Inductive Reasoning

[Nujabes]

By the very nature of Inductive reasoning you cannot find truth from it, you can get *close* but, never actual truth.

The Scientific method is based off of inductive reasoning in this case, making generalization from a specific event, this is the general basis of science.

Knowing this why do we put so much faith in The Hard Sciences?
^Debate Topic

*I am going to exclude physics for arguments sake since it has the possibility of being proved through math(truth)




(or is this to vague of a topic?)

 

[Dre89]

'So much faith' is an astronomic exaggeration.

Not every inductive proposition requires the same amount of faith. For example the proposition 'the sun will rise tommorrow' does not require that much faith, because we have reason to believe that it is enormously probable that it will happen. The only reason why even an ounce of faith is required is because the proposition is inductive, meaning it is contingent (it is possible for it to not happen).

In contrast, the proposition that I can walk through walls requires a huge amount of faith. The faith required is not only because the proposition is simply inductive/contingent, but because it is highly unlikely to happen anyway.


Most scientific propositions fall into the former category in terms of probability.

There is also the practical purpose. If you're not going to put your faith in science, then you can't put your faith into any observation or experience you have, because they are also inductive.

If you want to get more technical, the rejection of inductive logic entails you only value deductive logic (assuming you don't value abductive logic either, which is less reliable than inductive). The problem is that the proposition 'inductive logic cannot conclude absolute truths, therefore it is not valid, and we must rely on deductive logic exclusively' is itself not a deductive proposition, so you have a problem there.