warpus said:
Maybe on some level this isn't intuitive, but if you know enough about physics and how the planets operate, how the solar system operates, then you'll *know* where the sun will be in the sky at 8 in the morning tomorrow.
"Physics will be different" tomorrow is an extraordinary claim and thus requires extraordinary evidence. The laws of physics haven't changed for billions of years - why should they change tomorrow? What evidence do you have that this
will happen?
What evidence do you have that they won't? That it has not happened before is not good enough until you validate induction with non-circular logic.
Furthermore - when is something "extraordinary"? When it suits you? Give us some criteria - and to go with it, explain why it should matter.
@askthepizzaguy: Brilliant post(s), but a bit beside the point. Most debates here @ cfc are semantic & trivial in nature.
Even the ones that do "matter" (abortion vs. non, etc), rarely result in people changing their pov. But imo it's fun to argue.
For the record, although it may seem that I'm passionate about this debate, I really don't care that much if I convince anyone
to adopt my position. It would be nice, sure, but the sun will continue to rise whether we justify our belief in that or not.
askthepizzaguy said:
When we get trapped in such discussions as "how do you KNOW the sun will rise tomorrow?" then we are being distracted by rhetoric. We don't know with absolute certainty, but it is a reasonable assumption because there is nothing stopping the earth from spinning or the sun from shining in the foreseeable future. That's that. Inductive reasoning isn't always conclusive or correct, but sometimes it is a useful shortcut.
Why is the future foreseeable? I agree that induction is useful from a human pov - indeed without it, no meaningful predictions could be made and science would become undoable. The reason I'm asking these questions (and lovett who started it, likely has the same reason - feel free to correct me if that's not the case), is to show that science & reason require some faith to work too, even if intuitively less than religion. And in this case, intuition is deceptive. That something is "useful for human progress" is really quite a biased criteria; it amounts to taking things like induction on faith becase they are needed for further results. There's not anything shameful or wrong in that, imo. Human progress is shiny & quite awesome to have around, even if partly based on technically unproven/irrational things.
As for the God(s) issue, well, to me the problem lies with the traditional narratives: all the holy books (that I've read at least) are rather violent and intolerant in nature, not to mention requiring absolute obedience down to the choice of toothpicks and the color of your Sunday sweater. Depending on the denomination, things may be milder or more harsh; but it is the books themselves that are the root cause of the problems. Most of the New Testament is an exception; it seems to be designed to reign in primitive human nature, while the OT seems to do the opposite. Note that I said most; there's plenty of bad stuff in the NT too. And it too tends to be authoritative, which is something that seems common to all religions: they almost always have rules, not guidelines.
Someone needs to update religion to the 21st century. Make a religion where it says, on trivial enough matters: "these tenets may change in the future, as the human race and its needs change". If I could get a hold of a decent batch of hallucinogens, I'd be willing to do it (for a decent fee ofc).
Lonewolf said:
"Because in world in which any inductive statement was, is and will be false the conclusion of the inductive statement "induction had been wrong before, and it will be wrong in the future" is true, which is a contradiction."
If induction is false, no reliable predictions about the future can be made. Your statement is unnecessary; in a world without valid induction, one simply needs to say "right now, induction is not valid". And that is all you
can say,
because induction is not valid! Note that this is all deductive reasoning (as far as I can tell; I'm not exactly a professor of logic). Also note that in this kind of world, there is nothing that prevents induction from becoming valid in the future, even if it never was before. How it might, well, beats me.
cardgame said:
Indeed it does. Let us hope that it continues to work tomorrow.
So it goes.
I thought that the whole point of this debate was that we cannot justify induction by deductive logic, only by itself (circular logic) and by human bias (i.e. it's useful to rely on induction).
