It wasn’t intended to be amusing. It was intended as my perception of the silliness of the debate. And if it comes across as an incomprehensible and stupid waste of time to me, a reasonably intelligent and scientific person, you stand no chance whatsoever using similar reasoning with the Intelligent Design people.
The ancient Greeks realized that and gave up 2500 years ago when trying to do the same thing with mathematics, so they gave us the axiom. Because the laws of physics as we currently understand them appear to have worked the same way throughout history it should be axiomatic that they will operate the same way tomorrow. Without base assumptions like that you have nothing on which to build a system of science, and it becomes turtles all the way down.
However, as I’ve said before, as an engineer I’m unwilling to commit to the absoluteness of anything. “Will the Sun rise tomorrow?” “It has every day for 4.5 billion years, so I’ll go out on a limb and say, ‘Probably.’”
Ok. So is ID science or not? Show your work this time.
Which is a formal system, not reliant on empirical observation.
Which works for formal systems. Are you now contending that physics is a formal system? I thought you were telling me about science. And I thought science was about observation.
And it is. That’s the point. It’s an axiom.
*Id. *
Can you prove an axiom?
Then we agree. Yesterday, you said the answer was “yes.” Therefore . . .
Well, yes. Maybe not accurate science. Maybe it’s based on different assumptions than what most modern scientists accept. But it is every bit as much science as what Archimedes studied.
Which is why trying to force-fit science into the framework of a formal system by denying induction is ultimately fruitless.
Er, isn’t that the point of having axioms? However, while they cannot be proven, they can be disproven, which is suggested in your Wikiquote on axioms in engineering and which is where ID falls down as a modern science.
I’ve always said that I’m a bundle of contradictions. But yesterday’s “yes” was shorthand for “It’s probable enough that any denial of it prior to the receipt of data to the contrary is a complete waste of time and shouldn’t you guys be using your enormous brains for something useful, like curing cancer?”
It may be helpful to think of the discussion of the problem of induction as not an attack on its use, but an attempt, as logicians, to analyze and understand the precise details of its use. In making clear what cannot serve as its justification, one need not be implicitly rejecting inductive logic itself; rather, this brings us to a better understanding of the correct foundations of inductive logic, its precise logical relations with other forms of reasoning. As Gfactor said, it’s not a matter of pretend-rejection of logic; it’s a matter of having such great interest in logic that one studies and analyzes it in detail, paying meticulous attention to how things really work within it.
Incidentally, I am amused by this sort of thing:
On what grounds do we know that the sun has risen every day for 4.5 billion years? (On the grounds that the laws we’ve formulated have always held in the past?) Presumably, whatever kind of reasoning could take us from our observations to knowledge about the past could also, in some manner, take us from our observations to knowledge about the future. So, again, to the man who does not already have inductive reasoning available to him, this sort of argument is doubly unuseful. (That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it for us who do have inductive reasoning.)
Okay, I’ll revise it to “Whereas I have observed the Sun rising every morning in the 52 years of my life, I’d place good money on it rising tomorrow.” Er, maybe not observed it rising every morning. More like I inferred that it rose every morning because I observed that its location in the sky was about where I’d expect it for that time of day and since I heard no news stories about it jumping around that day and the stories I have heard about the Sun jumping around are limited to observations by people at specific sites, like Fatima, and those observations can be dismissed because nobody anywhere else saw it happen. I mean…JEBUS! It’s “given,” 'kay?
I will attempt to use your blasted reasoning to “prove” to my satisfaction, if not to yours, that the Sun “rose” every morning since the Earth was formed and get back to you. You bastids are going to make a philosopher out of me yet.
I’m not so sure it’s even science, but since I think it’s crap either way, I’m not looking to argue about it.
I’d say they were trying desperately to find a way to prove induction, but failed. Just as the *Principia Mathematica * failed in a similar effort. Turtles all the way . . .
Yes. But as you can see from prior responses in the thread. Many defenders of science are uncomfortable admitting that induction is an axiom. It’d be a lot easier to simply admit, as you did, that we assume it, we need to assume it, and damnit, it works. But Popper didn’t want to, and it makes some people squirm in their chairs.
It’s always reminded me of this bit from Salinger:
Yes. Although, science historians point out that the history of science shows an attachment to keeping the axiom, and working the contrary evidence into the theory, which by the way, also works. Few claim that science doesn’t work, or even that scientists do it wrong.
Right. And let’s not mince words here. Logic is not the same thing as common sense. In fact, often they are opposites. Try to explain the material conditional in terms of common sense, for example:
