Posted by:
Tal Bachman
(
)
Date: October 20, 2014 08:35AM
A while ago, I posted on the interesting case of Swiss-American psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, best known for developing "The Five Stages of Grief". In brief, after a successful career in psychiatry, Kubler-Ross wound up in thrall to a transparent New Age charlatan named Jay Barham. She wasted her time, money, and reputation believing in, and defending, this man even long after his deception was exposed. You can read that thread here:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1306816,1306816#msg-1306816My point was that neither extraordinary intelligence nor great education are guarantees against winding up with beliefs so wrong that they seem almost insane. In fact, as (I think) Michael Shermer noted once, there are certain thinking errors that *only* smart people can make.
Take the case of the famous Austrian philosopher, Karl Popper. Popper is still revered by many; and yet, like Kubler-Ross and so many others, he wound up believing in the most absurd nonsense imaginable. A close examination of his writings shows how he got there.
First, some quick background.
"Induction" describes a thinking process in which we infer something about the unobserved based on the observed. Say we have used Grandma's chocolate chip cookie recipe a hundred times, and the cookies have always wound up tasting the same. Based on those observations, we can infer something about tomorrow's batch: if we follow the same cooking procedures using the same ingredients as before, the cookies will again taste the same. That is, we have made an *inductive inference* about the unobserved (tomorrow's cookies) based on the observed (past cookies).
This is an intuitive thinking process which all humans employ. But the Scottish philosopher David Hume argued that this effective thinking process cannot be rationally justified.
Here's why: if we assume that cookies made in the future will taste like cookies made the same way in the past, then we are also necessarily assuming - inductively inferring - that *the laws of physics in the future will operate as they did in the past*. That inductive inference - that the laws of physics will continue to operate - underlies every single other inductive inference we can make, whether it be about building cars, baking cookies, or training dogs.
Hume argues therefore that defending the validity of any specific inductive inference ("tomorrow's cookies will taste like yesterday's") requires us to have already assumed the validity of an underlying inductive inference that *the laws of physics will operate in the future as they have in the past*. That is, to defend the conclusion that induction is valid requires that we assume its validity in the first place; and this, Hume points out, is a fallacy known as "begging the question" - a circular argument in which a conclusion already exists in the premise. (See
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/begging-the-question ). And for that reason, induction - a thinking process without which we could not survive in this world - is actually rationally indefensible.
At least, so says David Hume.
Karl Popper encountered Hume's "Problem of Induction" as a young philosophy student, and immediately concluded it was legitimate and devastating. Tormented by the thought that humanity's default thought process was actually a giant, indefensible fallacy, Karl Popper decided to devote his life to "solving Hume's Problem of Induction". And that is where the problems began.
More to come. Comments welcome.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2014 08:38AM by Tal Bachman.