Can anybody give me a good example of how we can go from particulars to universals? I mean, suppose you knew so many things about a set of particular things. Can you take that knowledge and conclude something universal from it. I don’t see how you can.
Keep in mind Hume’s problem of induction and Popper’s theory of falsification.
Hume says that we can’t take a set of particular instances, and noticing properties about them, extrapolate those to all such instances. Similarly, Popper says that you can’t prove a scientific theory true by testing instances of the phenomena the theory refers to because all it takes is for one instance to not comform to the theory, and the theory will be proven wrong.
Arguments like this make me doubt that there is any universal statement that we can know to be true for certain if we start with particulars.
i totally agree - and, being epistemologically limited as we humans are, we can, a lot of the time, only ever start with particulars. i think that many global problems could be much more easily solved if those in positions of power realised this, because ignorance of it can lead very quickly to prejudice, philosophical blindness and a whole lot of jumping to conclusions.
So what do you think we’re doing when we go from particulars to universals. For example, science tells us that all matter is made of atoms. We know this based experiments we’ve done on particular samples of matter. So why do we feel so confident that we can generallize the results of these experiments to all matter in the universe?
For the simple reason that it works. It creates repeatable, predictable results.
While there is a difference between that which works and that which is true, science isn’t particularly concerned with the latter since it is, first and foremost, a pragmatic discipline. What works is ‘true enough’ for our present purposes.
There are instances where propositions concerning universals are necessarily and universally true. I’m thinking about analytic enuntiations, like “All bachelors are unmarried.”
I’ll leave it to you to decide what these tell us about the world.
Although this may be true, when someone says “all matter is made of atoms”, he/she is usually doing more than offering a useful concept for predictions; he/she is expressing a belief. What I’m wondering is, why is it a belief?
I think this is starting with a definition, which is already universal, isn’t it? We don’t come to the conclusion that all bachelors are unmarried based on what we know about a few particular bachelors; we come to this conclusion because of the definition of “bachelor”.
That’s probably how it works psychologically, but is this the logical justification for the belief? Am I logically justified in disbelieving in aliens if nothing’s come along to suggest they do exist?
In absence of evidence, you can’t make an informed decision so any decision you make is going to be equivalent. We have no evidence for aliens, just conjecture. Which conjecture you support will be based on which argument you find more persuasive . . . but that doesn’t make it true (or untrue).
There is a big difference between n=small and n=large. You know?
That’s true, but the appropriate word is “conjecture” - is this the same as a belief? I suppose it could be. I mean, we sometimes express our beliefs as “I don’t know X for certain, but I believe it to be true”. Is this the kind of belief we’re dealing with when it comes to scientifically accepted theories such as “all matter is made of atoms” or “all bodies with mass exert a gravitational influence on each other”?
The gist of it was let’s look at our sample size. We’ve got a huge sample size for the atomic theory. The lives-on-other-world’s theory . . . that’s a pretty small sample size.
Yes, I see what you’re saying, and for all practical purposes, I agree that this is good grounds for being conclusive on atomic theory. But I’m still a little unsatisfied.
Let me make my question clear: what I’m wondering is not so much how justified we are in coming to universal conclusions based on particular facts or reasons, but whether it is better to describe such a process as psychological rather than logical. Psychologically, if we have an extremely large sample size, our minds tend to feel justified in generalizing what we know about that sample to the entire class of things from which it is drawn. But anyone who’s familiar with Hume’s problem of induction or Popper’s falsification view of science knows that such leaps can’t be grounded in logical deduction.
I’m tempted to conclude therefore, that any universal claim that we can make is a result of our psychology rather than reason. I just wanted to see if anyone could debunk this conclusion before I settled on it.
But I have to ask what the utility of the converse is?
While it can be argued that we (logically) don’t have a justification for it, if we follow that perfectly logical route we end up with a useless product.
That tells me that our logic-system is flawed rather than our understanding. In the case of this particular problem, I think it is justified to say that we may not know whether something is true if it works, we are justified in saying that something isn’t true if it doesn’t work.
You can always twist logic to support absurd conclusions, but those conclusions remain flawed due to failed premises. Instead of trying to create a system of thought de novo, it is usually better to look at the system already in place (that which we know works) and build the system around that – or, at the very least, follow the de novo system through to its logical end (play by its own rules) and see whether the resulting system agrees with reality. If it doesn’t, it ought be discarded.
Yes, you’re absolutely right. It would be way less efficient to limit ourselves to propositions that can only be supported by strict logical deduction. We wouldn’t make much headway at all. But I’m not advocating one way over another. I’m asking because I’m writing a paper in which I want to give an account on how we go from particular cases to universal conclusions. I just want to be able to explain it given the most reasonable/realistic scenario.
I’m taking it a step further and saying that where logical deduction and reality conflict, then the premises (or even mechanism) whereby you came to that ‘logical’ conclusion ought be carefully examined and, most likely, disposed of.