Deductive vs Inductive vs Abductive Reasoning

you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to practice your powers of deductive reason or would that be inductive reasoning deductive inductive what's the difference deductive reasoning starts out with a hypothesis and examines the possibilities to reach a specific logical conclusion for example spiders have eight legs a black widow is a spider therefore a black widow has eight legs think of it as a mathematical equation a equals B B equals C therefore a equals C for deductive reasoning to work the hypothesis must be correct it's assumed that the premises spiders have eight legs and a black widow is a spider are true so the conclusion is logical and true because in deductive reasoning if something is true of a group of things in general it's also true for all members of that people however even if the generalization is not true it's possible to come to a conclusion that sounds logical but may also be incorrect if I say all spiders eat fish a black widow is a spider therefore Black Widows eat fish it's valid logically but it's not true because the original statement is false inductive reasoning on the other hand makes broad generalizations from specific observations there's data then conclusions are drawn from the data here's how it works a coin that I've pulled from this bag is a penny a second coin is a penny a third coin is also a penny therefore all the coins in the bag are pennies but inductive reasoning allows for a conclusion to be false even if the premises are true for example cobras are venomous cobras or snakes therefore all snakes are venomous inductive reasoning may not always produce a true conclusion but scientists can use it to produce hypotheses to investigate and they use deductive reasoning to apply the hypotheses to specific questions about science deductive and inductive reasoning but wait what about abductive reasoning this is a type of scientific reasoning that is neither inductive nor deductive it usually starts with an incomplete set of observations and goes from there to the likeliest possible explanation it's used for making and testing a hypothesis with whatever information is available for example you walk into your room and find papers all over the floor the windows open you conclude that the wind blew the papers around because it's the most likely scenario of course it's possible that your roommate snuck in and tossed the papers around but the window theory is the more feasible conclusion deductive and inductive and deductive reasoning [Music]

Channel: LiveScience

Views: 131,409

Rating: 4.8767505 out of 5

Keywords: science, life, animal, sex, live science, scientific, research, press, deductive reasoning, abductive reasoning, mindy weisberger, inductive reasoning

Id: jX3OXwpEpl8

Length: 3min 2sec (182 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2018