Currently I'm reading Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery and in the first chapter there is a rather beautiful refutation of induction which I thought worth sharing.
The problem of induction is the problem of how to justify our believes: why do I think that my ideas are true? Inductivism is the idea that our belief is based upon a generalisation of a finite number of cases, e.g. we see a couple of white swans and conclude that all swans are white. Popper, following Hume, points out that the logical support* for induction is missing. Why do a finite number of observations justify general theories? What justifies this jump from the particular to the general? (In this case: why are we sure that no black swans exist?) In fact, the problem runs deeper, for even if there was some justification for the principle of induction then we have yet to justify that justification and this is the problem of induction all over again. The same is true for all justifications of our knowledge; we can always ask: why is that justification true and not some other justification? Justifications are always easy to vary and easy to vary theories are "not even wrong", we reject them outright. The idea of justifiable knowledge is refuted and with it the hope for certainty; but that is okay, certainty was not as interesting an idea anyway. *As Popper points out, inductivism has to be either a synthetic or a tautological truth. It seems to me, as it does to Popper, that inductivism is a synthetic truth. Accepting this will lead to the above reasoning.
1 Comment
Johnny Gentle, Famous Crooner
12/16/2017 05:24:38 am
weet ik.
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