PHI 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Inductive Reasoning, Richard Dawkins, Fetus

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 1101
• Professor: Iva Apostolova

Document Summary

Inductive arguments, unlike deductive arguments, do not guarantee (the truth of) their conclusion. So, the strength of inductive arguments does not come from their structure, as is the case with deductive arguments. The premises provide probably truth for the conclusion. Inductive arguments, then, can never be sound arguments. Inductive reasoning extrapolates on what we know, using our current knowledge to arrive at conclusions which are not deductively implied by the premises. In other words, inductive reasoning allows us to arrive at genuinely new knowledge. The new knowledge comes at a cost: certainty. Certainty in inductive reasoning is achieved empirically (through experience) Inductive reasoning rests on the assumption that nature is uniform (what does that mean?) The uniformity of nature: all events in nature conform to generalizations (eg: physical laws) that can be verified directly or indirectly via observation. Uniformity of nature is understood temporally (the future will resemble the past) and laterally (across different phenomena in the same time frame)