Here is a summary of Hume's argument stated in modern english and summarized. If you want to read his entire argument look at -Treatise of Human Nature: Book I-.

Here is the summary:

http://www.princeton.edu/~grosen/puc/phi203/induction.html

Enjoy.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Very interesting but I have to wonder why people waste their time with analysis like this. Hell, animals exhibit "inductive inference" when they go to their hunting grounds, I believe it's called learning. Forming theories based on what you have learned is simply an attempt to preserve what you have learned so that it can benefit future generations.

The question is not that there is or is not inductive modes of thought. The question is the general validity of inductive inference. Inductive inference is not generally valid.

You are quite right to link induction with learning. Learning is largely an inductive exercise. And you can be sure it is not a generally valid mode because we learning a lot from our errors. Learning is induction put into practice. It is the only way we have to crank out general hypotheses from particular assertions. Sometimes the hypotheses we crank out are wrong.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I don't know what 'valid' means I guess. If you do something and it works in my mind it's valid. I guess some people are obsessed with certainty and can't get by without it.

The reasonable solution to the "problem of induction" is to recognize induction's limits. It is not to declare that induction isn't valid (in the way deduction is). A falsification rarely makes a fatality; only a treatable wound. Bland Blanshard got it about right in Reason and Analysis, p. 228. He said that you cannot falsify, for example, the proposition that some swans are white. As well, one counter instance does not falsify the proposition that most swans are white. Indeed, the counter-example gives an opportunity to make the generalization more exact. The importance of Hume and Popper are exaggerated and should be deflated.

That makes a lot of sense. It's also has a lot to do with my signature below.

Merlin,

I agree with this except for one thing. My disagreement is more about style than substance, but there is a subliminal load that bothers me.

The idea of recognizing induction's so-called limits is nothing more than recognizing its nature. One would not say that not expecting a train to fly is recognizing a train's limits, although that would be technically correct. But one would never expect a train to fly in the first place.

The only reason this statement of yours does not sound weird is because there has been a weird competition set up by God knows who down the ages, probably to prove that science is superior to philosophy or some other such issue of vanity.

Imagine if a bunch of otherwise intelligent people started writing long works explaining that trains were not valid because they cannot fly. That's what I see has happened with induction. Induction was never made to deduce anything.

Michael

Michael, the history of "the problem of induction" goes back to Aristotle, who thought that one could form incontestable premises from which to reach guaranteed-true conclusions. Hume's realization that you can't arrive at incontestable universalizable inductive generalizations caused him bouts of depression. He was upset by his own reasoning, far from trying to prove any superiority. His reasoning presented an enormous crisis, almost from the start of the scientific era, for the validity of science. (There's a famous quote by Russell which well describes the gulf which seemed to open under the foundations of science. Maybe someone else has the quote immediately to hand; I haven't time at the moment to look for it.) Kant was attempting to salvage the situation with his critiques. He didn't succeed at the salvage job, with multiple philosophic woes to follow. In very brief whirlwind synopsis, that's the background for Popper's attempt to show that we don't require induction to be valid to do quite well at science.

Merlin might be right about the over-rating of the problem, and about "the reasonable solution." But if there was any "vanity" trip involved, I'd say it was the widespread desire for certainty, the feeling of threat at having one's knowledge of the world be ineluctably tentative.

Ellen

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Ellen,

I'm perfectly happy with "some swans are white" for my certainty instead of "all swans are white." I will have to insist on "all swans are swans," though.

I also know that this issue, from what I have read both here in discussions and in a few passages from works by major philosophers, has an extremely high competitive load. There is a scramble to prove this person or that right or wrong (or "muddled"). Tell an induction disparager that you are happy with the certainty that "some swans are white" and he will accuse you of begging the question or some other yada yada yada.

I like your visual of great philosophers agonizing over truth, but what I have read so far is not so noble.

Michael

Can you name "an induction disparager" who questions that "some swans are white" or that "all swans are [by definition] swans"?

;-)

Ellen

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I surely do wish someone would/could explain the importance of swans this or swans that. Why? Because both statements are true. This or that, that or this. After all, the damn swans are swans.

--Brant

To be safe with exactitude, you'd have to include a time qualifier: Most swans thus far reported as having been observed have been white. The timeless "are" could, however, turn out to be wrong in the future if, for instance, there were a mutation that took hold such that gray became the prevailing swan color.

Ellen

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Ellen,

The first is easy. Popper. The second was me being a smart-ass, so there is no need.


Now this I can agree with (mostly). It's high time that time be included. I don't understand "are" to be timeless, however. I understand it to be the present tense in the English language. I learned that in grade school.



Michael

In fact it is this very bland reply that should be deflated...;-)

Brand B simply missed the point. Recall that Popper was writing primarily about Hume's impact on science, the distinctive characteristic of which he regarded as the search for universal laws.

What is distinctively scientific - or even interesting - about the proposition "Some swans are white"?

Daniel,

Plenty, if you are interested in swans.

Michael

Brand B got the point very well, and Hume dropped his philosophy the minute he was faced with putting it into practice.


That is simply an example to demonstrate a principle. Do you think people should have no interest in the following?
- Some people get cancer.
- Some people get heart disease.
- These diseases can some times be successfully treated.
- Some foods are poisonous.

Well, you can define science any way you like, Merlin. I would have thought that "some people get cancer" is an observation that might be a spur to try to discover the universal laws that govern the disease, such as "All people that eat X will get cancer." That, to Popper, is the aim of science - even if we know in advance we might never achieve that aim with any finality. If you want to argue differently, ie that science should aim at less demanding statements like "Some people that eat X will get cancer, and some won't" that is up to you.

Daniel,

Is the search for the causes, prevention, and cures for said diseases scientific enough for you?

Of course. This is just another way of saying the same thing, that we are after the universal laws that govern the above.

Is your answer "Popper" meant seriously? Or are you joking again?



The "are" in such formulations as "All swans are white" or "All men are mortal" isn't meant as applying just to all the swans or all the men existing at this moment.

Ellen

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Awhile after I posted the above, I thought that if one did play strictly safe with exactitude, the statement would become merely a summary statement of observations to date and not an induction.

Ellen

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Ellen,

Yep.

Nope.

And I don't get the joke.


I understand it to mean all men who have existed up to this point and all men (or swans or whatever) who now exist (more specifically, "known to exist" is the meaning of "exist" in this context). I have never, even in grade school, thought this meant all men who would ever exist and prohibit an exception, nor do I know anyone who thinks that way, not even the most boneheaded Randroid. In fact, I have never thought that the present tense meant the future. Ever. I have always thought it meant the present.

I will admit that there is an implicit presumption for the future such as, "so long as men exist, they will most likely be mortal," or "so long as men exist within the present state of understanding of mortality, they will be mortal," but it's always qualified by something other than the noun, verb tense and adjective. That presumption projects the present context into the future and slaps a big honking qualified "if such is the case" on it.

You can argue this if you like, but I prefer to stick to elementary grammar.

Michael

If you want to make "are" strictly present tense, and not refer to the future, then elementary grammar (and logic!) would dictate that, in regard to all the men who have existed up to this point, that you say "have been" or "were," not "are." All the men who existed in the past were mortal. Or, all the men who existed up to this point have been mortal. Nor "are."

I prefer to stick to elementary grammar, too. But I think we should do it consistently.

REB

Roger,

Ellen's point is that the present tense insinuates a condition for the future in the form of an implicit proposition.

"All swans are white"

translates to

"No swans can ever be anything but white."

And this can be falsified by one black swan, thus it is proven that induction is invalid or Rand was muddled in her thinking or whatever.

But those are not the same meanings. "Are" is not timeless as she claimed.

I learned that the future tense includes "will."

"All swans will be white" is vastly different than

"All swans are white."

Your present perfect example, "all swans have been white," does not change the meaning of present tense. See here for example (from an super-quick Google search):


This is all pretty elementary, no?

Only on an Objectivist forum is it possible to debate whether the present tense is timeless or not.

Michael

"All swans are white" simply means a black bird that can mate with a white bird that is a swan and produce reproductive oddspring is not a swan. The proof of the proposition is in the proposition, but empirically the proposition is false. Either all swans are white or they are not. Color does not define "swan," only describes, partially, almost all of them. To say all swans are white is like saying all humans are not albino. Just ignorant and stupid.

--Brant

Brant,

You turned the focus from verb tense to adjective: from "are" to "all."

Michael

Isn't that because I transliterated from the positive to the negative?

--Brant

Did you mean there to be a sneering undertone to your remarks, Michael? I detect one, or infer one, and hope I am mistaken. It adds an ugly note to your efforts to make your interpretation stand, expecially in the context of the dangers of relying upon inductive reasoning for valid generalizations, timeless conclusions.

I believe it is fair to say that the present tense serves to indicate the now, as you state. It also serves to indicate rules of nature, or the way the world is (or as noted above, a widespread truth). Water is wet. Zinc is white. Handsome is as handsome does. Boors are unwelcome at the Queen's table.

It's funny that you would insist upon a narrow rule reading of 'present tense' to clip the wings of your interlocutors. Context is important. Context is always important. Interlocutors are important. Today and in the future.

I hope that you will do a simple Google search on the term dicto simpliciter. This is a type of fallacy. I would explain it by pointing to this phrase: "The present tense refers only to the present."

There are exceptions. Ellen has pointed out an exception. Instead of getting your back up, you might acknowledge the exception.

You can't use induction "for timeless conclusions." Induction means looking for exceptions. No looking means "timeless." Brain dead, in other words. Deduction is the purpose of induction or nothing goes anywhere. Deduct and verify (induct) until the induct screws over the deduct then one reducts the deduct because of the induct. To deduct you have to deduct from something. All somethings are inductive. (I'm open to counterpoint. Don't be afraid.)

--Brant

The joke is that Popper said no such thing -- speaking of your denial on the other thread that AR's off-the-cuff remark about concept formation exhibiting the fundamental pattern of induction doesn't mislead O'ists as to what other persons meant by "induction."

Re your grammar problem, MSK...that is just too funny.

Ellen

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Sorry, Brant. "Timeless conclusions" is just what "induction," traditionally understood, is about: How do you go from X observations that Y to the generalization that ALL observations of Y will be the same? (How do you go from a set of particulars to a universal?)

Ellen

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E=mc^2.

I'm just about to die laughing over the timeless "are" snafu. I would NEVER have anticipated a quagmire over that one.

Cracking up.

Ellen

Edit: PS: Speaking of the meaning of words, I'd signed on intending to seriously discuss the meaning of "valid" as used in formal logic versus as used in various meanings in common parlance versus as used in O'ist lingo, for instance when O'ists (or the heavily O'ism-influenced) speak of a "valid" concept. I'll wait, however, on that one.

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With great caution and little hope. The general invalidity of induction has been shown by the so-many inductions that lead to false generalization. It is logically possible that induction may now and again produce a true generalization, but over very extensive or infinite domains it is impossible to demonstrate the truth of the generality by empirical means. Only the falseness of such generalizations can be shown empirically.

Induction is one of those things we have to do if we are to learn survival. But failure now and then is to be expected. The skinned knees and bruised flesh of our youth is clear evidence for that. We learn how to walk and ride a bike inductively (several tries before we get the action). Even then we take spills.

It is our fate as finite beings in a large universe to live with less than certainty, contextual or otherwise. It is not that we cannot know anything (hardly that!). It is that we cannot know with certainty just where and when our most general and extensive rules and laws will break down.

Ba'al Chatzaf

It wasn't "ignorant and stupid" once upon a time. Europeans once upon a time had no knowledge of the existence of black swans in Australia -- nor had they any knowledge of modern scientific thought about principles of genetics.

I'm reminded by your comment of something an instructor in the math department recently said to Larry, re Aristotle's being stupid because he didn't use the method of limits in re answering Zeno's paradoxes. It's like...hello? When did Aristotle live?

Ellen

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Bob quotes me:



For the record: I'd meanwhile edited the quoted post to correct the unmeant plural (and in so doing, I changed the intended "conclusion" to "generalization"). See.

E-

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William,

You are mistaken. Light exasperation is more accurate.

I get tired of discussing things that make no sense because someone wants to bash another. I have no problem with real reasons. I do have a problem with made up reasons, forced logic, and the competitive approach to rhetoric.

Michael

Ellen,

Popper didn't use those words, but he was blasting induction in the essay I read and the conclusions I mentioned are the only ones you can reach and remain logically consistent with his objections.

Look at it from another example of the same reasoning method. Person A says you can't drive anywhere because driving isn't valid. Then Person B says, so-and-so claims you can't drive to New York. Then he is challenged because Person A did not mention New York in his original statement. "Nowhere did Person A say you can't drive to New York!"

The fact that "anywhere" applies to "New York" and "isn't valid" applies to driving gets brushed aside in the quibbling.

I am not interested in pursuing that form of reasoning. It's nothing but semantics and I am more interested in the ideas.


Ditto for your twisting the rules of grammar out of shape and one-liner put-downs where arguments should be.

We're just a barrel of laughs, aren't we?



Michael

Fair enough. Thanks for clearing that up. I still have a couple of questions that pertain to your comments on 'elementary grammar.' I am assuming you read up on dicto simpliciter . . . and that you grant my, Ellen's and Roger's point that in some cases, the present tense of to be denotes a "state of nature."

William,

I will even go further and unpack this thing as best I can.

My intent is not to show off any learning or say this person or that person was wrong or unclear or whatever, but to examine ideas. I always kick myself after I get entangled in one of these exchanges that smells strongly of oneupmanship, but there it is. Forum life.

On the issue of the present tense of "to be" meaning "state of nature," depending on the context, I suppose, it could mean that. But here is my beef. ALL things can denote "state of nature" since "state of nature" (or an imagined state of nature) is a more fundamental concept on which all others are based.

My big toe is a state of nature. To kill is a state of nature. Puce is a state of nature.

Let's look at the concept before looking at the grammar. A conceptual thinker would never make a metaphysical statement about the present that excluded time simply because it is like saying the bottom of the mountain with no mountain existing. Time is made up of aspects: past, present, future and eternity. It is also entangled with space. We only experience directly a very small slice of this and the rest is projected. So metaphysically it is nonsense to talk about the present as not having a future. The present is part of time, not the other way around. Time embodies both present and future and the other two. I even mentioned once before the paradox of not being able to consciously experience the present since the moment that awareness registers the present, it is already the past.

When we get to grammar, I am not what you could call a grammar freak. I find formal grammar boring as all get out and I have to prop my eyes open with toothpicks every time I need to look something up. But I do look things up when I need to.

Even years ago when I heard the old joke about a man going out for supper and asking a taxi driver where to get scrod and the driver responding that he had heard that question a millions times before but never in the third-person pluperfect indicative, I looked it up and discovered it was only a spoof, not real grammar.

So when I was talking above (too hastily, I admit) about the present not having a future, I was talking specifically about a grammatical place on the timeline, not about some weird metaphysical notion of the present existing without time or outside of time (which includes the full shebang).

I understand when Ellen claimed that "are" had a "timeless nature," she was basically talking about eternity or at least time-space absoluteness (XXXXX is/was/will be such-and-such so long as it exists), but I do not get that from the verb tense alone. I may get it from the adjective "all," I may get it from the basic meaning of the verb, but not the verb tense, which indicates a point on (or section of) the timeline.

About "state of nature." The verb "to be" already indicates a state of nature in all its tenses, past, present and future (and eternal). "To exist." That's the meaning of "to be."

The meaning of the verb is more fundamental than the verb's tense. (And verb tense was what Ellen was talking about.) The whole concept does not replace a part of it, the verb tense. That doesn't make any sense. "Verb tense" is a time-focused facet of the verb-concept, not something apart from it.

A conceptual thinker always places the more fundamental concept underneath the parts built on it and does not try to project something like a verb tense as outside of time (or time's essential nature). That's called a stolen concept in Objectivism. But he does try to be specific according to whatever qualification he is focusing on.

To my understanding, the word "are" means something plural in a state of nature now. Not before. Not after. Not forever. Now.

"State of nature" as a concept obviously includes time, so it has a past, present and future (and possibly forever), but the verb tense does not. The verb tense identifies only part of the story.

That's why it is called the "present tense," not the "timeless tense," or the "eternal tense."

I hope that makes my thinking a bit clearer.

Michael

Pursuing the issue of Popper's meaning of "induction," Michael, I'll first track the history of your latest reply.

You wrote:



(I'm leaving out the part about "all swans are [by definition] swans," since in a subsequent post you said that you were joking about that part.)

I asked:



"[That's] easy," you answered -- here. "Popper."

In response to my saying -- here -- that:

"Popper said no such thing," you reply:




I don't know what essay you read. However, judging from my general understanding of Popper's views, I'd bet that what he was arguing is that induction isn't a valid form of reasoning. I'd also bet that what he meant by "induction" in the context was what he's meant in everything of his I've read, which is the typical meaning that's used when philosophers talk about "the problem of induction."

I.e., I'd bet that what Popper meant by "induction" in whatever you read was: extrapolating from a set of non-contradictory observations "that X" to an assertion that other observations which haven't been made will also show "that X." (Or another way of saying it: arguing from examples which have been observed to a claim of certainty about examples of the same type which haven't been observed.)

There is nothing in this meaning of "induction" which would lead to questioning that "some swans are white." "Some swans are white" isn't an induction in the meaning Popper uses. It might be an "induction" in the meaning you use, but it isn't in Popper's meaning. It's just a factual statement about particular observations which have been made.

Thus you're misunderstanding Popper by importing your meaning into what he wrote and therefore misreading what he was talking about.

Ellen

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Ellen,

We have been over all this before (especially in discussing "The Problem of Induction"). I suggest you consult the older posts rather than simply making an unfounded claim about my understanding.

I do understand. I have written about it. I see parallels between Popper and Rand on a conceptual level, but both use different jargon. I also see some problems with Popper's terminology. You have disagreed with this. So we disagree.

I don't feel like repeating.

Michael

Where have you made the claim before that Popper would have classified a statement such as "Some swans are white" as being an induction?

I had no recollection of your having made that claim before.

So...I did a search of my own posts using the search terms (without the quote marks) "Popper induction." I found three and a half screens, many of the posts long ones. I've spent about the last hour and a half reading through the whole set. Nowhere in those posts do I find any indication of your and my (or of anyone else's and my) discussing this particular point.

The large majority of the disputing between you and me re Popper pertains to Popper's essay on Two Kinds of Definition. Much of that disputing occurred on a thread titled " Two Kinds of "Induction": [...]," but it doesn't pertain to induction. It pertains to whether or not Rand's views on definitions classify as what Popper calls "essentialist."

The few posts I find (toward the bottom of the 3rd screen of my own posts which came up) in which you and I tangled on Popper's meaning of the term "induction" were on the "Scorecard" thread. I don't find in any of those a quote from you in which you claim that Popper would have classified a statement such as "Some swans are white" as being an induction.

Ellen

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Michael, I found a thread in which you talk extensively about swans. It's in the Ethics forum, a thread called "Do We Own Ourselves?" -- see.

I've only had time to skim the thread, and haven't even figured out yet how the issue of swans came up on a thread with that title! ;-)

There aren't any posts by me on the thread. It was started a couple days after my sister-in-law died following her long bout with cancer and it ended, except for four straggler posts from August, only about a week after Larry and I returned home from the memorial service in Florida (we were gone for more than a week). I'm not sure if I even saw that thread before.

On a quick skim, it seems to be informative about your views on "induction" -- and derivatively on why you're talking at cross-purposes with others of us.

I'll try to get around to reading the whole thread later.

Ellen

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Ellen,

You see, this is why I don't like competitive discussion hairsplitting over trivia and semantics.

Your original question was:


I answered "Popper."

Then you were off on some kind of crusade to prove God knows what, but your first question and my answer have nothing to do with where you ended up. The reason you have no recollection is because it didn't happen.

I don't have time for this. I am interested in induction, etc., but not in wasting a lot of time doing this "I said, you said" stuff. Please feel free to make other unfounded allegations and insinuations, but don't interpret my silence as agreeing or not being able to answer. I just don't hold any value for this kind of discussion.

Michael

Ellen,

Our posts crossed.

If you have anything of value to say, like treating the swans thing as an example of process, I'm interested. If the point is just to say so-and-so didn't use the word "swan" in discussing the process, I am not so interested. My interest in swans in this discussion is very little. May they have long and happy lives and multiply and be fruitful. Swans work as an example, but so do other things. I am really interested in the process of induction.

Michael

I don't follow that at all. You said that Popper "questions that 'some swans are white.'" On further questioning, you claimed that Popper would classify such a statement as "Some swans are white" as being an induction. Are you now saying that, no, you wouldn't make that claim? If so, I don't know what viewpoint it is you were attributing to Popper in your original statement.

Ellen

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I just had an epiphany!

All swans are black or white!

--Brant

Ellen,

(sigh)

Could you please give me a quote where I allegedly claimed that? Either you misunderstood something I wrote or I was unclear. So please drag the quote out and I will clarify my meaning.

Michael

That's a pip of an epiphany, Brant.

--Mindy

Here again is the sequence as laid out in my post #40. The "latest reply" referred to is your post #37.

I'll ADD two further paragraphs from your post #37, in which you made an analogy to what you called "another example of the same reasoning method."





If you weren't claiming that Popper would classify such a statement as "Some swans are white" as being an induction, I'm at a loss to figure out what you were claiming.

However, to expedite matters, I'll ask two direct questions, each of which can be answered with a simple affirmative or negative:

(1) Do you or do you not classify "Some swans are white" as an induction?

(2) Do you or do you not believe that Popper would have classified "Some swans are white" as an induction?

Ellen

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