I meant the same thing. Induction is quite possible, and we do it all the time.
What is the thinking process you are using to judge the epistemology of induction? Does that process involve induction? If you are doing induction all the time then you are using induction to judge the epistemology of induction. How is that supposed to work? And if not, judging the special case of the epistemology of induction is an exception. It is an example of thinking without induction. Why is this special case an exception?
Critical Rationalism does not have this problem. The epistemology of Critical Rationalism can be judged entirely within the framework of Critical Rationalism.
What is the thinking process you are using to judge the epistemology of induction?
The thinking process is Bayesian, and uses a prior. I have a discussion of it here
If you are doing induction all the time then you are using induction to judge the epistemology of induction. How is that supposed to work?
…
Critical Rationalism does not have this problem. The epistemology of Critical Rationalism can be judged entirely within the framework of Critical Rationalism.
The thinking process is Bayesian, and uses a prior.
What is the epistemological framework you used to judge the correctness of those? You don’t just get to use Bayes’ Theorem here without explaining the epistemological framework you used to judge the correctness of Bayes. Or the correctness of probability theory, your priors etc.
If you are doing induction all the time then you are using induction to judge the epistemology of induction. How is that supposed to work? … Critical Rationalism does not have this problem. The epistemology of Critical Rationalism can be judged entirely within the framework of Critical Rationalism.
Little problem there.
No. Critical Rationalism can be used to improve Critical Rationalism and, consistently, to refute it (though no one has done so). This has been known for decades. Induction is not a complete epistemology like that. For one thing, inductivists also need the epistemology of deduction. But they also need an epistemological framework to judge both of those. This they cannot provide.
You don’t just get to use Bayes’ Theorem here without explaining the epistemological framework you used to judge the correctness of Bayes
I certainly do. I said that induction is not impossible, and that inductive reasoning is Bayesian. If you think that Bayesian reasoning is also impossible, you are free to establish that. You have not done so.
Critical Rationalism can be used to improve Critical Rationalism and, consistently, to refute it (though no one has done so).
If this is possible, it would be equally possible to refute induction (if it were impossible) by using induction. For example, if every time something had always happened, it never happened after that, then induction would be refuted by induction.
If you think that is inconsistent (which it is), it would be equally inconsistent to refute CR with CR, since if it was refuted, it could not validly be used to refute anything, including itself.
Yes. I didn’t mean to imply it isn’t. The CR view of deduction is different to the norm, however. Deduction’s role is commonly over-rated and it does not confer certainty. Like any thinking, it is a fallible process, and involves guessing and error-correction as per usual in CR. This is old news for you, but the inductivists here won’t agree.
FYI that’s what “abduction” means – whatever is needed to fill in the gaps that induction and deduction don’t cover. it’s rather vague and poorly specified though. it’s supposed to be some sort of inference to good explanations (mirror induction’s inference to generalizations of data), but it’s unclear on how you do it. you may be interested in reading about it.
in practice, abduction or not, what they do is use common sense, philosophical tradition, intuition, whatever they picked up from their culture, and bias instead of actually having a well-specified epistemology.
(Objectivism is notable b/c it actually has a lot of epistemology content instead of just people thinking they can recognize good arguments when they see them without needing to work out systematic intellectual methods relating to first principles. However, Rand assumed induction worked, and didn’t study it or talk about it much, so that part of her epistemology needs to be replaced with CR which, happily, accomplishes all the same things she wanted induction to accomplish, so this replacement isn’t problematic. LW, to its credit, also has a fair amount of epistemology material – e.g. various stuff about reason and bias – some of which is good. However LW hasn’t systematized things to philosophical first principles b/c it has a kinda anti-philosophy pro-math attitude, so philosophically they basically start in the middle and have some unquestioned premises which lead to some errors.)
An epistemology is a philosophical framework which answers questions like what is a correct argument, how are ideas evaluated, and how does one learn. Your link doesn’t provide one of those.
I said the thinking process used to judge the epistemology of induction is Bayesian, and my link explains how it is. I did not say it is an exhaustive explanation of epistemology.
What is the thinking process you are using to judge the epistemology of induction? Does that process involve induction? If you are doing induction all the time then you are using induction to judge the epistemology of induction. How is that supposed to work? And if not, judging the special case of the epistemology of induction is an exception. It is an example of thinking without induction. Why is this special case an exception?
Critical Rationalism does not have this problem. The epistemology of Critical Rationalism can be judged entirely within the framework of Critical Rationalism.
The thinking process is Bayesian, and uses a prior. I have a discussion of it here
Little problem there.
What is the epistemological framework you used to judge the correctness of those? You don’t just get to use Bayes’ Theorem here without explaining the epistemological framework you used to judge the correctness of Bayes. Or the correctness of probability theory, your priors etc.
No. Critical Rationalism can be used to improve Critical Rationalism and, consistently, to refute it (though no one has done so). This has been known for decades. Induction is not a complete epistemology like that. For one thing, inductivists also need the epistemology of deduction. But they also need an epistemological framework to judge both of those. This they cannot provide.
I certainly do. I said that induction is not impossible, and that inductive reasoning is Bayesian. If you think that Bayesian reasoning is also impossible, you are free to establish that. You have not done so.
If this is possible, it would be equally possible to refute induction (if it were impossible) by using induction. For example, if every time something had always happened, it never happened after that, then induction would be refuted by induction.
If you think that is inconsistent (which it is), it would be equally inconsistent to refute CR with CR, since if it was refuted, it could not validly be used to refute anything, including itself.
Deduction isn’t an epistemology (it’s a component), and is compatible with CR too. I don’t think it’s a good point to attack.
Yes. I didn’t mean to imply it isn’t. The CR view of deduction is different to the norm, however. Deduction’s role is commonly over-rated and it does not confer certainty. Like any thinking, it is a fallible process, and involves guessing and error-correction as per usual in CR. This is old news for you, but the inductivists here won’t agree.
Yes, I was incorrect. Induction, deduction, and something else (what?) are components of the epistemology used by inductivists.
FYI that’s what “abduction” means – whatever is needed to fill in the gaps that induction and deduction don’t cover. it’s rather vague and poorly specified though. it’s supposed to be some sort of inference to good explanations (mirror induction’s inference to generalizations of data), but it’s unclear on how you do it. you may be interested in reading about it.
in practice, abduction or not, what they do is use common sense, philosophical tradition, intuition, whatever they picked up from their culture, and bias instead of actually having a well-specified epistemology.
(Objectivism is notable b/c it actually has a lot of epistemology content instead of just people thinking they can recognize good arguments when they see them without needing to work out systematic intellectual methods relating to first principles. However, Rand assumed induction worked, and didn’t study it or talk about it much, so that part of her epistemology needs to be replaced with CR which, happily, accomplishes all the same things she wanted induction to accomplish, so this replacement isn’t problematic. LW, to its credit, also has a fair amount of epistemology material – e.g. various stuff about reason and bias – some of which is good. However LW hasn’t systematized things to philosophical first principles b/c it has a kinda anti-philosophy pro-math attitude, so philosophically they basically start in the middle and have some unquestioned premises which lead to some errors.)
Yes, I’m familiar with it. The concept comes from the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce in the 19th century.
An epistemology is a philosophical framework which answers questions like what is a correct argument, how are ideas evaluated, and how does one learn. Your link doesn’t provide one of those.
I said the thinking process used to judge the epistemology of induction is Bayesian, and my link explains how it is. I did not say it is an exhaustive explanation of epistemology.