The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics

[BaalChatzaf]

post deleted by poster

Edited August 18, 2010 by BaalChatzaf

[Xray]

Sjw,

I have no doubt that a lot of imaginative people have devoted considerable mental energy into trying to make sense of ITOE.

But if what it says in ITOE is so clear to you, then surely you won't have any difficulty answering some questions about it:

1) Could you please provide an example of a definition and demonstrate the "contextual absoluteness" in it?

2) Could you please demonstrate "essential characteristics being determined contextually" with a concrete example?

I have more but will await your reply before continuing.

None of this is relevant to your absurd view of what she meant by "concrete."

That you evade answering my two questions is hard to miss.

As for the term "conrete", feel free to plow through ITOE and you will see the cascade of contradictions:

On the one hand, Rand uses the term so widely that it can be applied to virtually everything:

Abstractions as such do not exist: they are merely man’s epistemological method of perceiving that which exists—and that which exists is concrete. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/abstractions_and_concretes.html

while on the other hand, she agrees to the position that "the concept concrete distuingishes entities from abstractions" (Prof B. in ITOE, p. 240). AR: "That's correct."

On rare occasions, Rand does become aware of her own confusing terminology though (ITOE, p. 158) but refuses to specify terms (e. g. by using "mental unit" instead of "unit") because "she is against neologisms" (!). Need more be said? The forming of neologisms is a creative characteristic inherent in language as such. Was Rand so convinced of her terminology being so perfect that she thought it would endure forever?

Besides, I am not one who holds ITOE to be something that can be defended in every respect, I have my own criticisms of her epistemology.

Could you name some of those criticisms and elaborate?

Rand obviously used concrete to mean a mixture of cement, sand, stone, and water that starts as a liquid and, as it dries, hardens to a stonelike mass.

You pour it into buckets and put the feet of your adversaries into it. After it hardens you throw them overboard into deep water.

It's called bucket epistemology.

(It would be helpful if Rand critics were not so concrete-bound in trying to abstract her meaning of concrete. And I don't mean Shayne...)

Michael

"Bucket epistemology" - Oh My Galtness, what do we have here: another neologism!

(The credit for the neologism "Oh my Galtness" goes to Brant who coined that one).

As we know from ITOE (see above), Rand was against neologisms, and imo to call such thinking "concrete-bound" would fit perfectly. ;)

Edited August 18, 2010 by Xray

[Xray]

If this thread hits 800 posts, I'm just going to shoot myself... I'm warning you guys....

Please review from 3:50 to 4:00 for important advice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sowOY6UAonE

Truly shocking, that advice of yours ND. Sonya sounds a bit Dagny-ish here. Such cold blood!

L&D is one of my Allen favorites. I have seen it many times. Remeber the scene at the beginning where seeing Sonya and Boris, have, at a tearing pace, that philosophical debate about - "subjective" and "objective".

If this thread hits 800 posts, I'm just going to shoot myself... I'm warning you guys....

But how utterly un-Galt-ish of you, Phil! Dreaming of being casted as Galt on one of the movie threads here and then this!

Would your hero Galt allow himself to be knocked down by a thread (allow me to use thread here instead of feather)?

Would your hero Galt allow his life hanging by a thread?

In addition, your hero Galt was also a fan of extended elaborations, just think of of his mega-long speech in AS.

But joking aside, Phil: Although what is being discussed here may appear to someone popping in like a debate on 'how many definitions can dance on a needle' ;), epistemology discussions always require lot of digging and sifting.

What you can observe here is only the ouverture, Phil.

The nucleus of the issue is going to reveal itself soon: when it becomes clear that all human attempts at classifying entities, all human endeavours to get a perfect definition, can't be any royal road leading directly to the discovery of so-called "objective reality". That royal road may not even exist at all.

So in case you reconsider and stay in here, fasten your seatbelt.

It is actually about objective and subjective, which requires thinking about to what extent our consciousness, through the filter of our senses, "constructs" that which we in everday life call objective reality.

The there's the "deep philosophical significance of experimental research agendas in quantum physics". (See the Wikipedia article on Bernard D'Espagnat, link below).

Bernard D'Espagnat said in "The Quantum Theory and Reality":

"The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_d%27Espagnat

I'm waiting for D'Espagnat's book On Physics and Philosophy to arrive in the mail, and my thanks go to Dragonfly for directing the OL posters to his work.

Edited August 18, 2010 by Xray

[merjet]

If this thread hits 800 posts, I'm just going to shoot myself... I'm warning you guys....

With what -- a water pistol?

Phil contributes to his own soaking.

Don't shoot at your crotch and then walk around in public. Little kids will point at you and laugh.

Edited August 18, 2010 by Merlin Jetton

[merjet]

For readers who may have missed it, Daniel Barnes and I had a dialog about Popper's Two Kinds of Definitions (TKD) in 2007. This is Daniel's reply to a post I made on another thread. Use the link in his post to first read my post about TKD.

[sjw]

As for the term "conrete", feel free to plow through ITOE and you will see the cascade of contradictions:

You list some things and never point to the alleged contradiction. I realize it is self-evident to you what you do not grasp, but I can't read your mind. By "concrete" I take Rand to mean the most specific things possible, those things in reality that are ultimately referred to by abstractions, whether entity, action, or attribute. It does not seem that difficult a concept to grasp, I am at a loss as to why it is driving you nuts.

Could you name some of those criticisms and elaborate?

Yes.

[Robert Campbell]

During the past century, however, many philosophers have rejected the validity of induction, and argued that every generalization is an error. For example, Karl Popper claimed that all the laws of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton had been "falsified". By demanding that a true generalization must apply with unlimited precision to an unlimited domain, Popper upheld a mystical view of "truth" that is forever outside the reach of man and accessible only to an omniscient god. In the end, he was left with two types of generalizations, those that have been proven false, and those that will be proven false. He was then accused by later philosophers of being too optimistic, they insisted that nothing can be proven, not even a generalization's falsehood. Such skeptics commit, on a grand scale, the fallacy of dropping context. The meaning of our generalizations is determined by the context that gives rise to them. To claim that a generalization is true is to claim that it applies within a specific context. The data subsumed by that context are necessarily limited in both range and precision.

David Harriman, The Logical Leap

Like ND, I was hoping we'd get around to discussing Harriman's claims at some point

This is a particularly important quotation, because it makes clear the burden Harriman is assuming. What are the limits, in range and precision, on the data subsumed by a generalization that is made by a particular scientist at a particular time? Will that scientist (and others who make use of the generalization, or respond to it) be able to recognize what these limits are?

Robert Campbell

[sjw]

This is a particularly important quotation, because it makes clear the burden Harriman is assuming. What are the limits, in range and precision, on the data subsumed by a generalization that is made by a particular scientist at a particular time? Will that scientist (and others who make use of the generalization, or respond to it) be able to recognize what these limits are?

The last sentence of the Harriman quote suggests that he would ignore one of the most if not the most stunning and important aspects of theories such as Newton's, which is that they go very far beyond the range and precision of the data that was available to him at the time.

Shayne

[tjohnson]

That's an interesting formulation, "I may know p, but p may be false", mentioned in this thread, although I'm not sure who wrote it. I would reword it slightly after Korzybski;

"I may know p, but my knowledge of p will always be incomplete". We can never know all about something because we only get limited information with our senses and our instruments. This does not stop us from knowing a great deal and using this knowledge to our advantage.

[Robert Campbell]

I agree with George that Karl Popper was not a skeptic, as that term is generally understood today.

Nor would Leonard Peikoff turn out to be a skeptic, if Peikovian contextual certainty turns out not to qualify as the real thing.

Popper was definitely not a Pyrrhonian. I can't see a Pyrrhonian recommending that anyone put any effort into figuring out whether any deep scientific theory is true or false. It would detract from the hassle-free life...

About Academic skepticism I know a good deal less. I've been reading some Cicero lately; maybe I'll get a better sense of it.

I'm going to start another thread soon, focusing on passages in Harriman's book that expound various Peikovian doctrines: Peikovian proof, the theory of first-level generalizations, contextual certainty, the arbitrary. That, I suspect, is the most profitable way to address Harriman.

With the possible exception of some of Paul Feyerabend's most extreme utterances, Harriman knows as much about 20th century philosophy of science as his mentor knows about Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. Harriman's sparse comments about Popper and others are best taken as symptoms of ignorance.

Robert Campbell

[Ellen Stuttle]

[...] recall this passage by Popper that I quoted earlier.

One should never get involved in verbal questions or questions of meaning, and never get interested in words. If challenged by the question of whether a word one uses really means this or perhaps that, then one should say: 'I don't know, and I am not interested in meanings: and if you wish, I will gladly accept your terminology.' This never does any harm. One should never quarrel about words, and never get involved in questions of terminology. One should always keep away from discussing concepts.

It seems that, for Popper, "never" means "never, except when Popper wishes not be to misunderstood."

Here's an example which I think is particularly important of Popper's attempt to clarify and explain the basis for and history of his usage "methodological nominalism."

It's an ironically pertinent example of the confusion which can result from incorrect definition.

The passages I've highlighted in color are ones which I think especially significant in linking Popper's and Rand's views and in providing a way to partially reframe Rand's views so as to place them in an evolutionary context.

Unended Quest

7. A Long Digression on Essentialism

Routledge Classics edition, 2002

pp.15-18

[bold and color emphases added]

I do not wish to suggest that the following formulation was in my mind when I was fifteen, yet I cannot now state better than in this way the attitude I reached in that discussion with my father which I mentioned in the previous section.

Never let yourself be goaded into taking seriously problems about words and their meanings. What must be taken seriously are questions of fact, and assertions about facts: theories and hypotheses; the problems they solve; and the problems they raise.

In the sequel I shall refer to this piece of self-advice as my anti-essentialist exhortation. Apart from the reference to theories and hypotheses which is likely to be of a much later date, this exhortation cannot be very far from an articulation of the feelings I harboured when I first became conscious of the trap set by worries or quarrels about words and their meanings. This, I still think, is the surest path to intellectual perdition: the abandonment of real problems for the sake of verbal problems.

However, my own thoughts on this issue were for a long time bedevilled by my naive yet confident belief that all this must be well known, especially to philosophers, provided they were sufficiently up to date. This belief led me later, when I began more seriously to read philosophical books, to try to identify my problem--the relative unimportance of words--with one of the standard problems of philosophy. Thus I decided that it was very closely related to the classical problem of universals. And although I realized fairly soon that my problem was not identical with that classical problem, I tried hard to see it as a variant of the classical problem. This was a mistake. But in consequence I became greatly interested in the problem of universals and its history; and I soon came to the conclusion that behind the classical problem of universal words and their meaning (or sense, or denotation) there loomed a deeper and more important problem: the problem of universal laws and their truth; that is, the problem of regularities.

The problem of universals is even today treated as if it were a problem of words or of language usages; or of similarities in situations, and how they are matched by similarities in our linguistic symbolism. It seemed to me quite obvious, however, that it was much more general; that it was fundamentally a problem of reacting similarly, to biologically similar situations. Since all (or almost all) reactions have, biologically, an anticipatory value, we are led to the problem of anticipation or expectation, and so to that of adaptation to regularities.

Now throughout my life I have not only believed in the existence of what philosophers call an "external world" but I have also regarded the opposite view as one not worth taking seriously. This does not mean that I never argued the issue with myself, or that I never experimented with, for example, "neutral monism" and similar idealistic positions. Yet I was always an adherent of realism; and this made me sensitive to the fact that within the context of the problem of universals this term "realism" was used in a quite different sense; that is, to denote positions opposed to nominalism. In order to avoid this somewhat misleading use I invented, when working on The Poverty of Historicism (probably in 1935, see the "Historical Note" to the book edition), the term "essentialism" as a name for any (classical) position which is opposed to nominalism, and especially for the theories of Plato and Aristotle (and, among the moderns, for Husserl's "intuition of essences").

At least ten years before I chose this name I had become aware of the fact that my own problem, as opposed to the classical problem of universals (and its biological variant), was a problem of method. After all, what I had originally impressed on my mind was an exhortation to think, to proceed, in one way rather than in another. This is why, long before I invented the terms "essentialism" and "anti-essentialism", I had qualified the term "nominalism" by the term "methodological", using the name "methodological nominalism" for the attitude characteristic of my exhortation. (I now think this name a little misleading. The choice of the word "nominalism" was the result of my attempt to identify my attitude with some well-known position, or at least to find similarities between it and some such position. Classical "nominalism", however, was a position which I never accepted.)

In the early 1920s I had two discussions which had some influence on these ideas. The first was a discussion with Karl Polanyi, the economist and political theorist. Polanyi thought that what I described as "methodological nominalism" was characteristic of the natural sciences but not of the social sciences. The second discussion, somewhat later, was with Heinrich Gomperz, a thinker of great originality and immense erudition, who shocked me by describing my position as "realist" in both senses of the word.

I now believe that Polanyi and Gomperz were both right. Polanyi was right because the natural sciences are largely free from verbal discussion, while verbalism was, and still is, rampant in many forms in the social sciences. But there is more to it. I should now say that social relations belong, in many ways, to what I have more recently called "the third world" or better "world 3", the world of theories, of books, of ideas, of problems; a world which, ever since Plato--who saw it as a world of concepts--has been studied mainly by essentialists. Gomperz was right because a realist who believes in an "external world" necessarily believes in the existence of a cosmos rather than a chaos; that is, in regularities. And though I felt more opposed to classical essentialism than to nominalism, I did not then realize that, in substituting the problem of biological adaptation to regularities for the problem of the existence of similarities, I stood closer to "realism" than to nominalism.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Speaking of confusion about terms, I'm now wondering what Daniel means in classifying Popper as a "skeptic." I'd taken him to mean a "scientific skeptic." Scientific skepticism is the proper attitude of a scientist. To put it in an aphorism, my husband's, it's the awareness that "In science the debate is never over."

But some of Daniel's posts make me wonder if he means what I think of as "universal skepticism," the doubt that we can know that there is an external world, and that we can have any knowledge at all.

I have to re-read that article by Miller which Daniel cited. I read it before when Daniel cited it in an earlier Popper discussion and thought I agreed with it, but I might have read it too fast and missed significant details.

Ellen

[BaalChatzaf]

How did this thread turn into a rumble on Popper's bones?

I thought it was about induction in physics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[George H. Smith]

During the past century, however, many philosophers have rejected the validity of induction, and argued that every generalization is an error. For example, Karl Popper claimed that all the laws of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton had been "falsified". By demanding that a true generalization must apply with unlimited precision to an unlimited domain, Popper upheld a mystical view of "truth" that is forever outside the reach of man and accessible only to an omniscient god. In the end, he was left with two types of generalizations, those that have been proven false, and those that will be proven false. He was then accused by later philosophers of being too optimistic, they insisted that nothing can be proven, not even a generalization's falsehood. Such skeptics commit, on a grand scale, the fallacy of dropping context. The meaning of our generalizations is determined by the context that gives rise to them. To claim that a generalization is true is to claim that it applies within a specific context. The data subsumed by that context are necessarily limited in both range and precision.

David Harriman, The Logical Leap

Like ND, I was hoping we'd get around to discussing Harriman's claims at some point

This is a particularly important quotation, because it makes clear the burden Harriman is assuming. What are the limits, in range and precision, on the data subsumed by a generalization that is made by a particular scientist at a particular time? Will that scientist (and others who make use of the generalization, or respond to it) be able to recognize what these limits are?

Robert Campbell

The correct place to start is not with complicated issues in science or the history of science (where the number of variables is immense) but with everyday examples of inductive reasoning. Popper may believe, and may even be right, that science proceeds by conjectures and refutations rather than by induction, but his broader claim that there is no such thing as inductive reasoning is absurd.

Suppose I claim that no human being can fly by merely flapping his or her arms with no artificial aids. How did I arrive at this generalization? By inductive reasoning, clearly, but this was not what logicians call "complete" (or "perfect") induction. That is to say, I did not observe every human being who has ever existed. Nor, even if I had, could I possibly observe every human being who will exist in the future.

My generalization rests upon "incomplete" (or what Aristotle called "material") induction. This is essentially a process of reasoning from particulars to universals. I know of my own inability to fly, and I know from my knowledge of other people that they cannot fly either. This is a very incomplete enumeration, of course. There are many billions of people that I know nothing about, so how can I generalize about them?

My generalization is based on my knowledge that human beings have roughly similar physical attributes, and I know that our physical attributes determine our physical powers . And I simply cannot conceive of human arms that would enable a person to fly. Moreover, if there were people with this ability, surely we would have heard of them before.

Well, what if we did have reports of people who could fly by flapping their arms? If these were historical reports, in most cases we would dismiss the accounts out of hand. (Possible exceptions, such as the claim that a person was born with webbing on his arms, rather like a bat, would take a while to explain.) We would classify such reports as "miraculous" and then use a version of Hume's argument against miracles to show that they lack credibility. (As some of Hume's Christian critics pointed out, Hume's argument against miracles is incompatible with his argument against induction. If inductive reasoning has no rational merit but is based solely on habit, then we cannot summarily dismiss reports of miracles as devoid of credibility.)

If we had contemporary reports of someone who can fly by flapping his arms, then we would demand rigorous proof, up to and including first hand observations. We would also demand controlled conditions, as Houdini did with psychics and the magician Randi did with that great fraud Uri Geller. And here fellow magicians rather than "scientists" should control the conditions.

Geller passed some tests performed by Stanford scientists, which endowed him with enormous credibility in the public mind, but Randi shredded them -- and Geller. (Randi pointed how naive even highly trained scientists can be in matters involving sophisticated deception.) Indeed, when a large group of Israeli magicians sat in the front row for a Geller performance, Geller refused to go on stage, complaining of hostile vibes. (Geller was right about this in a way. Most serious magicians, however skilled in the arts of deception, despise fraud.) Additionally, when Geller appeared on the Johnny Carson show, Carson, an amateur magician who had been advised by Randi, knew how to keep things honest. As a result, Geller was unable to do one damned trick. (I saw this show many years ago, during my amateur magician days, and I laughed out loud as Geller sat squirming at a table. But I digress....}

Even if induction is not used in some of the sciences, it is used in archeology, anthropology, and other historical sciences, and it also used in many of the "social sciences." Whether the latter should be called "sciences" or not is irrelevant to Popper's contention, since his objections to induction are universal. Popper's insistence that the physical and social sciences employ the same basic methodology -- a position known as "methodological monism," in contrast to the "methodological dualism" of Hayek, Mises, and others in the Verstehen tradition -- is as wrong as it could be.

If we apply Popper's conjectures and refutations approach to my generalization about the inability of humans to fly by flapping their arms, we end up with an absurd scenario, to wit: I have a hypothesis (a "conjecture") and I should test it, not by looking for more instances of people who cannot fly by flapping their arms, but by looking for instances that will falsify my hypothesis, i.e., people who can fly in this manner (a "refutation"). And if I don't find anyone who can do this, then I may have corroborated my hypothesis to some degree, but I have not proven it to be true. Why? Because I can never be certain that some people I am unaware of have not had, do not have, or will not have this ability.

In truth, we would never reach the point of testing my generalization in any fashion, because we regard its contradictory that some humans (i.e., at least one) can fly by flapping their arms as impossible and therefore as utterly lacking in credibility. And we can legitimately say this -- with certainty -- even if we don't have the necessary scientific knowledge to explain why humans cannot fly in this manner. My generalization is the result of inductive reasoning.

The preceding is only a rough and informal sketch, one intended to get the ball rolling on this topic. I await the usual criticisms about "logical possibility," and so forth, and I will consider them as they come up. If my generalization isn't strong enough for you, then there are countless others to choose from, e.g.: No person can run 1000 miles per hour; no person can turn himself invisible at will; no person can leap a tall building in a single bound, etc., etc.

Ghs

[Ellen Stuttle]

Meaning, someone with a hard copy, to better insure an accurate transcription? No?? Alright, then I'll do it myself. I can't give a page number reference:

During the past century, however, many philosophers have rejected the validity of induction, and argued that every generalization is an error. For example, Karl Popper claimed that all the laws of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton had been “falsified”. By demanding that a true generalization must apply with unlimited precision to an unlimited domain, Popper upheld a mystical view of “truth” that is forever outside the reach of man and accessible only to an omniscient god. In the end, he was left with two types of generalizations, those that have been proven false, and those that will be proven false. He was then accused by later philosophers of being too optimistic, they insisted that nothing can be proven, not even a generalization’s falsehood. Such skeptics commit, on a grand scale, the fallacy of dropping context. The meaning of our generalizations is determined by the context that gives rise to them. To claim that a generalization is true is to claim that it applies within a specific context. The data subsumed by that context are necessarily limited in both range and precision.

David Harriman,

The Logical Leap

Slight divergences from the hard copy, all except for one ("have" instead of "had") details of punctuation. Here it is from hard copy:

The Logical Leap

David Harriman

pp. 189-190

During the past century, however, many philosophers have rejected the validity of induction and argued that every generalization is an error. For example, Karl Popper claimed that all the laws of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton have been “falsified”. By demanding that a true generalization must apply with unlimited precision to an unlimited domain, Popper upheld a mystical view of “truth” that is forever outside the reach of man and accessible only to an omniscient god. In the end, he was left with two types of generalizations: those that have been proven false and those that will be proven false. He was then accused by later philosophers of being too optimistic; they insisted that nothing can be proven, not even a generalization’s falsehood.

Such skeptics commit--on a grand scale--the fallacy of dropping context. The meaning of our generalizations is determined by the context that gives rise to them; to claim that a generalization is true is to claim that it applies within a specific context. The data subsumed by that context are necessarily limited in both range and precision.

[Daniel Barnes]

While skimming some online articles about Karl Popper, I ran across this passage from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Karl Popper is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. He was also a social and political philosopher of considerable stature, a self-professed ‘critical-rationalist’, a dedicated opponent of all forms of scepticism, conventionalism, and relativism in science and in human affairs generally.... (My emphasis.)

It seems that Daniel's news that Popper was a "skeptic" has not reached every corner of Popperdom.

Ghs

Clearly this calls for urgent debate on the meaning of the word "skeptic"!...;-)

[Daniel Barnes]

For readers who may have missed it, Daniel Barnes and I had a dialog about Popper's Two Kinds of Definitions (TKD) in 2007. This is Daniel's reply to a post I made on another thread. Use the link in his post to first read my post about TKD.

Merlin, you truly are a sadist!

[Daniel Barnes]

Speaking of confusion about terms, I'm now wondering what Daniel means in classifying Popper as a "skeptic." I'd taken him to mean a "scientific skeptic." Scientific skepticism is the proper attitude of a scientist. To put it in an aphorism, my husband's, it's the awareness that "In science the debate is never over."

But some of Daniel's posts make me wonder if he means what I think of as "universal skepticism," the doubt that we can know that there is an external world, and that we can have any knowledge at all.

I have to re-read that article by Miller which Daniel cited. I read it before when Daniel cited it in an earlier Popper discussion and thought I agreed with it, but I might have read it too fast and missed significant details.

In order, very quickly:

Yes. But I'm not sure why you think that debate can be permanently settled in fields other than science? What, one day there will be no more debate in ethics? In politics? In a funny way this reminds me a little of David Stove's putdown of Popper, where he made out that it was a kind of a fault in Popper's philosophy of science that debate is never over. Debate, not having things settled...what a terrible state of affairs!

No.

I recommend you do.

Edited August 18, 2010 by Daniel Barnes

[Daniel Barnes]

Sorry for the brevity folks, though perhaps you will thank me for it...! Unfortunately I won't be able to make regular posts until about a week from now.

I would like to start a new thread and quit torturing this one. I have the chart Ellen mentioned scanned to jpg, and can quickly upload it to a new thread but not sure how. MSK, how to?

Then should anyone feel like target practice you can all fill it with bullet holes in my absence...;-)

[tjohnson]

Suppose I claim that no human being can fly by merely flapping his or her arms with no artificial aids. How did I arrive at this generalization? By inductive reasoning, clearly, but this was not what logicians call "complete" (or "perfect") induction. That is to say, I did not observe every human being who has ever existed. Nor, even if I had, could I possibly observe every human being who will exist in the future.

There is a difference between a positive assertion and a negative assertion. If I say humans cannot fly by flapping their arms then to falsify this assertion you must produce one human who can fly this way. But If I say it is possible that a human can fly this way then we can never falsify this for sure since there is always the possibility that we might discover one that can.

[George H. Smith]

Suppose I claim that no human being can fly by merely flapping his or her arms with no artificial aids. How did I arrive at this generalization? By inductive reasoning, clearly, but this was not what logicians call "complete" (or "perfect") induction. That is to say, I did not observe every human being who has ever existed. Nor, even if I had, could I possibly observe every human being who will exist in the future.

There is a difference between a positive assertion and a negative assertion. If I say humans cannot fly by flapping their arms then to falsify this assertion you must produce one human who can fly this way. But If I say it is possible that a human can fly this way then we can never falsify this for sure since there is always the possibility that we might discover one that can.

So? I was addressing Popper's argument that inductive reasoning is never valid.

Moreover, your second statement is positively verifiable. All you need do is produce one human who can fly by flapping his arms. But before you expect others to take this hypothesis seriously (in the absence of positive verification), you would need to present reasons for supposing that it is possible for a human being to fly by flapping his arms. The fact that something may be "logically possible" doesn't count for diddly-squat in this matter. As Kant pointed out, logical possibility pertains to meaning; to say that x is logically possible is merely to assert that x is not self-contradictory. This by itself is no reason to believe that x may actually be the case. This requires specific reasons or evidence that pertain to this particular case. (Kant called this "material possibility.")

Ghs

[tjohnson]

Suppose I claim that no human being can fly by merely flapping his or her arms with no artificial aids. How did I arrive at this generalization? By inductive reasoning, clearly, but this was not what logicians call "complete" (or "perfect") induction. That is to say, I did not observe every human being who has ever existed. Nor, even if I had, could I possibly observe every human being who will exist in the future.

There is a difference between a positive assertion and a negative assertion. If I say humans cannot fly by flapping their arms then to falsify this assertion you must produce one human who can fly this way. But If I say it is possible that a human can fly this way then we can never falsify this for sure since there is always the possibility that we might discover one that can.

So? I was addressing Popper's argument that inductive reasoning is never valid.

Moreover, your second statement is positively verifiable. All you need do is produce one human who can fly by flapping his arms. But before you expect others to take this hypothesis seriously (in the absence of positive verification), you would need to present reasons for supposing that it is possible for a human being to fly by flapping his arms. The fact that something may be "logically possible" doesn't count for diddly-squat in this matter. As Kant pointed out, logical possibility pertains to meaning; to say that x is logically possible is merely to assert that x is not self-contradictory. This by itself is no reason to believe that x may actually be the case. This requires specific reasons or evidence that pertain to this particular case. (Kant called this "material possibility.")

Ghs

Sorry, I am not familiar with Popper's ideas about inductive reasoning, I just threw that into the mix.

People can have many reasons about why they believe something is possible, which is why you can't falsify a positive assertion. You may not like or agree with their reasons but that is not the point. The same applies to the existence of God. I can say God doesn't exist with certainty because to disprove me you have to produce God in a way I can see. On the other hand if you say God exists and you have seen him I can't deny that because I can't be in your head.

[Ellen Stuttle]

While skimming some online articles about Karl Popper, I ran across this passage from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Karl Popper is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. He was also a social and political philosopher of considerable stature, a self-professed ‘critical-rationalist’, a dedicated opponent of all forms of scepticism, conventionalism, and relativism in science and in human affairs generally.... (My emphasis.)

It seems that Daniel's news that Popper was a "skeptic" has not reached every corner of Popperdom.

Ghs

Clearly this calls for urgent debate on the meaning of the word "skeptic"!...;-)

C'mon, Daniel. It isn't an issue of a debate over "the meaning of the word 'skeptic.'" It's an issue of what epistemic category Popper's views belong in. How can anyone know if Popper was or wasn't a "skeptic" according to your meaning of "skeptic" if you won't deign to tell us what you mean? For instance, if what you mean is a believer in Zoroaster, then we can say that Popper's views don't belong in that category.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Speaking of confusion about terms, I'm now wondering what Daniel means in classifying Popper as a "skeptic." I'd taken him to mean a "scientific skeptic." Scientific skepticism is the proper attitude of a scientist. To put it in an aphorism, my husband's, it's the awareness that "In science the debate is never over."

But some of Daniel's posts make me wonder if he means what I think of as "universal skepticism," the doubt that we can know that there is an external world, and that we can have any knowledge at all.

I have to re-read that article by Miller which Daniel cited. I read it before when Daniel cited it in an earlier Popper discussion and thought I agreed with it, but I might have read it too fast and missed significant details.

In order, very quickly:

Yes.

Yes, what? Are you saying that what you mean in classifying Popper as a "skeptic" is a "scientific skeptic"?

But I'm not sure why you think that debate can be permanently settled in fields other than science?

Where did I say that I think that? Depends on the field and the issue. Even in science there are issues which can be settled.

No.

No, what? Are you saying that you do NOT mean "the doubt that we can know that there is an external world, and that we can have any knowledge at all"?

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Suppose I claim that no human being can fly by merely flapping his or her arms with no artificial aids. How did I arrive at this generalization? By inductive reasoning, clearly, but this was not what logicians call "complete" (or "perfect") induction. That is to say, I did not observe every human being who has ever existed. Nor, even if I had, could I possibly observe every human being who will exist in the future.

My generalization rests upon "incomplete" (or what Aristotle called "material") induction. This is essentially a process of reasoning from particulars to universals. I know of my own inability to fly, and I know from my knowledge of other people that they cannot fly either. This is a very incomplete enumeration, of course. There are many billions of people that I know nothing about, so how can I generalize about them?

As your subsequent reasoning shows, you aren't arriving at your generalization by "a process of reasoning from particulars to universals" -- i.e., by reasoning from "Some a are X" to "All a are X."

Instead you primarily (although not entirely) reason on the basis of an at least implicit theory of physics according to which humans flying by flapping their arms is impossible:

My generalization is based on my knowledge that human beings have roughly similar physical attributes, and I know that our physical attributes determine our physical powers . And I simply cannot conceive of human arms that would enable a person to fly. [....]

[....]

In truth, we would never reach the point of testing my generalization in any fashion, because we regard its contradictory that some humans (i.e., at least one) can fly by flapping their arms as impossible and therefore as utterly lacking in credibility. And we can legitimately say this -- with certainty -- even if we don't have the necessary scientific knowledge to explain why humans cannot fly in this manner. My generalization is the result of inductive reasoning.

The generalization isn't the result of inductive reasoning in the meaning of "inductive reasoning" which you gave, to repeat, "a process of reasoning from particulars to unviersals."

It's this meaning -- reasoning from "Some a are X" to "All a are X" -- which I think was Popper's meaning of "induction" when he said that inductive reasoning is invalid. Further, as I recall, by "invalid" he meant in the formal logic sense wherein a "valid" argument means an argument in which the truth of the premises would guarantee the truth of the conclusions. ("Some a are X" doesn't guarantee the truth of the conclusion "All a are X.")

If he strictly used "induction" and "valid" in the meanings indicated, then he was correct that "induction" isn't a "valid" argument form. I think he made the further claim that no one ever actually reasons from "Some a are X" to "All a are X." If he did claim this, I have doubts that it's true. However, I think that in a great many cases which might superficially look as if a person is reasoning from "some" to "all," the person is actually reasoning on the basis of a causal theory, as you did in arguing that why we don't expect ever to find a person who can fly by flapping his arms is because we believe this is impossible according to our knowledge of physics.

Ellen