i think inductive reasoning cannot give us true knowledge because we cannot know each and every element of the entire creation.
for example; take the classic case of swans.
if you see a sample of 1000 white swans you cannot say that “all swans are white” because you do not see each swans that are there in the entire universe.
take another example:
when Socrates examine each and every knowledgeable man in Athene and he found them fool, he arrive at a conclusion that " he is the wisest man’ as described by oracle at Delphi. but he did not examine each and every wise man of the entire universe. thus he was wrong.
and if you examine each and every object at entire universe you cannot come to certain conclusion because our world is changing continuously and we cannot know if different type of object will come into future.
for example:
if you examine all swans of the entire creation and find them white, you cannot say that all swans are white because you don’t know if tomorrow a black swan comes. into this universe.
so inductive reasoning cannot give you true knowledge.
Socrates was the wisest man of his time though.
The thousand swans that are white are white.
If you knew every object in the universe, then you would be able to determine what comes next from that; there are no unforeseeable things, just things we havent the information on. We are simply talking about limits of our knowledge, until we have the universal set, then we are talking in exact terms.
Not that we will ever have the universal set, so all we can say is that usually this occurs, and its unlikely that that will do so.
The conclusions become probabilistic at a point. Socrates wasn’t expressly “wrong”, but it’s possible. Could a black swan appear at some point in the future? Sure, it’s improbable based on evidence, but possible.
Knowledge is about as “true” as it is applicable or verifiable. We have no infallible methods of obtaining knowledge at all. That is to say, nothing really provides us “true knowledge” as I think you’re defining it.
if you know the nature of a man and a woman, can you predict the nature of their kids?
this means until we get the universal set, we don’t have any true knowledge. this again strengthen my claim that inductive reasoning cannot give us knowledge.
this is a probability. yes. there is no certainty of a knowledge. without certainty how could you say that things are this and not that. there is no certainty that socrates is a wise man. there is no certainty about the color of swan. how could there be a knowledge at all without certainty?
there is a method that gives true knowledge. that is deductive reasoning. it always give a knowledge that is certain.
so far as obtaining universal knowledge is concerned, we don’t know any means to obtain.
Here is the problem though - if what you say id true, then we have no knowledge. But doesn’t this strike you as odd? I mean, it seems that the concept of ‘knowledge’ must have been twisted by philosophers here to something that it does not mean to ordinary people. It may be the job of philosophers to define terms more accurately, however, when philosophers define ‘knowledge’ somehow, and this leads to the conclusion that we have no knowledge of anything, then this seems to me to suggest that the definition itself turns out to be mistaken.
In our heads, we all have this thing that we call ‘knowledge’. It is more certain than the things we admit are just ‘belief’, but that does not mean we expect all ‘knowledge’ to be absolutely certain. Any inspection of ordinary minds shows that no one really expects their ‘knowledge’ to be 100% certain or infallible. I would happily say that I know which city I live in, and that this is more than just a belief, but actually knowledge. Yes, it is fallible (perhaps I have been decieved by some clever form in to thinking that the name of my city is something other than it is?), but I don’t think that really swerves my convinction that it is knowledge.
Here is a big problem for epistemology in the analytic tradition: it has defined knowledge in a way that makes it almost impossible to know anything, then called this a problem. But actually, its only a problem to those still clinging to this idiosyncratic definition of knowledge (justified true belief). Its no wonder that most people find it difficult to care about epistemology in the same way they care about, say, ethics.
I’m not saying that I’ve got a better definition up my sleeve. I’m just saying, if you relax the rules of the definition a bit, then you will suddenly have much less of a problem.
In conclusion, I would more happily state that ‘most knowledge is at some level uncertain’, and that the difference between knowledge and belief is degree of certainty. In this way, inductive reasoning does give us knowledge (almost all of our knowledge).
Well, in this case, all swans are white. A statement made in the present tense need only be true in the present. It does not need to be true in the past and the future as well.
Very good comments from brevel_monkey! I applaud you. Clear thinking is a rare commodity.
As an interesting aside, I would interject that the “black swan” has come to symbolize highly improbable events. There is a very good book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called, just that, “Black Swan”, in which he resurrects the problem of induction and rails against the use of conventional statistics, especially for economics. One cannot help but regard economics as a pseudoscience after reading this book.
In fact, providing you can say that know that what you’re reading is intelligible, your knowledge of anything can’t be more solid than your knowledge of the language you use to talk about it. And it’s far easier to be confused about words and grammar than it is about many facts about yourself.
yes it is odd but according to the reasoning it is true. we don’t have real knowledge. all we have is belief : some kind or other. we believe all swans are white but we don’t know for certain. descartes also felt this kind of uncertainty.real knowledge is certain knowledge. in that sense we don’t have any real knowledge. we have only believes.
knowledge must be infallible. if it is fallible, then we could not achieve any real good of it. doubt arise from uncertainty. if knowledge is not certain then there would be only doubt and not knowledge.
i think the only certain knowledge is the knowledge of self. i do therefore i exist. how it is certain? if i take the statement “i do” as true then i was there to do something. therefore i must exist. only this knowledge is certain.
the world is changing like lightning. in this ever changing world nothing is certain. so there is no knowledge and only belief system. we use those believes to argue and try to win.
Knowledge as certainty is a hyperbolic notion. That’s not what knowledge is, nor what it has to be – certainty is an unrealistic goal. Knowledge is applicable, reliable, verifiable. Historically, knowledge never entailed infallibility. But there is a certain comfort, or confidence, that comes with the notion. I think, in essence, we build trust relationships with our beliefs and assumptions; some stronger than others.
Not exactly true.
…else you wouldn’t be able to declare it. You have used inductive speculation to make such a claim against ALL forms of reasoning including your own inductive speculations.
This is patently false, though. We achieve a lot with the knowledge we have, which is not infallible. We’re paralysed with uncertainty or doubt only incredibly rarely. Whatever it is you are calling knowledge, it therefore bears little relation to the knowledge that everybody uses every day to accomplish small and great things.
One of the conclusions that often comes from inductive reasoning is that if one person doesn’t have a means for certainty, then certainty is impossible for all people.
If inductive reasoning is based on one’s experience–because you’ve only seen white swans, you reach the conclusion that all swans are white–then it can give only limited knowledge. But even limited knowledge is knowledge and that knowledge can be used in our everyday lives as long as it doesn’t become a prejudice.
If you say, for example, “People of color (or ethnic or religious background) tend to live together within a certain given area (read ghetto.) Those areas have a high crime rate. I’d be in danger if I entered those areas, so I won’t.” and then infer that everyone who lives in a ghetto is somehow criminal, then you’re supporting a prejudice.
Yes, what xxx200 is distinguishing between is heuristical thinking and “truth” or “true knowledge”. Heuristical thinking works well in many cases, but it does not rise to that level of knowledge which is reserved for more comprehensive ideation that is at once both “ethical” as well as consummately rational and “universal”. More powerful thought, genius, arises out of the heuristical being, out of the “personality”, it is its continuation, it at once both assumes and justifies it as well as goes beyond it.
Socrates was wise because he put before his mind the more universal and conditioning ideas of thought, of conception. His contemplation aspired to the highest possible, which means both widest (most general) and deepest (most specific) standard of knowledge. This is a knowledge that becomes “ethical” (able to contemplate “the good”) because it becomes situated within a vast enough valuational possibility wherein it may posit values, goods, ideals in a way that is not “pathological”, not heuristical and opportunistic.
The nature of “true” knowledge is that it partakes of both freedom and beauty, that it unites the thinking subject even as it inwardly differences it. True knowledge is endlessly useful and transformative, whereas heuristical and factual knowledge is situational, limited and opportunistic, i.e. pathological/of the passions, animal instincts, desires. Within this true knowledge, induction plays an important role, but rather induction itself becomes, for this true knowledge, the very heuristic of situational, applied and probabilistic/posit-ional thinking. Deduction and induction form the two “halves” which constitute together the singular possibility of true knowledge, of real and vital thinking.
This is a label I used here to distinguish between ideas arising from a “pathological” or instinctual, reactive/opportunistic motive/cause and those ideas which do not arise thusly, but rather from a ‘comprehensivity of contemplation’, which is to say, from necessity (from the necessity of a subject’s own sphere of conscious being, what most gathers its ideas, contents of mind together and acts as a principle not only of grounding but of relation and meaningfulness). “True knowledge” does not mean facts or datums, nor does it mean a sort of “absolute certainty”, it is a way of delineating try very different types, modes of thought, of ideation.
For me, I would say that perhaps ‘true knowledge’ is only that which becomes known and experienced through the pushing of ourselves toward more personal evolution into more consciousness. It becomes true in the ‘acting upon’ of the wisdom which it creates. Perhaps the reality is that only that is true which causes us an ongoing re-birth and knowing of self.