Sunday, January 5, 2014

Induction cannot be rationally justified


"Another popular response is to admit that induction cannot be rationally justified, but to argue that this is not really so problematic after all. How might one defend such a position? Some philosophers have argued that induction is so fundamental to how we think and reason that it's not the sort of thing that could be justified. Peter Strawson, an influential contemporary philosopher, defended this view with the following analogy. If someone worried about whether a particular action was legal, they could consult the law-books and compare the action with what the law-books say. But suppose someone worried about whether the law itself was legal. This is an odd worry indeed. For the law is the standard against which the legality of other things is judged, and it makes little sense  to enquire whether the standard itself is legal. The same applies to  induction, Strawson argued. Induction is one of the standards we use to decide whether claims about the world are justified. For example, we use induction to judge whether a pharmaceutical company's claim about the amazing benefits of its new drug are justified. So it makes little sense to ask whether induction itself is justified."

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