Posted by alexandra_k on December 2, 2005, at 14:51:36 [reposted on December 3, 2005, at 14:38:52 | original URL]
In reply to Re: ...addendum, posted by linkadge on December 2, 2005, at 14:13:33
> the only way to proof or disprove the statement is with a counterexample.
statements aren't 'proved' or 'disproved' they are 'true' or 'false' (or 'neither true nor false' - but not in a two valued logic. in a two valued logic they are either true or false and not both at the same time).
lets imagine a possible world in which...
it is TRUE that the poster thinks he is smarter than his p-doc... (so the premiss is true)
AND
it is FALSE that most babblers think they are smarter than their p-docs... (51% do not think they are smarter than and thus the conclusion is false)then you would have a 'counter-example'
a situation where the premiss is true (the poster thinks he is smarter than his p-doc) AND the conclusion false (because most babblers do not think they are smarter than their p-doc).
However, that counter-example only works to show that the argument is DEDUCTIVELY INVALID. Which just means... that it IS possible (without contradiction) for the premises to be true while the conclusion is false.But we decided already that it wasn't so charitable to interpret it as an attempt at a deductively valid argument...
With respect to an inductive argument...
If one individual has property p
Is it more likely to be true or false that most individuals have property p?
It doesn't really seem more likely to be true that MOST individuals have that property (if the ONLY reason / premiss is that one individual has that property)
and hence...
the premiss doesn't give us good reason to believe the conclusion is more likely true than false
hence...
it isn't inductively forceful...It is about the weakest form of inductive argument possible because it goes from one to most. worse still would be from one to all. slightly better would be most to one. best (and deductively valid or 100% inductively forceful would be all to one)
:-)
poster:alexandra_k
thread:585017
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20051203/msgs/585039.html