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Author | Topic: Induction and Science | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
And yet you are still confused. Amazing.
Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Straggler writes:
When Marie Curie discovered radioactivity, that seemed to be energy from nowhere. Instead of being taken to refute conservation of energy, it was decided to say that there was nuclear energy.Any universal principle of science (e.g. Newton’s universal law of gravitation, conservation of energy, the second law of thermodynamics etc. etc. etc.) is considered to apply to ALL relevant events. Whether past present or future, observed or unobserved. I put it to you that the principles are not about the world, but are about us and how we should interpret things in the world. See also the Duhem - Quine thesis.
nwr writes: The standards have nothing to say about how nature behaves. Straggler writes:
Apparently, I was not clear enough. I'll say it again. Scientific theories have nothing to say about how nature behaves.Yet scientific theories do. Suggested reading: Nancy Cartwright, "How the laws of physics lie". She makes the case that the laws of physics are not descriptions of reality, but are idealizations. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Panda writes:
That's made up to. I keep wondering why people believe these obviously made up stories.
The swan example is real. It is used as an example because it is real. People used to think that all swans were white and the term 'Black Swan' was even used to describe things that didn't exist. Panda writes:
Of course it is deductive reasoning. It is rather trivial deductive reasoning, but it is still valid logic.
But you are not deducing that all swans are white, you are just repeating the definition. Premise: "A swan is (by definition) white." Conclusion: "All swans are white" You present only one premise and then repeat that premise as your conclusion - that is not deductive reasoning. Panda writes:
No, it is achieved through the adoption of a naming convention. There is nothing inductive about it.
The initial definition that "A swan is a white bird" is achieved through inductive reasoning. Panda writes:
Until you have defined "swan", there are no such things as swans and observations of white birds are not observations of swans.
When defining what a swan is - you inductively apply your observations to all swans. Panda writes:
A definition is a general statement. It depends on zero facts and does not require deduction. It becomes, in effect, an axiom that can be used in future deductions.By definition: you cannot make general/universal rules/laws using deductive reasoning. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Panda writes:
That's made up to. I keep wondering why people believe these obviously made up stories. Panda writes:
Sure, it's self-evidently true. Never mind the evidence. Don't worry about facts. It fits your creationist way of thinking about the world so it is self-evidently true.Yes, it is weird that people believe stories that are self evidently true. When explorers reached Australia, they did not discover any black swans. What they discovered were some black water fowl that had a somewhat similar appearance to swans. They were not of the same species as swans. They were not even of the same genus as swans. They were just distant relatives of swans. I spent the first 23 years of my life in Australia. We never called them "swans." We called them "black swans." That is, we used a two word composite name. So it is self-evidently true that the "black swan" refutation of an alleged induction is a made up story.
Deduction does not produce new information. At most, it helps to reveal information already in the premises that had not been previously noticed.
Panda writes:
The definition says that if it isn't white, it isn't a swan. No induction is needed.Your definition said: "A swan is..." - so the name is established. Then it said "...white". This means that you have said that all swans are white. Have you inspected all swans? No. Therefore it is inductive. Your problem with this is that you are thinking like a creationist. In the beginning God created the world. And he created the swan kind, and the swallow kind. So the swan kind exists on account of the creator, and at best we have to try to work out what that means. Forget the creationist thinking, and what you get is: The world is a mess. There's all kinds of stuff there. So lets try to organize that stuff. We will try to find ways of seeing differences in the stuff that is there, and then use those difference to name various types of stuff. So we name one type of stuff "swan". And what makes it a swan isn't that it is part of any natural kind, isn't that it has some mystical swan essence. No, what makes it "swan" is that it fits the characterization that we have used to classify it as "swan". So if part of that characterization is whiteness, then it is a necessary truth that swans are white, made necessary by the way that we have organized the world into different types of stuff. There's no induction about it. You are seeing induction involved because you are not accepting the definition as a definition. You are insisting that "swan" is actually defined by the creator in the creation of those "natural kinds", and you are insisting that what I called a definition is merely a description of what was defined by the creator. Science doesn't work with that type of creationist thinking. If you want science to work that way, then you will need to abandon much of our scientific knowledge. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Stephen Push writes:
Once you account for those things, you no longer have true solar time. Instead, you have mean solar time.Mean solar time is convenient because it is more constant. But true solar time is compatible with Newton's laws if you account for the elliptical orbit of Earth, the tilt of its axis, and other causes of fluctuations in the length of the day. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Stephen Push writes:
Do pay attention."Swan" in not an abstract entity that you can define any way you like. The term refers to a group of species of birds. As I said, the swan example is artificial, so I will feel free to use it artificially to illustrate the point. If you don't want to use it artificially, then you are stuck with the fact that there has been no evidence given that scientists are inclined to make any such induction as "all swans are white."
Stephen Push writes:
I'm calling "bullshit" on that.
A 1997 study that involved 231 paired observations of crows in Davis, California, was titled, "Crows Do Not Use Automobiles as Nutcrackers." Please note the study was not titled, "231 Crows in Davis, California, in 1997 Did Not Use Automobiles as Nutcrackers." The authors used inductive reasoning to make the claim that their conclusion applies to all crows, everywhere, all of the time. quote:There's no assertion there about "all crows". There's no induction. The only conclusion made is that the original research was of poor quality and should not be cited. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Stephen Push writes:
That reads like word salad.
Using true solar time and accounting for the elliptical orbit of Earth, etc., does not ignore the fluctuations, it explains them. Stephen Push writes:
You are way off.You think it's all about definitions, standards, deduction, appearances, opinions, and guesses. I see science as being about getting precise information about the world, in order to be able answer questions (and make predictions). Precise definitions and precise standards are part of what is required for precise information. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
That seems to be an unlikely theory.
Stephen Push writes:
I have never seen documentation for that alleged induction. The fact is, that the black water fowl discovered in Australia had only an aboriginal name at that time, and were of an entirely different species from the knows swans.
As a matter of fact, Europeans did use inductive reasoning to conclude that all swans are white, until Dutch explorers discovered black swans in Australia in 1697. Stephen Push writes:
So what you are saying is that you have no actual evidence of induction, you just think that there must have been one. That is to say, you are relying on the good old fashioned argument from ignorance.
Without inductive reasoning, the authors of the 1997 study could not have made a valid claim of having refuted the studies conducted two decades earlier on different crows. Stephen Push writes:
It does not follow that they are using induction. They are examining a range of behavior, and usually not asserting that all behave in the same way. Using sampling methods to estimate ranges actually has a deductive basis.When researchers study the genetics of fruit flies, for example, they are not interested only in the individual fruit flies in their lab. In fact, they are not interested only in fruit flies generally. They are trying to understand genetic principles that can be applied to other sexually reproducing species, including humans. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Straggler writes:
Indeed, we could. And we would probably miss the target.If we wanted to send a rocket to Mars (or wherever else) we could make the necessary calculations on Earth today. That's why actual space missions involve continual measuring of position, and adjusting the flight with small rocket firings, in order to keep it on target. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
nwr writes: Scientific theories have nothing to say about how nature behaves. Straggler writes:
I have not said anything which would have that implication.Then I guess we can just change our "standards" build a series of perpetual motion machines and solve the world's energy crisis before breakfast. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Straggler writes:
You assert that as "indisputable fact", yet you have not produced any evidence to back that up. I think you would have to be able to read the minds of those "real scientists" to know whether or not they could be said to be using induction. Whether some scientists actually use induction (a possibility that I have acknowledged) does not address the question of whether science as an institution depends on induction (which is what I have questioned).
Your non-inductive description of science spectacularly fails to deal with the indisputable fact that science as practised by real scientists makes inductive conclusions about the way nature will behave in as yet unobserved circumstances. Straggler writes:
I don't know what objection you could have to guesses and opinions. The future is inherently unknowable. The best we can do is make conclusions of the form "if nature continues to behave as it has in the past, then ...(prediction)... That the conditional part of that is often not made explicit does not mean that it is not implicitly there.
Until you can describe science in a way that does not necessitate such genuibely scientific conclusions as being "guesses" or "opinions" you remain entirely refuted on this very crucial point regarding the inductive nature of science. nwr writes: I put it to you that the principles are not about the world, but are about us and how we should interpret things in the world. Straggler writes:
You word that as if you are expressing a disagreement. But I do not see that it disagrees with anything that I have said.
I don't see how you can seperate the two in the way that you are suggesting. Our interpretations are worthless unless they say something about the actual world. nwr writes: She makes the case that the laws of physics are not descriptions of reality, but are idealizations. Straggler writes:
I disagree with the often expressed view that theories are models.OK. But idealisations of what? If you are saying that scientific theories are imperfect models nobody here will disagree with you. But what are our scientific theories modelling? If you hire a contractor to do some major work on an old tall building, the first thing the contractor will do is erect a scaffolding to give better access to the building. The scaffolding will have roughly the shape of the building, but it won't be a model. I see a scientific theory as a kind of scaffolding that we construct to give us better access to reality. We do have to make sure that the scaffolding fits well enough to be useful, but we don't have to make it a model. In fact, it is often better for the scaffolding to have a rather simpler and more mathematical structure that the reality to which it provides access.
Straggler writes:
That scaffolding not only is not a model of the building, but it also is not a description of the building (i.e. it says nothing about the building). Likewise, I suggest that our theories, as a scaffolding that we erect to access reality, are neither models nor descriptions of reality. What they do is provide us the access we need to make very precise observations of reality.
The difference between imperfect models and the assertion that "scientific theories have nothing to say about how nature behaves" is enormous. Straggler writes:
I think I have just done that in the preceding couple of paragraphs.Can you tell us what it is you think scientific theories are doing and why they allow us to manipulate and control aspects of nature so successfully then? Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Panda writes:
There is none. So what? It a completely irrelevant point. The information comes via making observations. The definitions are preliminary ground work such as is needed for making such observations.
Your conclusion is a re-statement of your premise. "A swan (by definition) is white" is identical to "All swans are white". What is the information "not previously noticed" - be specific. Panda writes:
Not so, given the assumed definition. It is trivially deducible from the definition.To state that all non-white birds are not swans requires inductive reasoning. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Kapyong writes:
That's interesting, but does not seem relevant.
'Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno. ' "A bird rarely seen on earth, and very like a black swan." Satires 6, 165 Kapyong writes:
The often told story that explorers spotted a black swan in Australia, and thereby refuted an alleged induction.What do you think is made-up ? Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
bluegenes writes:
Quite right. And that's why real scientists don't actually make such inductions.Crows aren't actually all one colour, and they're not named after a colour, as far as I know. Incidentally, the crows I was familiar with in my youth in Australia where pretty nearly pitch black. The crows that I see around here (surburban Chicago) are more of a gray - and that's assuming that there are any crows left. The crows around here fell victim to West Nile virus, and I rarely see them now.
nwr writes: Part of what I am arguing in this thread, is that a lot of what is credited to induction should instead be credited to the systematicity of science. Panda writes:
Because if you are sufficiently systematic, then you don't need the induction. The systematicity gives you are rather homogeneous group that you are studying. And if it is sufficiently homogeneous you can use statistical analysis (which is actually deductive) for reaching the kind of conclusions that you want.Why not the two combined? Jesus was a liberal hippie
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
nwr writes: I see science as being about getting precise information about the world, in order to be able answer questions (and make predictions). Stephen Push writes:
Perhaps I have been too busy responding, to state it clearly enough.That may be what you believe. But you have failed to articulate a method by which it can be done. The point is that we make precise definitions, and then use those definitions as the basis for observations. Those observations are where the precise information comes from. Before we settle on particular definitions, there's a lot of pragmatic testing as to whether it works and whether the resulting information is actually useful. Jesus was a liberal hippie
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