PHIL 221 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Logical Truth, Prime Number, Mathematical Proof
Document Summary
Example: gold can be de ned as a yellow metal that sinks in water. Then the statement that gold sinks in water becomes a logical truth. There is not way this statement can be false based on the way we de ned gold. That doesn"t solve the problem of induction, you just moved it. The fact that you de ned something, doesn"t mean that it exists (any de nition can be correct but that doesn"t mean its a de nition for an existing object) If there is an element where it is yellow and it sinks in water, then by repeated experimentation where it sinks in water, we can say this element is gold. This does not work because the problem of induction comes up again. How do we know that this matter will behave like gold in the next experiment? we have to assume that nature is uniform.
