Induction and Science

Can you explain how your latest stance regarding the inevitable role of inductive reasoning in science is compatible with this:

When I started this discussion, I knew that most people disagreed with me. So I expected disagreement in this thread.What I did not expect, is the large number of bogus arguments that would be presented.So sure, many people believe that we use induction. But they cannot actually demonstrate that. Induction is a core assumption of AI and machine learning research, where they call it "pattern induction." However, machine learning has not produced anything at all comparable to human learning. That ought to count as evidence against induction, but people don't look at it that way.The basic argument for induction is of this form:

• It sure looks as if science works by finding patterns in nature;
• I can't think of any other possibility;
• therefore they must be using induction.

But that is really the argument from ignorance. It is the type of reasoning that we often see coming from ID proponents, and they are criticized for such arguments.There's nothing wrong with forming a hypothesis that induction is used, and then setting out to find evidence for and against that hypothesis. I view the pattern induction research in machine learning to be just such a research program. But to assume the conclusion before the program has has completed is just bad reasoning. To repeatedly use an argument from ignorance is just bad reasoning.Why can't people just state that they disagree with me, but admit that they have no proof that I am wrong? That's what should have been the response.I won't be responding to all of the replies to my earlier posts. It is getting too repetitious. I'll comment on only a few.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

I'm a realist. But I happen to not agree that scientific theories are descriptions of reality. However, the evidence does not support falsification. I'll agree that Popper's claim to having solved the induction problem rests on his falsification thesis. But his claim that scientists don't actually use induction does not rely on falsification.I'll grant that Popper was mistaken about having solved the induction problem.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

That's a good example of using the argument from ignorance. You can't think of an alternative, and therefore you assert that it must be true.That you can't think of an alternative is not evidence. It might be a reason for hypothesizing that induction is used. Whatever happened to the idea of subjecting hypotheses to critical testing?

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

I am still waiting for the proof that they can be derived by no method other than inductive reasoning.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

If a peer reviewed article were to publish 1000 data point, and then assert "therefore, by induction, statement x is always true", that would seem to be a clear use of induction. At least it would if statement x applied to many more than 1000 possible cases; otherwise it would be proof by exhaustion (exhausting all possibilities).

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Agreed, but I don't see the relevance.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

That reads more as a proposed hypothesis, rather than as an inductive conclusion.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

It's an interesting paper. It aims at making a persuasive argument, but it is not a refutation.It does correctly point out some problems with Popper's thesis, particularly in the way it uses corroboration. But it doesn't address the reason that Popper disagrees with induction (the reason is already in the text I quoted from SEP in Message 600, though it seems that reasoning is invisible to most of participants in this thread).

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Four years later, I'm still waiting for you to tell me what else is left besides induction.

I have actually been doing that in several of my posts. But it seems to be invisible to people reading the thread.In any case, it doesn't matter. That you don't know of other possibilities does not prove that there are no other possibilities.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

If I put a piece of potassium in a glass of water what does science tell us will happen? As long as your description of science denies the ability of science to make highly accurate and reliable (albeit tentative) conclusions about the future behaviour of natural phenomena your argument remains entirely refuted. Because science indisputably can and does do this. You have presented no alternative. All you have done is deny the ability of science to do the things science is demonstrably very adept at. Dismissed by you as "guesses" and " opinions". Because your false pet theory cannot allow such conclusions to be anything else. No matter how inappropriate these descriptions are given the phenomenonal (albeit imperfect) reliability and accuracy that science can and does achieve. Your hypothesis that science is unable to reliably and accurately (albeit tentatively) make conclusions about things which have not yet occurred based on the principles derived from what has gone before has been critically tested. And it has failed. Science can and does do this.If there is some entirely non-inductive explanation for the ability of science to do what it so undeniably successfully does then neither you nor anyone else has yet presented it.

Then I suggest that you read what has been written by those including yourself.

So (from this thread alone) you are a realist, instrumentalist Popperian who doesn't think that scientific theories are descriptions of reality, who does not rate falsification as particularly important and who advocates a form of science that is unable to draw reliable and accurate (albeit tentative) conclusions about something as simple as the physical behaviour of my soon to be dropped pen. Nwr: "Scientific theories have nothing to say about how nature behaves".Can you not see what a confused muddle that is? Nevermind being entirely divorced from anything that actually goes by the name of science.

You either do not understand what an argument from ignorance is or you have not been paying attention to our posts.From the Skeptic's Dictionary: Positive evidence has been presented here that scientists use induction. Perhaps you don't find the evidence compelling, but those of us defending the proposition that scientists use induction are not saying that the proposition is true only because it hasn't been proved false.