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Author | Topic: Induction and Science | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Straggler writes:
The topic is supposed to be about the use of induction in science, not about whether or not I can be said to use it in my private life.
The fact you do not like a question and cannot answer it does not make it a bad question. Nor does it make it "off-topic". Straggler writes:
I am quite certain that we will still have the same theory of gravity tomorrow as we have today. However, I have no basis at all for judging whether the phenomena of gravity will continue to be much as they are today.
I would say that we can consider it exceptionally probable that gravity will still be operating as currently experienced and that this conclusion is derived from inductive reasoning. Hence the relevancy. Straggler writes:
I was quite clear when I said that was a guess, rather than a conclusion.
And can you specifically describe how can it be used to derive the conclusion that gravity will "probably" still be operating as currently experienced? Straggler writes:
If you don't know what Platonism and nominalism are, and if you don't understand why they were highly relevant in the post where I used them, then why not just admit your ignorance instead of trying to turn it into an insult.But ALL I ask is that your don't do your usual trick of posting stock phrases and meaningless philosopho-sounding but unexplained terms as answers. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Straggler writes:
I'm not sure that science has a conclusion about that. I expect that many individual scientists have opinions. But I don't think that there is anything that can be called "the scientific conclusion."So what, according to your view of science, is the scientific conclusion regarding gravity operating as we currently observe it this time next week? Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Blue Jay writes:
Okay. I certainly agree that there are natural phenomena. I'm a bit puzzled as to why the term "law" would be used for them, but I have seen that usage elsewhere.
The "natural law" of gravity is the natural phenomenon that these three "scientific laws" of gravity were attempting to explain. Blue Jay writes:
And yet I'm pretty sure that many evolutionists would say that the random occurrence of mutations is a consistent feature of replication.Incidence of mutations during replication would be a phenomenon that could be considered inconsistent. I raised the question, because I'm not sure that "consistent" is all that meaningful. Or, to say it differently, people are quite inconsistent in the way that they use "consistent." When we say X is consistent with Y, then we are saying something that is at least a bit clearer. And when we say that a logic system is self-consistent (with "self" often being dropped), we are being quite precise. But it is often hard to make sense of other uses of "consistent."
Blue Jay writes:
That's about what I thought they were arguing, until I questioned their conclusion. But now it seems that they all want to twist the discussion into something else. Thank you for being the exception, and actually sticking with the topic.
I think the conclusion to be drawn here is that the people you refer to are using inductive reasoning to argue that "scientific laws" are part of nature. Blue Jay writes:
I'll grant that. For the most part, scientists don't try to analyze how they do science. They just do it. So when asked about how they are doing it, they just use what philosophers of science often say. I'm not questioning the science, but I am questioning the claims of philosophy of science...., I can state with a fairly high degree of confidence that this is an integral part of the Discussion section of typical scientific papers. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Straggler writes:
Scientists and engineers make predictions. Science doesn't.Science does make predictions yes? Acceptance of a scientific theory is a consensus acceptance by a large body of scientists. However, predictions are made by individuals and not by the body of scientists at large. I'll note, also, that predictions can turn out to be wrong.
Straggler writes:
If it is made using scientific theories, then it is a scientific conlusion as contrasted to "unscientific conclusion". But it is still the conclusion of individuals rather than of science.Predicting when eclipses will occur (for example) is not a scientific conclusion? Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
nwr writes: In Message 200 you seemed to imply that Newton's third law was a case of induction. I'm challenging you to provide actual evidence to support that. Modulous writes:
That's pretty weak. Creationists are often making similar assertions about evidence supporting their Adam and Eve beliefs and their flood beliefs. And you don't let them get away with it.My evidence is that there is evidence to support Newton's laws. However, I'll weaken my request to make it easier. Can you provide evidence, or citations of evidence, explicitly supporting Newton's third law?
Modulous writes:
That's not induction. That's pragmatism. You are accepting what works. I agree that science is very pragmatic. What I am questioning is the use of induction, not the use of pragmatism.
In science, when we check our laws and theories against the evidence we grow confident that the laws and theories are at least somewhat true. As the evidence builds, so too does our confidence. Modulous writes:
I'm calling that a "Just So" story (a modern fable).But our evidence that Newton's laws describe motion is acquired with confidence intervals, and the inference that Newton's laws are true enough is uncertain and has potentially calculable confidence intervals. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Straggler writes:
Bullshit.You seem to have just put yourself into a position of arguing that science isn't scientific because it is can only result in conclusions derived from individuals. Quoting myself from Message 224:Acceptance of a scientific theory is a consensus acceptance by a large body of scientists. However, predictions are made by individuals and not by the body of scientists at large. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Blue Jay writes:
But don't you think that scientists could predict that the pattern of future mutation occurrences will pass a randomness test? And don't you think that such a prediction would likely turn out to be correct?That mutations happen is a consistent feature of replication that can be demonstrated by observation. However, I was trying to refer to the pattern of occurrence, i.e. predicting where and when a given type of mutation will occur. I would argue that the lack of such predictive capacity is independent of the level of scientific development, i.e. a part of nature. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Blue Jay writes:
So you are saying that when a creationist biologist such as Cornelius Hunter makes predictions that favor ID claims, then those predictions should be considered predictions of science and not merely predictions of a scientist?I don't see how it's meaningful to separate "science" from "what scientists do" (unless, of course, "what scientists do" is unrelated to their professional life, e.g., watching a movie or learning to polka or something). Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
nwr writes: However, I'll weaken my request to make it easier. Can you provide evidence, or citations of evidence, explicitly supporting Newton's third law? Modulous writes:
There's nothing there that explicitly supports Newton's third law.
Sure - I offer 'rockets have worked as we have expected them to when we assume it is approximately true'. Modulous writes:
Maybe, though I think that's a stretch. Induction can often lead to wrong conclusions, and that does not seem very pragmatic to me.
Induction is pragmatic. Modulous writes:
However, induction is usually described as a method for producing general statements from a collection of specific observations.I was talking about growing confidence in a hypothesis based on increasing supporting evidence. I see Newton's laws as a package of procedures used to make predictions. The package is tested as a whole, and accepted based on pragmatic principles (how well does it work for making predictions). There's nothing in that pragmatic acceptance that has to do with forming general statements on the basis of specific observations. Induction is often asserted to be the basis of some of the components which are a part of Newton's package of procedures, and that is what I am disagreeing with. The overall pragmatic acceptance of the the package as a whole, based on how well it works - that I agree with. I have been raising Newton's third law for two reasons. Firstly, you referred to it in your first paragraph of Message 200. And, secondly, nothing could be more obvious than that Newton's third law is not any kind of generalization from specific observations. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Modulous writes:
Ah, sigh. That sounds like a good old apologetics argument to me. I would prefer actual evidence.
We use it, not because it is perfect but because it works often enough to justify using it. That's pragmatics. And it is far more pragmatic to be occasionally wrong (as long as you admit it ahead of time (principle of fallibilism)), than to not be able to make any general scientific statements based on limited evidence. Modulous writes:
I have never denied that Newton's laws were general statements. But that they are general statements does not demonstrate that they were arrived at by means of induction from specific observations.
Fine - but to deny that they are general statements would be foolish. Modulous writes:
Oh, bullshit.And in science - we only have specific evidences to support those general statements. How many specific evidences to you need to support the general statement "There are 100 centimetres in a metre"?
Modulous writes:
No, that is not the point at all.
quote: is unfortunately useless as far as science is concerned. Maybe this is what you mean by 'explicit'? Maybe you'd say the evidence explicitly supports this law and implicitly supports Newtons law as he worded it. nwr writes: And, secondly, nothing could be more obvious than that Newton's third law is not any kind of generalization from specific observations. Modulous writes:
So are we supposed to accept that on faith, without any actual evidence?But we can accept that it is a generalisation that science justifies by supporting it with a smaller set of specific cases. Can't you tell that the total number of actual specific observations, of which the 3rd law is alleged to be a generalization, is precisely zero? Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
It was intended to be a trivially obvious example that the existence of a general statement need not imply that it was derived by induction over specific statements.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Blue Jay writes:
My main point was that the word "consistent" was being used in a way that I could not work out what was meant. It's a bit hard to respond to an argument when you can't tell what is being argued.
So, you're arguing that even a random natural phenomenon could be considered a "consistent" phenomenon? Blue Jay writes:
I'm not a biologist. I don't know enough about the situation to be able to hazard a guess.Picture a specific misrepair mutation, ... Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Blue Jay writes:
No, it was the confusion between the actions of science as an institution, and the actions of individual scientists. I see it as important to keep those distinct.
---was it just the anthropomorphism that bothered you? Blue Jay writes:
I thought I was asking a rhetorical question, and not actually saying anything.If, when you say, "...those predictions should be considered predictions of science..." you mean, "...we should say that they are what the entire body of scientists worldwide would predict," then no, we should not consider those predictions to be the predictions of science. To get back to my point, it seems to me that scientists make predictions, but science as an institution does not. Here's a recent headline: Odds of Life on Nearby Planet '100 Percent,' Astronomer SaysThat's a prediction by a scientist. Should we say that science, as an institution, is making that prediction? Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Straggler writes:
For the moment, I'll go with my response to Blue Jay in Message 249.Are you seriously suggesting that predictions (such as eclipses) have not achieved "consensus acceptance by a large body of scientists"? When we use an expression of the form "science predicts ...", I'm inclined to say that is a metaphoric way of speaking.
Straggler writes:
That sounds like creationist (as in ID) reasoning.The entirety of applied science is based on the inductively reasoned conclusion that natural phenomenon will behave in the future as they have been observed to behave thus far. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Modulous writes:
I'm calling foul on that. The particular discussion was on inductive support for Newton's third law. You are twisting it to pretend that it was about pragmatism.
If you'd like evidence of what pragmatism means I suppose you could look it up. Modulous writes:
You still don't get it, do you.Unless you claim that scientists take the third law of motion on faith, I don't think I need to. But the methodology of science strongly suggests that before a law can be accepted, it must have evidence of being true. Newton's third law is a convention, an empirical principle. It is prior to any evidence. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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