, 2015 2:53 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: "Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." C.D. Broad

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ant wrote:Your interpretation seems very narrow and particularized.

I don't have the book here with me. But you've definitely made me want to reach for it again.
I think you're wrong.
It's not my interpretation, and as I said Feyerabend may have even disclaimed it. My point is that some people interpret him that way, and use that to justify junk methods. I'll search for the article. It was Scientific American or Philosophy now.
ant wrote:You'll have to give me an example of some vested interest scientist that cites Feyerabend's Against Method as justification for something like climate change denial.

I'd be almost certain he's characterizing Feyerabend's thesis.
Mischaracterizing? Caricaturizing? He was, that much I remember. Not the author of the article, but the vested interest scientist. It's the position a person finds himself in when he understands a philosophy only enough to abuse it. But can you really say this is different from how Stahrwe used it above?
Stahrwe wrote:I want to make the point that it is ILLOGICAL to enumerate the fallacies which will render an inductive argument invalid when the whole process is a sham.
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