Exploring Ravens Problem: Pitfalls of Inductive Method

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Philosophy is a fundamental study that encompasses the knowledge of nature, critical reasoning in science, as well as logics in everyday life. As philosophy is an essential part of the human civilization, there are a lot of ongoing debates within this discipline that philosophers and scientists are seeking for the answer. A famous paradox that has been existing for a long time and challenging the inductive method is the Ravens Problem, which is proposed by the logician Carl Gustav Hempel. The ravens argument seems to have valid premises and leads the reader through a reasonable logic to come to the conclusion. However, the bizarre conclusion that any non-black non-raven object confirms the hypothesis of “All ravens are black" does not make …show more content…

In fact, the whole argument of the hypothesis “All F’s are G” can be applied to any object in the universe, not just exclusively to ravens. For example, the hypothesis that “All zebra have stripes” can be explained by using the same logic in the raven case. Specifically, the hypothesis “All non-striped things are not zebra" is logically equivalent to “All zebra have stripes”, and both can be confirmed by an observation of a ginger cat. It is worth noticing that different hypotheses are incrementally confirmed by the same evidence. Thus, it might be possible to think that the conclusion is not too bizarre and the evidence supports the hypothesis in a different way rather than genetics. In fact, the observation of a ginger cat is not strong enough to prove that all ravens are black, but at least it stays true to the hypothesis. The second suggestion to solve this paradox is taking the order in which information is presented into consideration when elaborating an argument. The Nicod's criterion only mentions about the presence of required properties, and ignores the possibility of a thing is both F and G, but might not support the hypothesis that all Fs are G. If an object is said to be a raven, then whether it is black or non-black matters. On the other hand, if an object is said to be black first, it becomes less relevant to the hypothesis because not all black things are ravens. In this case, a black thing that is a raven is not a strong evidence as a raven that is black. Thus, the Nicod's criterion does not apply to all situations. The same logic can be applied to a non-black and non-raven thing. In the Raven Problem, the only evidence to refute the hypothesis is a non-black raven. If this object is said to be non-black, then it becomes important because whether it is a raven or not will determine the validity of the hypothesis. Thus, any non-black thing is worth to consider and if it is

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