SOC SCI H1G Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Inductive Reasoning, Descriptive Knowledge, Karl Popper

• School: UC-Irvine
• Department: Social Science
• Course: SOC SCI H1G
• Professor: Jeff Barrettand Kyle Stanford

Document Summary

Due to our psychology we are built to make certain conclusions based off of experience. Regardless of whether we have rational justification. Will conclude based on events being conjoined in experience. Goes against long standing tradition of humans seen as rational human beings. Inclined to see humans as especially complex. Not special due to the presence of reason or anything. There is no fancy faculty of reasoning or rational justification that motivates or guides what we do. What we do is guided by something that is natural, instinctive -> just like other organisms. Doubts about whether we have rational justification for inference. Hume doesn"t have any mechanism in mind when he says custom -> means that we are built that way. Moral: we are creatures of nature, not of reason . Should not rely on induction & inference. Reason has much less to do with what we think, say, & do then we are inclined to imagine.