On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 6:50 PM, Lawrence Crowell < [email protected]> wrote:
*> Inductive reasoning involves recognizing some process and then > thinking of some general principle.* Inductive reasoning is much simpler than deductive reasoning, it simply makes use of the rule of thumb that things usually continue. Its much more universal than deductive reasoning too, all animals make use of it even snails. If a snail is in pitch darkness and then suddenly a intense flash of light occurs the mollusk will go into emergency mode and withdraw into its shell; if however its not just a flash but the bright light is continuous then bright light is now the new normal, the snail will assume the light will continue and go back into normal mode and go about its business doing whatever snails do. If then the light suddenly goes out and does not continue then the snail will go into emergency mode again and withdraw into its shell. In other words Evolution has programmed the snail to assume that things usually continue, and when they don't continue danger often follows so precautions need to be taken. Evolution has found that this sort of program beats out a program that does absolutely nothing when a flash happens or when everything suddenly goes dark, it beats a program that does NOT assume that things usually continue. Induction isn't perfect but it's pretty good, for example inductive reasoning would say if John Clark doesn't exist today he won't exist tomorrow either and if John Clark does exist today he will exist tomorrow too. In the entire 13.8 billion year history of the universe induction would only be wrong about that twice, on the day of my birth and on the day of by death. So that's a pretty good rule of thumb. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
