Induction and Deduction

[LostInNerSpace]

Originally Posted by dissonance

It seems to me that induction is really just deduction with hundreds (edit: not necessarily more than one) of hidden premises.

How is coming up with new information possible? There must be sets of rules, built through metaphor and experience that deductively lead to "novel" conclusions.

You may ask, well, how do we come up with the first premise? The answer is that it's probably genetically programmed in. Just like certain rules of language. All animals have premises about the world that they're born with.

One hidden premise in all induction is "the future resembles the past". The only way to justify this premise is with other inductive arguments which use the premise anyway. We could never come up with that premise ourselves -- no one ever questions it. It just "seems" obvious.

Sorry, those ideas were not presented in any sort of clear way... took a bunch of painkillers earlier, lol.

Thoughts?

Everything is relative. Even the most ridged seeming axiom can be viewed in a slightly different light. Take the speed of light for example. The speed of light, c, is only the speed of light in a vacuum. Vacuum is defined as absence of matter, but I bet that definition excludes dark matter. It is believed that dark matter accounts for most of the matter in the Universe. If the Sun can bend light, why not dark matter? The speed of light would be different passing though some other matter such as water, or some gas. Does dark matter have an effect on the speed of light?

I'm not a physicist. It was just to illustrate my point.

INTPs have what I would describe as massive multidimensional jigsaw puzzles in our heads. We are continually absorbing new knowledge and trying to fit that new knowledge into the puzzle. The fitting process is kind of random trial and error. The pieces can fit many different parts of the puzzle--hence multidimensional. The pieces can also form smaller independent puzzles that don't yet seem to fit anywhere in the main puzzle. Often, later on, we will find one or more suitable places to fit the smaller puzzles or other pieces that we could not fit before.

The whole puzzle is our big intuitive picture. It is our understanding of the natural world.

Any other INTPs agree with this assessment of how we think?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Originally Posted by dissonance

I guess I would say it's still a hidden premise because you wouldn't make that inference if you hadn't made similar guesses and been right in the past.

This doesn't necessarily have to be so. In an extreme case, say that you have never seen a jigsaw puzzle before. You come across a 500 piece puzzle with 499 pieces put together. Your mind sees what the picture looks like by filling in the missing piece. This is inductive reasoning, and it does not require past experience.

[Evan]

^Yeah it does. You need some sense of the concept of "completeness", which must either come from past experience or probably genetic programming.

Has to come from some premise.

[LostInNerSpace]

Originally Posted by dissonance

^Yeah it does. You need some sense of the concept of "completeness", which must either come from past experience or probably genetic programming.

Has to come from some premise.

What about an infinite jigsaw puzzle? There's no reason except for practically that jigsaw puzzles have to be finite. Isn't that just life? When we are born we have only basic genetic knowledge; the basic tools necessary to learn more.

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Originally Posted by dissonance

^Yeah it does. You need some sense of the concept of "completeness", which must either come from past experience or probably genetic programming.

Has to come from some premise.

You are correct that there is an unconscious premise at work, but I am saying that the underlying assumption does not require a temporal component.

[Evan]

Hmmm.

How do you know when to apply that unconscious premise then? And when you do apply it, you are assuming that the premise will work because it has worked before in similar situations.

I guess this is just a semantic debate. And I'm not really invested in this point.

I think you all get what I'm saying; induction is just an informal form of deduction with hidden/unconscious/unstated premises.

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Originally Posted by dissonance

I think you all get what I'm saying; induction is just an informal form of deduction with hidden/unconscious/unstated premises.

I agree. One of my major views on scientific thinking (or simply thinking in general) is that we are all carrying around a large amount of unstated assumptions when we approach a problem, experiment, or situation. An astute person will attempt to uncover as many of these assumptions as possible. Doing so will greatly clarify reasoning and results.

[Orangey]

Originally Posted by The_Liquid_Laser

All of my logic training comes from a mathematical context, so that is why I'm not familiar with it. Formal logic is very useful within the context of mathematics, but it's true that it's too rigorous to use formally among most people.

Ah, I see. I don't think it's the level of rigor, though, that impedes its applicability to natural language argument (ordinary argument). Sure that may be a factor that prevents most people from being able to use it, but it's my view that even if everyone had a firm grasp of the subject, its usefulness (in a natural language context) would still be limited. I've gone far enough off topic, though, so I will stop now .

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Originally Posted by Orangey

Ah, I see. I don't think it's the level of rigor, though, that impedes its applicability to natural language argument (ordinary argument). Sure that may be a factor that prevents most people from being able to use it, but it's my view that even if everyone had a firm grasp of the subject, its usefulness (in a natural language context) would still be limited. I've gone far enough off topic, though, so I will stop now .

I don't think this is true from my experience. I find logic quite useful for my private reasoning, but I have to reword everything because most people don't know what I'm talking about otherwise. Also if I try to point out an error in someone else's reasoning they often don't know what I am talking about.

[gotbeef]

Neighbor 1: "Hi, there, new neighbor, it sure is a mighty nice day to be moving."
New Neighbor: "Yes, it is and people around here seem extremely friendly."
Neighbor 1: "So, what is it you do for a living?"
New Neighbor: "I am a professor at the University, I teach deductive reasoning."
Neighbor 1: "Deductive reasoning, what's that?"
New Neighbor: "Let me give you an example. I see you have a dog house out back. By that I deduce that you have a dog."
Neighbor 1: "That's right."
New Neighbor: "The fact that you have a dog, leads me to deduce that you have a family."
Neighbor 1: "Right again."
New Neighbor: "Since you have a family, I deduce that you have a wife."
Neighbor 1: "Correct."
New Neighbor: "And since you have a wife, I can deduce that you are heterosexual."
Neighbor 1: "Yup."
New Neighbor: "That is deductive reasoning."
Neighbor 1: "Cool."

Later that same day:

Neighbor 1: "Hey, I was talking to that new guy who moved in next door."
Neighbor 2: "Is he a nice guy?"
Neighbor 1: "Yes, and he has an interesting job."
Neighbor 2: "Oh, yeah, what does he do?"
Neighbor 1: "He is a professor of deductive reasoning at the University."
Neighbor 2: "Deductive reasoning, what is that?"
Neighbor 1: "Let me give you an example. Do you have a dog house?"
Neighbor 2: "No."
Neighbor 1: "Fag!"