Philosophy of Knowledge – 20/03/2023

Topic: Induction

1) Hume’s problem

-Deductive inference;

P1: All men are mortal

P2: Socrates is a human

.’. Socrates is mortal

^The above is a deductive inference which is truth preserving, it is valid and sound in structure and
content.

-A valid argument is an argument where it is not possible for the premises to be true and the
conclusion false

-It is a conditional statement that presumes only if the premises are true then the conclusion is true

-Soundness refers to whether the premises and conclusion actually are true

-For logicians, validity is more important than soundness

-With truth functional second order logic you do not have completeness within it and cannot
represent statements in terms of validity with truth tables

P1: ∀x[Mx]
P2: ∃x[Sx]

_________________

.’. ∃x[Sx ^ Mx]

^The above is a deductively valid inference represented in predicate logic.

-Inductive inference

Every day so far the sun has risen

Therefore the sun will rise tomorrow

^The above is not deductively valid (or truth-preserving)

-We think it is a good argument regardless as it is a kind of argument we make everyday and appears
to be a good way of reasoning from the past about the future

-The cornerstone of modern science involves induction in which we infer from a set of empirical
facts a given conclusion concerning them

-The question posed by Hume is whether or not it is rational to make use of inductive reasoning in
the first place, holding that there is no rational reason to use inductive reasoning to actually find out
true things about the world, it is for him a quirk of our psychology, it is as rational to believe the sun
will rise tomorrow as it is to not believe it will rise tomorrow

-To develop his argument Hume developed two sources of knowledge:

i) relations of ideas => a priori principles, analytic claims which can be justified a priori, independent
of experience and with necessity

ii) matters of fact => a posteriori claims grounded in experience, relating to the world, empirical,
claims concerning causal relations, synthetic in nature

^The above are Humean ways of expressing these claims

-Hume attaches such a thing as truth-preserved judgements and necessity to judgements made
among relations of ideas. Hence the above inference concerning the sun rising tomorrow is not one
that is valid or guaranteed, it is quite possible that the sun will not rise tomorrow, it is contingent.
Hence he holds it is not rational to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow

-Inductive reasoning cannot be justified directly by experience either, since experience only directly
gives us knowledge of sensed states of affairs, and inductive reasoning takes us beyond sensed to
unsensed states of affairs.

-Inductive inferences ‘transcend’ states of affairs in terms of the inferences made and the activity of
reasoning itself, it is not directly connected to the empirical content as such. An inductive inference
as such cannot be justified a priori or a posteriori.

-While he holds that we are not justified in using inductive inference, we use it as a matter of habit
and psychology, so simply ought to remain using it.

-The above inductive inference can be made valid via the following method;

P1: Every day in the past the sun has risen

P2: Nature is uniform (the future will be like the past)
.’. Hence, tomorrow the sun will rise

^Through the introduction of the second premise which there is a problem with justifying, we can
transform the inductive inference to a deductively valid inference. Hume holds that we cannot
derive the second premise from reason alone, so it is not something that exists among relations
among orders of ideas, and since it is not located in matters of fact either, it is not derivable from
either of the foregoing categories. Hence we should not accept this principle and cannot derive
certain inferences from it.

2) Early responses

->Kant was one of the early responders to Hume’s critiques

-He held that the principle of the uniformity of nature (in the form of a principle of universal
causation) is secured as a synthetic a priori truth of pure reason.

-Kant had no doubts about the existence of synthetic a priori truths; he was merely formulating in
rather clear and precise terms what philosophers had maintained about the status of geometry for
more than two millenia

-The subsequent discovery of non-Euclidian geometries, and the searching philosophical

investigations of their applicability to the physical world, have thoroughly undercut any such view of
the nature of geometry
-The ability to derive synthetic a priori truths has since shown to be shaky and contingent on things
external to itself, so would not be truth-preserving as a kind of judgement. Whether synthetic a
priori truths are derivable at all remains vague and unclear.

->John Stuart Mill

-Mill, rather than assuming uniformity of nature simpliciter, Mill’s idea was to assume just as much
uniformity of nature as you need for the inferential job at hand (postulational approach)

-The method of postulating what we want has many advantages; they are the same advantages of
theft over honest toil – Russell

3) Contemporary responses

-> Karl Popper

-Popper claimed to have solved the problem of induction. (Quote in slides).

-Claimed to have reached the solution in 1927 (lol)

-He holds the following; (i) Hume is right: induction cannot be rationally justified (ii) science,
however, does not rely on inductive inference (iii) hypotheses, can however, be refuted by the
deductively valid modus tollens.

-He would reject Francis Bacon’s claim that science depends on inductive inference instead of
deductive inference. This does not however involve a move towards axiological philosophy in the
same way that Aristotelian or premodern philosophy was. Instead modus tollens was used as a
mode of falsification of specific propositions.

P1: If there is smoke, there is fire

P2: There is not fire
.’. So, there is not smoke

P1: P->Q
P2: -Q

.’. -P

^The above is deductively valid and truth-preserving as a form of argument

-Scientists deductively derive conclusions from their hypotheses. The method of science is to put
forth generalisations as conjectures, and to attempt to falsify them (conjectures and refutations)

-Scientific hypotheses must be falsifiable; non-falsifiable hypotheses are not scientific

-This is applicable for a statement such as ‘all swans are white’, if you find a black swan then you can
falsify the statement ‘all swans are white’ and then use deductive reasoning to be capable of
falsifying the statement.

-Popper further strengthens this by viewing it as a way of demarcating between science and non-
science; he removes astrology or psychoanalysis from the domain of science through their lack of
falsifiability

-> Further discussion wednesday