A problem with inductive reasoning.
By well-wisher
- 315 reads
Firstly, what is inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning is a logical process in which multiple premises, all believed true or found true most of the time, are combined to obtain a specific conclusion.
For example: The sun rose yesterday. The Sun has risen every day of my life. I have never known or heard of the sun not rising and so its likely that the sun will rise tommorrow.
Now this is the problem:
In my experience I have never seen evidence of absence without presence.
I have seen the absence of heat but I have seen heat. I have seen the absence of light but I have seen light. I have seen the absence of wealth but I have seen wealth.
So based upon that experience, using inductive logic, I would have to say that absence does not exist without presence.
But wait a minute, you say...
There's an absence of unicorns in the world. That doesn't mean that unicorns exist.
But I can't prove that Unicorns don't exist somewhere, if not on this planet then somewhere else, so I cannot use your Unicorn example as evidence that absence can exist without presence.
But if I were to put my faith in inductive reasoning (and ignore deductive reasoning) and say, "All X's I know of are Y so all X's are probably Y" then I would have to say, "I have no experience of absence without presence but lots of experience of absence with presence and so, based upon that, an absence of unicorns here probably indicates the presence of unicorns somewhere else".
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