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1. Lecture 7
Induction

2. What Is Induction?
• In deduction, we move from premises to
conclusion. But where do the premises
come from?
• One way is through analytic judgments,
e.g., “All triangles are three-sided figures”.
• In an analytic judgment , the subject and
predicate are logically connected.

3. Analytic Judgments and Austrian
Economics
• Much of Austrian economics, as developed
by Mises, consists of analytic judgments
and deductions from them.
• Some example: Every action uses means to
achieve ends
• An actor always chooses his most highly-
valued end.

4. Learning From Experience
• Induction concerns truths that are not
analytic judgments. These are learned from
experience.
• How do we know, e.g., that people need to
eat in order to live? This isn’t something
that we deduce from the concept of “human
beings” or “eating food.”

5. Why Induction Is a Problem
• Experience is always about particular events
at a particular time. (This is a conceptual
truth.) How can we get a universally true
proposition from such experience?
• Suppose, e.g., that we have found on a
number of occasions that waters runs
downhill. What justifies the generalization,
“Water always runs downhill?”

6. Joyce’s Answer to the Problem of
Induction
• There isn’t a generally accepted answer to this
problem.
• Joyce’s solution depends on the fact that the
generalizations we make from experience are
about causes. By “cause” he means the reason for
something, i.e., what makes a thing to be what it
is.
• Joyce’s approach is quite similar to the “new”
approach to induction offered by Leonard Peikoff
in David Harriman, The Logical Leap.

7. Joyce’s Answer Continued
• Sometimes we can recognize a causal relationship
immediately. For example, I grasp immediately
that I caused the previous slide to shift to this one.
• Sometimes it is very difficult to find out what the
cause of something is. For example, there are all
sorts of things that take place once I click the
mouse that bring about the slide’s movement. You
have to know a great deal to discover these.

8. Types of Cause
• Joyce takes an Aristotelian approach to
causality.
• In this view, there are four types of cause:
• Final
• Formal
• Material
• Efficient

9. Final Cause
• The final cause of something is its purpose.
• In the Aristotelian view, purposes aren’t
confined to human action.
• This doesn’t mean everything has a mind.
Rather, everything has a natural end. For
example, the purpose of the heart is to pump
blood.

10. Formal and Material Causes
• The formal cause is the shape of something, Joyce
gives the example of the shape of a statue.
• The material cause is what something is a made
of. For example, the material cause of a marble
statue is the marble that makes up the statue.
• The formal and material causes are called intrinsic
causes. They make no reference to anything
outside the thing whose causes they are.

11. Efficient Cause
• The efficient cause is the closest to the modern
conception of cause. It is what brings about a
change.
• In the example of changing the slides, I am the
efficient cause, because I brought about the
change from one slide to the next.
• In the Scholastic view, the efficient cause is a
substance, not an event. This contrasts with the
views of most modern philosophers.

12. More About Causes
• The final and efficient causes are called
extrinsic causes because they refer to what
is outside the object. For the final cause,
this is the end, or aim, of the object. For the
efficient cause, it is the substance that
brings about a change in the object.

13. How Does Joyce Solve the
Problem of Induction?
• We know what to look for when we are
trying to discover the cause of something.
Depending on the situation, it can be any of
the four causes.
• But how does this help us solve the problem
of induction? That is, how will it enable to
come up with universal causal
generalizations?

14. Abstraction
• When you arrive at a cause of something, you can
abstract from the particular details of the instance
you are considering.
• In the example of changing the slides, I can
abstract from saying that clicking the mouse this
time caused this slide to move. I can say, “clicking
the mouse will cause a slide to move”, without
referring to a particular occasion.

15. The Uniformity of Nature
• Even if you abstract from particular causal
occasions, though, how does this solve the
problem of induction? How do you know that the
abstract causal statement will always apply?
• Joyce appeals to the principle of the uniformity of
nature: the same cause will under the same
circumstances produce the same effect.
• This principle, he claims, is a metaphysical
principle that applies to the physical world.

16. A Mistake About the Uniformity
Principle
• According to Joyce, this would be a wrong
way to reason:
• Nature is uniform
• On various occasions, my clicking the
mouse causes a slide to move
• Clicking the mouse in the right
circumstances will always cause a slide to
move.

17. What’s the Mistake?
• Once I say that my clicking the mouse
causes the slide to move, i.e, then I have
already appealed to uniformity. That is, I
have claimed that it is in the nature of
clicking the mouse in the appropriate
circumstances that as a result a slide will
move. I’m already relying on uniformity, so
I don’t need to bring it in as the major
premise of a syllogism.

18. The Inductive Syllogism
• This is different from ordinary induction.
• In an inductive syllogism, if something applies to
all the logical parts of a whole, it is true of the
whole.
• This is sometimes used in geometry.
• The conclusion doesn’t establish a logical
connection between the nature of the whole
subject and the property attributed to it. The
property might apply to each of the parts in
different ways.

19. Perfect and imperfect Induction
• This is another type of induction. In this
type, you enumerate, i.e., list the instances
in a certain whole that possess a certain
property. You conclude that every instance
has the property. Note the difference from
the inductive syllogism, which is about
logical parts---sub-types---of a whole, not
instances.

20. Perfect and Imperfect Induction
Continued
• If you enumerate every instance, the
induction is called perfect and is valid.
Suppose I ask each student in this class,
“Are you interested in logic?” and everyone
says yes. Then I can conclude everyone in
the class is interested in logic.
• If I generalize from a few instances, the
induction is imperfect and isn’t worth much.

21. Hume on Induction
• Joyce’s Scholastic account wouldn’t be
accepted by most modern philosophers who
work on induction.
• They have been influenced by a famous
argument of David Hume
• Hume denied that the principle of the
uniformity of nature could be established by
reason. Induction rests on habit

22. Hume’s Argument
• Hume said that if the principle of uniformity could
be rationally established, this would be either by
reason or experience.
• It isn’t contradictory to deny uniformity. Thus, the
principle isn’t a truth of reason.
• If we say experience supports it, because the same
causes have been observed to have the same
effects in the past, how does this justify an
inference to the future? It can do so only if
uniformity is already assumed.

23. Karl Popper’s Radical Approach
• Popper accepts Hume’s argument
• His response is that we don’t need induction. We
don’t need to say that from the fact that a number
of instances of a causal relation have been
observed, we are justified in inferring a causal
law.
• He says that we come up with a hypothesis that
can be falsified. We don’t need anything more in
science.

24. Objections to Popper
• On Popper’s view, we can say that a theory
hasn’t yet been falsified, but this gives us no
grounds to expect that it will continue to be
true in future.
• This is a skeptical view. We don’t know,
e.g., that stepping in front of a speeding car
will have bad consequences for you if you
do it.

25. Example of a Fallacy
• Christopher Weldy has sent in this case:
• “Do you realize that anything which applies to the
government also applies to God. That the
government is the one earthly entity that closest
resembles God. If obeying to the government, if
blind faith and blind obedience in the government
is wrong, same thing goes for God.”
• He asks, Is this an example of Begging the
Question?

26. What’s Wrong with the
Argument?
• This isn’t strictly a case of begging the question,
because the argument doesn’t start with the
premise that not obeying the state is like not
obeying God, and then conclude to this same
proposition.
• But it assumes a controversial premise—the state
is like God---that only those who already reject
disobedience are likely to accept.

27. Another Example
• One person wondered whether the argument we
have just discussed has an undistributed middle
term. I don’t think so.
• This example is also from Christopher:
• “You see the word obedience appear a lot in the
Bible and you see Christians use the word
obedience a lot. The last time a charismatic person
used the word “obey” and “obedience” as often as
the Christians do, a second world war erupted. I
say, let’s get rid of both, the government and
Christianity and all other religions for all I care.”

28. The Fallacy Exposed
• As Michael Ronnall suggests, this argument
commits a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.
• The last time a charismatic person used the word
“obey” and “obedience” as often as the Christians
do, a second world war erupted
• Just because the war came after the use of
“obedience”, it doesn’t follow that using this word
caused the war.