PHIL 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Enumerative Induction, Sampling Bias, Hasty Generalization

• School: University of Victoria
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 201
• Professor: Klatt Carrie

Document Summary

Inductive -> believe the conclusion with some degree of probability. 40% of pine trees around kelowna are infested with pine beetles. Therefore, about 40% of pine trees in bc are infested with pine beetles. Property - infested with pine beetles problem when sample does not represent the whole group (sample big enough?) With inductive generalizations information is taken about a sample and conclusions are made about a larger group. observed target group. Problems arise if the sample does not represent the group. The problems that occur with enumerative inductions are: 1) the size of the sample is too small to justify the conclusion (hasty generalization), That is, the sample group does not represent the relevant properties that are found in the target group. 3) psychological problems arise because of how information is taken from the sample group. The size of the sample needed to justify a conclusion will depend on what is concluded.