Posted: 2008-05-23 02:43pm
But that's precisely the problem: Hume's argument only recognizes two states: valid or invalid. In his argument, there is no distinction between "not deductively valid" and "invalid".Surlethe wrote:I think this doesn't do justice to the original argument, which, if I read it correctly, posits that inductive logic is simply not deductively valid. It seems more economical to argue against the binary truth values or to argue that science is not inherently a deductive system (as opposed to mathematics or theology) than to argue against that premise.Darth Wong wrote:That's not to say that there's anything wrong with Popper's argument, it's just that it gives up ground which doesn't need to be given up. Hume's argument assumes that inductive logic is always invalid: an assumption which has no more inherent justification than the assumption that it is always correct.