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Inductive Reasoning Aristotle’s deductive arguments were the most popular and effective way to arrive at true statements for 1800 years. That was until the Enlightenment and a man by the name of Francis Bacon came up with his own technique. He was a nobleman and politicians in England during the reign of King James. He was dissatisfied with traditional methods of truth seeking. He saw it as restrained by existing belief systems and commonly accepted claims. One of the most famous failings of deductive reasoning is the black swan fallacy. ·         A: All of the swans I have ever seen have been white. Therefore, all swans are white. ·         B: Here's a black swan. ·         A: All swans are white, therefore that can't be a swan. Bacon saw the problems with these kinds of statements.  “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end w...

How did Induction Change the world? Galileo (1564-1642) Origin Galileo came from a poor family of musicians in the town of Pisa. His father was skeptical of authority and imposed that on Galileo from an early age. Galileo was an intelligent young man and considered becoming a priest but his dad encouraged him to study medicine. Galileo instead took to mathematics after accidentally attending a lecture on geometry. Once he had graduated he took a job as the Professor of Math at Pisa University. He also took a position as the Ballistics Consultant at the arsenal of Venice. He entered into public debates on calculating the “shape, location and size of hell” but also showed that bodies of different weights fell at the same speed. With this success he got a better teaching job in Padua and then became Chief mathematician and philosopher at Florence With the money Galileo was now making, he bought and improved telescopes. They were invented by a Dutch spectacle maker but...

Induction, Deduction, Schmucktion – what’s wrong with using intuition? Why do we need science? We have brains for a reason don’t we? Why can’t we just use them to arrive at knowledge? Our intuitions will lead us to truth! Sense Deception Illusion in Philosophy Book under Descartes Arrows same length  Fake hand and hammer experiment Pareidolia Hot hand, cold hand, room temp hand Page 100 of thinking fast and slow That gorilla basketball video https://youtu.be/dQ47ocCsUPs Perceptual Deception Is the earth flat? Do we observe the sun move or the earth? How fast are you moving? (107,000 km/h) Have you ever touched anything? Is air open space? Are solid things, solid? Do heavier things fall faster? What color is white light? Are my hands clean? Refraction of light Your body is what percent human? How do you protect someone against diseases? Keep them away from the disease or give them the disease? Did Tyrannosaurus Rex exsist closer to the time of stegosaurus or us today? ...

What is Science? All science is born out of philosophy and logic. Philosophy asks the questions, logic provides tactics in finding the answer. The word science comes from the Latin word “to know”. Science is a collection of tactics used to discover truths about the world around us by use of experimentation and observation. Deductive Reasoning Aristotle loved making observations about the world. He categorized living things. Reptile comes from the Latin "to creep", avian meaning bird comes from the Latin word Avis, Mammal comes from the Latin for breast, because almost all mammals drink milk from their mothers. The word amphibian comes from the Greek for 'both life' referring to their lives both in and out of water. Aristotle used observations to recognize common characteristics of different animals. This way he was able to organize them into groups. He reasoned that if an animal lays eggs in water then it must be related to the other animals that do. By do...

Charles Darwin described a mechanism within nature which shaped species. However, some understood this observation as a philosophical truth. They believed that if nature acted in that fashion then it would only be natural for humanity to organize itself in the same way. So the question became, should we try to emulate nature? People always talk about the benefits of natural foods and a natural lifestyle. You might hear the objection to an idea that “it’s not natural”. The rhetoric brings to mind pictures of cleanliness and health. However, is this true? First, natural foods  – there’s some truth. Natural foods before agriculture sucked. However, too many additives, saturated fats and refined sugars cause obesity and heart disease. However, it’s also “natural” for us to seek out fatty and sugary foods. Our hunter-gather ancestors would’ve had little access to such dietary resources and taking advantage of the added sugar and fat would have been valuable. However, in the ...

The Republic Plato tells the story from the point of view of Socrates. I went down yesterday to the Peiraeus with Glaucon to pay my devotions to the Goddess, Athenia and also because I wished to see how they would conduct the festival since this was its first day. I thought the procession of the citizens very fine, but it was no better than the show, made by the marching of the Thracian soldiers. After we had said our prayers and seen the spectacle we were starting for town when Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, caught sight of us from a distance as we were hastening homeward and ordered his slave to run and bid us to wait for him, and the boy caught my attention from behind and said, “Polemarchus wants you to wait.” And I turned around and asked where his master was. “There he is,” he said, “behind you, coming this way. Wait for him.” “So we will,” said Glaucon, and shortly after Polemarchus came up and Adeimantus, the brother of Glaucon, and Niceratus a...

What is justice? During the conversation, the concept of justice arises... Polimarcus claims that justice is the act of truth-telling. Socrates then asks, “Is it just to tell people, unprovoked, that they look bad? Or did something poorly? Is it always just to tell the truth?” Polimarcus said that it was not and rethinks his position. He then claims justice is repaying what's owed. Socrates seeks to discover the truth by testing his claim, “But speaking of this very thing, justice, that we define as paying back what one has received from anyone, or may these very actions sometimes be just and sometimes unjust? I mean, for example, as everyone I presume would admit, if one took weapons from a friend who was in his right mind and then the lender should go mad and demand them back, that we ought not to return them in that case and that he who did so return them would not be acting justly.” “You are right,” Polimarcus replied. “Then this is not the definition of justice....