Some thoughts about reasoning, induction and the limits of facts

When people think of reasoning they often think of deductive reasoning: the old example is "All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therfore Socrates is mortal." Assuming the premises are true, deductive reasoning gives us a truth.

Inductive reasoning is reasoning from what happened in the past to predict the future. Whenever the X we've seen Y. All men before Socrates eventually died, so he probably will too. 

Deduction yields a purer type of knowledge than induction. Deduction from true premises yields truths. Induction can only yield probabilities: likelihoods or odds.  

The problem with deduction and it's privileged position in teaching reasoning is that true, readily agreed upon premises are rare. I think that we should think more about induction. 

Thinking about induction in law and science

A problem with school

I was speaking to someone who succeeded financially by inventing an interesting product. I mentioned my decidedly mixed feelings about my educational experience and he noted with conviction that "grades in school reflect obedience as much as they reflect knowledge." I don't know if obedience is the right word but I basically agree. In addition to not disrupting class, there's a more fundamental ability to not just perceive the points that the instructor is trying to make but to adopt their mindset in some way. This ability to perceive and adopt a mindset when necessary is a way to succeed but it is also a trait that facilitates and disposes towards bullshitting as described by Harry Frankfurt. Such bullshit has poisoned our discourse, turning statements into markers for being in a group rather than building blocks for ideas that can be advocated or defended. 

What is science?

I recently came across a humanities professor's assessment of science (Your professors say, “This is how things are.” They give you certainty.) This person doesn't understand science at all. And maybe it's not his fault, because scientific education rarely gets into the philosophy of science. A little bit goes a long way: 

There is no certainty in science. Scientific "truths" represent a provisional consensus among those who scrutinize the relevant experiments. While it may not be the smoothest process, if a relevant experiment supports a theory, the theory will gain support if continued experiments continue to support it (and the theory is a defeasible proposition to begin with). See how the theory of general relativity came into acceptance for an example. 

Furthermore, the frontiers of scientific understanding force man to cope with experimental results beyond his intuitive grasp. Quantum mechanics gives us a world that is unpredictable, to say the least. 

 I don't want to force collegians to spend hours upon hours in a lab, but I do think that educated people need to understand that science, at its heart, is a process rather than a set of conclusions (for its conclusions only lead to more questions - questions that can't necessarily be answered through the scientific method.)