Abducing and Inducing

Ladies . . . Gentlemen . . . lend me your ears for my first post.

I shall, this day, talk briefly about induction and abduction. Both these words are often seen as abstruse nomenclature for fairly simple and necessary tasks in the searching out of truth. (By the way, is it just me or is the word 'abstruse' itself quite abstruse?) Abduction is simply reasoning to the best explanation and induction is making a general or universal conclusion based upon finite or limited evidence.

An example of the former is found in Tom Regan's book Empty Cages in which he argues for human and animal moral rights. He attempts to determine what it is about humans that gives them moral rights by considering seven different proposals. He rejects all of these for one reason or another, and then settles on a property of humans which he calls being a subject-of-a-life (SOAL). Being a SOAL means that one is somehow aware of one's environment and can have a better or worse life and it matters to that SOAL whether it has a better or worse life. From this he concludes that animals share this property with humans, and thus also share moral rights. The point is this: there really is no argument at all from Regan as to why being a SOAL should entail moral rights, except that he presupposed moral rights and concluded that being a SOAL is the best explanation for the existence of moral rights. Thus, this is an abduction.

An example of the latter, namely induction, is the experience of Europeans a few hundred years ago. Every swan that they had ever seen was white. S1 was white, S2 was white . . . Sn was white. After some time, it seems that the Europeans were justified in concluding that all swans are white. But note this well: they did not observe every swan either in the past, present or future. There was VERY limited evidence for a universal conclusion in the form of All X is Y. Imagine their surpirse when they arrived in Australia and found black swans! This is an induction, namely taking a body of limited "evidence" and making a universal conclusion.

Now, if it can't be deciphered, I shall make it manifest: I do not support induction or abduction in the search for truth. And it is this that I would like to make a few comments about.

First, I do not deny that one can arrive at truth via abduction or induction. For example, one might say that the best explanation of the order in nature that we see is a sovereign creator God. I agree that this is true. Where my problem lies is that this method of argumentation is completely invalid and fallacious. A child may guess correctly at a differential calculus problem, and some teenagers may stumble upon some metaphysical truth by using a Ouija Board; this I do not deny.

Second, I do not reject induction and abduction simply because they do not give certainty. Certainly (ha!) this is an important issue, but a related issue is, I believe, more fundamental. There is simply no justification for making an induction or abduction. Try as one may, there is absolutely no rational reason to be found for thinking that being a SOAL grants moral rights or that all swans are white based on the limited observations of Europeans-of-old. That is, there is no justification for anyone to think that either of these two judgments are true, though they both may, in fact, be true. (However, they are both, as far as I am concerned, false).

Third, I do not reject the use of induction and abduction. Here is where many people get caught at. As a Clarkian aren't I committed not to use either of these methods? The simple answer is: no. In fact, I whole-heartedly endorse induction and abduction for the use in science and every day life, provided that one is not deceived into thinking that a judgment arrived at through induction or abduction is meant to be litterally true or false. One may act or behave as if it were true, for surely we must make decisions and act according to our best guess in order to make it through the world. There is a view in the philosophy of science that is much akin to this called anti-realism. I am an anti-realist/skeptic on all empirical judgments, however I am an instrumentalist in that I whole-heartedly endorse both of these methods as instruments to manipulate the environment and to predict phenomenon (granting, of course, that no prediction can actually be epistemically confirmed).

These observations are essential to one's understanding of science. I shall, Lord willing, discuss the failure of evangelicalism to rightly question the legitimacy of science itself instead of particular conclusions held to by particular scientists.