The Raven Paradox - Can anyone explain this in layman's terms?

Sorry for snipping parts of your post, Lemur866.

I don’t, nor do I have any way to know other than eating the apple or being eaten by that leopard. That things will behave consistently is an assumption that I as well as pretty much everyone on the planet, as you point out, works by. But it’s still an assumption.

But that’s just the thing; I don’t accept the premise that things will act consistently. It’s a guess. I don’t have any problem saying that it’s probably (and hopefully, anyway) a pretty good guess, at least from my experience, but that doesn’t make it proved. Logic based on a premise that hasn’t been shown to be true means the conclusion can’t be taken as true, and evidence for a piece of logic whose premise hasn’t been shown to be true isn’t evidence.

Of course. But there’s a difference between what we’re willing to accept in science and what we’re willing to accept in everyday life. I don’t have a problem relying on the underlying assumptions of science in my everyday life, and going around eating apples on the assumption they won’t be poison. But evidence has to be held to a higher standard than that. We can act as if inductive reasoning works, but scrutinised most carefully we can’t know.