By MAN WITH STICK
Added: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:54:35 UTC

Is inductive reasoning a more useful survival tool than deductive reasoning? - Discuss.

Induction allows people to arrive at a conclusion from limited experience: the argument can be valid but the conclusion false. Deduction is an evaluation of the validity and soundness of a conclusion from its premises. Imagine 2 tribes, the Inducters and the Deducters, are in competition. The inducters reason thusly:

'Bison migrate by this way every year, therefore they will do it this year, let's set traps and prepare for the massive herds...'

The Inducters reason thusly:

'An animal believed to be a bison, I have observed, migrates across this plain approximately this time every year, but it does not follow that such an event will happen this year. Would the energy needed to set traps, etc, be an optimum strategy based on such imperfect knowledge?'

You get the idea. No quibbling about the definition of induction/deduction, just the survival value of the 2 approaches.

In a pre-scientific world when humans did not know any laws of nature or have a body of facts to work from, just signs and cues from nature, would induction have been justified as the preferred method of reasoning? Could this be an explanation for why so many logical fallicies contain inference?

TAGGED: BEHAVIOR, CRITICAL THINKING, IRRATIONALITY