On Solving the Dreaded Problem of Induction
On pages 70-71 in my new book, The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True,
In inductive reasoning, scientists make a series of observations and then infer something based on these observations, or they predict that the next observation under the same exact test conditions will produce the same results. It’s argued there are two problems with this process. The first problem is that regardless of the number of observations it is never certain the next observation of the same exact phenomena under the same exact test conditions will produce the same exact results. For scientists to inductively infer something from previous results or predict what future observations will be like, it’s claimed they must have faith that nature operates by a uniform set of laws. Why? Because they cannot know nature is lawful from their observations alone. The second problem is that the observations of scientists in and of themselves cannot establish with certainty the validity of inductive reasoning.
There is a great deal of literature on the problem of induction, and I cannot solve it here…But if all we ever do is think exclusively in terms of the probabilities, as I’ll argue later (in chapters 7 and 10), then this problem is pretty much solved.
I write more about it, but can you catch my drift?
