Induction is having N instances of something being true (say, ‘all swans that I’ve seen are white’) and then concluding that the N+1th instance will also be true (‘the next swan I’ll see is white’).
What is your best defense of that type or arguments? Say, probability? Saying that without it we couldn’t say much? Let’s discuss it here
I think it is always best to put arguments in situ. So, you are talking to another human, in real time, about this issue. The other person without question uses induction: informally at least. They draw conclusions based on repeated experiences. So, the best defense is to point out that you both are on the same team, despite abstract problems that induction has.
Also, we always are choosing between options, including the option to do nothing. So, pointing out what life is like without induction and/or asking what the other person suggests we draw conclusions based on are good defenses.
Perhaps I wrote it poorly, but my question is how to defend induction as something valid
Induction is the process of inferring a general rule or unobserved case based on patterns found in observed cases.
For example:
Your description oversimplifies what philosophers mean by inductive reasoning. Hume concluded induction isn’t rationally justified but is driven by habit/custom and a psychological necessity. We can’t stop using it, so we embrace it non-rationally, without claiming epistemic guarantee.
Yes, and that was my approach. Defend implies an attack. One way to defend is to point out that there is no attack. I gave two different ways to do this. One of them relates to your ‘without it we couldn’t say much’ though I placed this in the situation between to people.
Yeah, it simplifies it. The enumerative one is a consequenuce of the predictive one. The causal thing is the N+1th thing plus supposing causation. Without needing to get into those particular avenues, the point still stands.
If ‘embracing’ is ‘using it’, it’s precisely what I pointed first. We use illogical arguments, but are you for using illogical arguments?
Is it psychologically necessary?
Well, humanity as a whole can’t stop killing, tho stopping the killing is a good thing, don’t you think?
@greenfuse Defending doesn’t need really an attack from anyone other that oneself when reflecting upon those arguments.
Well, in an encounter with oneself, at a specific time and place, one can use the exact same defenses intra-personally. In fact it is even cleaner. We can find the actual source/motivation for the attack (at least potentially more easily than with another person). We can then look in situ 1) do we use induction (consciously and unconsciously) and an honest ransacking should produce a yes to the first and some serious evidence that we also use it unconsciously. 2) do we rely on others for knowledge, others who use induction? Again, yes would likely be found. 3) what reasons would be stop these processes? 4) what would the coming month be like if we stopped? 4) is there something better, a non-problematic substitute - and it seems to me if there isn’t, it will feel intuitively wise to continue until there is a replacement, which we would need to gain confidence in and it is hard for me to imagine we wouldn’t test that replacement with a kind of inductive process.
I tried to understand what do you mean, and didn’t.
Now, without arguing about people and such, how can we defend induction in our own thoughts? Is it valid? How valid is it? Can we rewrite it to not be logically invalid?
Induction by itself isn’t valid. And it doesn’t need to be defended. It has its proper role and is fine within that role. Most instances that could be said to involve induction, since humans use induction (predictive pattern recognition) in one way or another all the time, are based on additional facts and understanding beyond simply recognizing a pattern. If I say the sun will rise tomorrow I am not only using induction but I also understand a lot about how the solar system works. It is based on that understanding I can confidently say the sun will come up tomorrow, and yes even that high confidence statement contains its own caveats to account for very rare possibilities such as the sun exploding out of nowhere for some unknown reason.
Pure induction itself is just pattern recognition used to form predictions. Anyone rational would conclude that basing ideas entirely on observed patterns but not understanding anything about the causes behind them might result in some useful predictive power but still lacks actual knowledge. No intelligent person would form absolute conclusions based ONLY on induction, so there’s no need to defend it. Just use it appropriately 
Well, yes, but since all research has error and such, it’s illogical to conclude the sun will rise tomorrow, tho it (probably) will
It’s not illogical to conclude the sun will rise tomorrow as long as we understand we are not making a claim to 100% certainty. Somewhere between 99% and 100%. Which, as you point out, is (probably) good enough.
There is logic in making claims that have a level of certainty somewhere between 99% and 100%, as long as we are honest about the existence of the remote possibilities that keep it from being 100%. Because technically NO claim is ever 100% certain. Or maybe there are one or two very basic ones, but beyond that.
But then again, what is that 99%, what is probability, but a subjective idea? Me saying ‘likely’ doesn’t really say anything about the sun rising, but about my idea… which is not the point at all - the sun rising is the point.
True, the sun will rise or it will not. The odds we place on it only reflect our own lack of knowledge, not the event itself. Nice clarification.
From one side, saying ‘the sun will likely rise’ seems to talk about the sun, but having that in mind, it seems to talk way more about my wants to be correct, to having bet on the winning horse… which doesn’t have anything to do with logic, the sun, rising, and what have you… That may be what baffles me most, that in the end logic seems to be, at least partly, coming from a will of saying ‘TOLD YA!’ and being right more than about researching in topics…
Does that make any sense?
Why is it illogical? – Mr X presented a position very like mine in a way that you seemed to understand, by the way.
If you mean that it might possibly not happen (an alien race comes and steals the sun or there is some weird anomaly we dont know about that happens now and then) this means it is illogical to conclude it will rise, there is a problem. All the ways we have of reaching conclusions might be wrong. Even deduction which would have rule out much of quantum mechanics and essentially did rule it out and create a lot of resistance until induction won over the consensus in physics. I think this kind of thinking creates pseudoproblems. That’s why I bring it down to a person here in the real world, deciding. It is not illogical for that person to conclude the sun will rise tomorrow. If they are a regular person making decisions it is obviously quite logical. If it is a philosopher, if when challenged by another philosophically literate person if they can be 100% sure it will rise tomorrow, they then might end up making an illogical statement or illogically place an absolute faith in that conclusion. But otherwise they are also being quite rational and not illogical concluding that the sun will rise.
I disagree. It is illogical to conclude that the sun will rise tomorrow. It makes sense to bet on that the sun will rise tomorrow. It may be useful to do so, and you may actually have a conclusion that is correct 100% of the times you make it, yet it is illogical.
The simplest thing being that the universe can end in 4 minutes and we can’t rule it out, but logic is not something graded on ‘getting the right result’, isn’t it?
It seems like you are saying that since we cannot deductively demonstrate that the sun will rise tomorrow (iow that it is a 100% certainty) then it is wrong to conclude that it will rise tomorrow. It would have been nice if you had actually responded to parts of my post instead of repeating, more or less, your position, since I point out problems with deduction. But what is the context? It seems you have some specific context in mind. What is the context in which it is wrong to conclude that the sun will rise tomorrow. So far, it is not a context I am in.
Prove that it can end in 4 minutes. What process did you use to reach the conclusion that it could, that this is a possibility? Deduction - I’d like to see the deduction that proves it is possible. Induction, unlikely you used this given the thread position. Abduction? What process did you use? And I do understand that you said can. But this is still a certain assertion. It can. You know that it can. How?
What I say is independent from context. But the sun rising tomorrow is good enough.
The context we are in any situation is enough, because we have no information about the future. We can guess about it, but not know about.
It can end in any number of minutes becuase you cannot rule it out, precisely. If any proof is needed, it is the proof that such is not possible.
In any case, keep in mind that scientific laws are descriptive, not regulatory. It is a certain assertion of possibility, precisely because we can’t rule it out that it can, so we have no grounds to assert it can’t
My defense of inductive reasoning is, either we can use inductive reasoning to learn about the world we’re in, or we can’t learn anything about the world we’re in.
If inductive reasoning doesn’t work, there’s nothing else available. Syllogistic logic can’t teach us about the world we’re in on its own, it can only tell us effectively tautological truths.
So either we try to learn about the world we’re in inductively, or we don’t try at all. I don’t think the former has any significant downsides, but the latter clearly does. Someone not applying inductive reasoning, in a universe where inductive reasoning is actually valid, is missing out on a whole lot. Someone applying inductive reasoning in a universe where inductive reasoning is not valid, imo, wouldn’t seem to be missing out on anything.
There’s a similarity to pascals wager there.
Well, but isn’t that a case of ‘the end justify the means’ there?
I think you can do some deductive reasoning that looks quite like inductive but isn’t. For example, saying “I bet tomorrow the sun will rise”, or simply applying humility: “The sun has risen every day that I’ve been living”. In that way, you can indeed learn with no drawback.
It’s not that we don’t know if induction is valid or not. It is not valid - it’s not a question. I think some cases are very fruitful to not go into induction.
There’s the whole Feyerabend point about anti-induction being equally as valid as induction, but I truly forgot most of it