Conductive And Inductive Argument

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Inductive and Deductive Arguments People have always sought to better understand the world surrounding them through reasoning. People reason about things they wish to comprehend or things they want to question. Through reasoning, they come to a conclusion by formulating arguments supported by premises. People use arguments to convince others that their reasoning is correct. The premises may or may not effectively support the conclusion, thus this kind of faulty reasoning may be detected through correct reasoning and analyzation. There are two kinds of arguments: Inductive and Deductive arguments. Aristotle and other great thinkers believed induction and deduction were important in the explanation of the universe and scientific phenomena. …show more content…

Francis Bacon, a great philosopher from the sixteenth century, was one of the main contributors to the development of the scientific explanation (Shuttleworth). Bacon sought better ways to explain the world surrounding him and believed deduction alone wasn’t enough, and inductive argument was more adequate. Inductive Arguments aim to support a claim or a conclusion with premises with a level of probability (Copi). Unlike deductive arguments, inductive arguments cannot be characterized with validity as the premises support the conclusion with probability and not with necessity. Thus, inductive arguments can be described as “weak” or “strong” (Copi). Since an inductive argument is probabilistic, it is still the case for the conclusion to be false even if the premises are true. Because inductive arguments provide with new ideas and knowledge beyond what is already known, unlike deductive arguments which do not provide anything new, inductive argument is seen as necessary in the scientific method, in order to arrive at new explanations (Cline). Moreover, Bacon introduced the use of induction in the Scientific Method since induction would be adequate for observations of specific issues to a broader issues. Induction was also seen as adequate for scientific experimentation as it would allow to generalize the findings in such experiments. In a …show more content…

In an inductive argument, new ideas and information may be introduced, aiding new scientific explanations and conclusions, whereas in an deductive argument, no new ideas or information is introduced since the conclusions are already stated either explicitly or implicitly within the premises. Both inductive and deductive arguments work hand in hand and are used in Empirical Science and in the Scientific Method. Deductive arguments alone, as encouraged initially by Aristotle, is not effective when trying to explain a more complex idea or phenomena. Deduction and scientific experimentation along with induction is much more effective at explaining and arriving at a conclusion and the Scientific Method and the Empirical Sciences now consists and depends of these two types of arguments, deductive argument to prove a specific conclusion, and inductive argument to generate new ideas and

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