Induction Is All We Got

By Magnus Vinding

'Induction Is All We Got' is a collection of short essays on epistemology that deals mostly with the problem of induction, particularly what the status of induction is. Controversially, it argues that induction underlies all our beliefs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Magnus Vinding
• Release date: Feb 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386980742

Magnus Vinding

Magnus Vinding is the author of Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It (2015), Reflections on Intelligence (2016), You Are Them (2017), Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? (2018), Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications (2020), Reasoned Politics (2022), and Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics (2022).He is blogging at magnusvinding.com

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Table of Contents

Induction Is All We Got

Beliefs: All in Memory

Knowing Good from Bad Induction

The Source of the Problem: A Narrow and Confused View of Knowledge

How We Know Things: It Just Seems That Way

Phenomenological Positivism: Knowledge Built from a Phenomenological Palette

Do We Have Faith in Induction/Science?

Doubting the Apparently Undoubtable

Inconsistent Skepticism

Induction Is All We Got

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In this piece I shall defend what may appear an unusual thesis, namely that all reasoning is ultimately based on induction, and hence that induction is the only way in which we ever know anything. By induction, I here mean what seems right in light of the doubtable data/experience we have accumulated so far. In everything from logic and mathematics to philosophy and psychology, this is invariably how we evaluate what is true. Or so I shall argue.

How can we be sure that the patterns we have reliably observed in the world so far will also exist in other times or places? How can we justify the assumed uniformity of the world that induction seems to rest upon? How can we trust induction when it cannot be deductively justified? This is the problem of induction in a nutshell.

What is interesting, however, and seemingly universally missed, is that exactly the same problem is staring us in the face when it comes to deduction. Logical deductions are also part of the world, and hence to assume that they will be valid in all times and in all realms is therefore also to assume that the world is uniform in certain ways. It is the exact same assumption, so why is it considered problematic in the case of induction but not in the case of deduction? What is the source of this discrimination?

The answer, I think, is that it just seems true that deduction is universal, and that the opposite claim — that logic is not universal — seems to make no sense. I certainly share this impression, but this does not render deduction wholly undoubtable. We may reasonably have confidence in the statement that logical deductions are universal, but we should be clear that the basis of this belief is itself merely that it seems reasonable to suppose this given