Quote:
Originally Posted by Davidius  Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianLanier Quote:
Originally Posted by Davidius The law of gravity is useful. Science has no explanation for it.
As Scott mentioned, scientists should be reminded that induction is fallacious reasoning and can never provide absolute truth. Even with something like gravity, there's nothing about throwing a ball into the air and seeing it fall down 10 times which logically implies that it will fall down on the eleventh. They'll probably laugh at this and pretend like it doesn't matter, but then again, most of them are also fools who say in their heart that there is no God. | Davidius,
How is induction *fallacious*? And can you deduce that <induction is fallacious> is an absolute truth? Are you saying that we can't have *knowledge* by induction? No offense, but not just scientists will laugh at this, but nearly *all* philosophers of logic will too. (Of course, I only know *this* by induction  ) | Yes, before black swans were discovered, it was inductively assumed that all swans were white. If I ask ten people for whom they will vote in the election and they all say Obama, he will not necessarily win. It is impossible to take all instances of a phenomenon into consideration; they cannot all be observed. Therefore, a sure conclusion can only be hypothesized. This is not a new idea. I remember reading in Bahnsen that the skepticism of Hume has yet to be answered in a non-presuppositional framework. |
Ok, induction doesn't yield maximal warrant, but so what? Does *that* somehow make induction "fallacious" as you stated? Can't a cognizer be warranted
enough via induction to to have knowledge (more than mere true belief), e.g., memory? Just because inductive beliefs may turn out to be false, it doesn't follow that *all* inductive beliefs are false ("fallacious"). And just because Bahnsen said it . . . well again, so what? It seems as if you are assuming classical foundationalism, internalism, and infalliablism. All three have their fair share of problems.