Deductive and Inductive Arguments

this video tutorial is on what are deductive and inductive arguments arguments can reach their conclusions through either deduction or induction now these distinct methods for arguing differ in two important ways one structure and two the strength of conclusions by the end of this video tutorial you should be able to explain highly differ in both these ways let's begin by examining deduction deductive reasoning consists of using general principles to infer specific propositions that means this type of argument starts with something general and moves to something specific consider this example mr. Moffet always wears black shoes to work premise 2 mr. Moffat will be coming to work on Friday therefore conclusion mr. Moffat will wear black shoes on Friday notice the structure of this argument it begins by starting a general principle in premise 1 mr. Moffat always wears black shoes to work it then in conjunction with premise 2 moves to a specific conclusion mr. Moffat will wear black shoes on Friday now this is structure that deductive arguments take they move from something general to something specific now this structure has an effect on the strength of the conclusion of deductive arguments what is fascinating about deductive arguments is that if all the premises are true then it follows the conclusion must also be true in fact this is necessarily the case if the premises are true then the conclusion must be necessarily true so this makes them very strong arguments because if you have a deductive argument and you're able to convincingly prove that your premises are true then your conclusion must also be true if somebody wanted to and argue against your position they would not be able to argue against conclusion because it necessarily follows from your premises makes it a strong argument last I look at induction inductive reasoning consists of using specific propositions to infer general principles now you can see this is the opposite reverse of deduction so you're going to begin in an inductive argument with something specific and you're working towards establishing a general principle consider this example premise 1 mr. Moffet were blacks used to work on Monday premise 2 mr. Moffet were blacks used to work on Tuesday premise 3 he wore black shoes to work on Wednesday from his 4 he were blacks used to work on Thursday therefore mr. Moffet always wears black shoes to work they see immediately that the conclusion in this argument is a general principle mr. Moffet always wears black shoes to work in fact this is the exact same proposition as we found in premise one of our deductive argument notice how in the inductive argument we've reached this conclusion we've got a collection of specific propositions and we move from those specific propositions to our conclusion now because general principles are the conclusion inductive argument and that they're arrived at from specific propositions this means the strength of conclusions inductive arguments are never going to be as certain as deductive arguments because even if all these premises are true it does not necessarily follow that the conclusion has to be true it could be true but equally it could be false that means inductive arguments do not have as strong conclusions they could be true or they could be false they're always only ever probabilistic that does not mean that inductive arguments are bad arguments you can have good inductive arguments a good inductive argument has a conclusion which is highly probable a bad inductive argument has a conclusion which is very very unlikely consider this argument the conclusion is mr. Moffet always wears black shoes to work now if we look at the premises then we can see that for four days of the working week he does indeed wear black shoes to work so that means the conclusion mr. Moffet always wears black shoes to work it's quite probable there's only one day not accounted for but because Friday is not accounted for that means we can't be totally sure that the conclusion is true if mr. Moffet were black shoes on the fighting then it'd be true but we don't have that information he could have wore different color shoes because there were no shoes or trainers so it's only a probabilistic conclusion okay so that's deduction and induction let's summarize they differ first of all in structure deduction moves from general to specific induction moves from specific to general they also differ in the strength of their conclusions deduction their conclusions of a deductive argument are necessarily true if the premises are true with induction conclusions only ever probabilistic right which arguments are inductive and which are deductive have a look at this task you see if you can work out reading these arguments whether they're examples of deductive argument ation or inductive pause the video now ok I have a look at the answers I've color-coded them blue being deductive and they're kind of orange peach as inductive and check your answers and and work out at any mistakes you possibly made portnow okay so in everyday language general principles often indicated by words like all always never and specific propositions are often indicates by words like some most are percentage often usually when applied to God deductive in inductive arguments try to reach some of similar conclusions in different ways so say you wanted to prove that God exists if you created a deductive argument to prove God exists then you're going to try and show this by saying that God's existence is logically necessary now if you wanted to argue for God's existence inductively then what you're doing is you're trying to show the gods of existence is highly probable right what is the difference then between deductive argument and an inductive argument the differ in two ways can you write them down now okay and as always any questions email me

Channel: Mr Moffat Philosophy

Views: 155,415

Rating: 4.8318472 out of 5

Keywords: deduction, deductive, inductive, induction, a level, Philosophy (Field Of Study), Deductive Reasoning (Field Of Study), Inductive Reasoning (Field Of Study), Argument

Id: gQO7qhYSwvk

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 22 2014