Deduction Argument Essay

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It would seem that because we experience the sun rising every day, we can make the general assumption that it would continue to rise in the future. Yet this argument has been debatable. Whereas philosophers such as David Hume argued that if we take away the notion of guaranteed certainty, the limitations of our knowledge shows that we are incapable of justifying inductive assumptions like the sun rising tomorrow. Bertrand Russell put forward a stronger argument by suggesting that the sun rising tomorrow is credible rather than certain, as our knowledge by induction allows us to draw inferences. Thus, I will be arguing that the possibility of knowing that the sun will rise tomorrow comes down to being only probable. For the most part, we …show more content…

But does this mean that we cannot use deductive logic to show that as well? Contrary to what philosophers believe, through deduction we are able to justify the argument that the sun rising tomorrow is probable. Deduction takes the a-priori argument which are truths that do not require experience or observation. For instance, we all know that 2+2=4. At first glance, this may look like the inductive principle is weak in comparison to deduction as ‘one sort of thing, A, is a sign of the existence of some other sort of thing B’ . For example, thunder is a sign of the existence of lighting. We know this because of our sense of cause and effect which we get from seeing something constantly aligned with something else, creating a constant conjunction in our minds. However, if I were to ask someone how they know that the sun would rise tomorrow, they would most likely refer to scientific reasoning and the laws of motion i.e. the sun rises because of the Earth’s rotation on its axis. Although science endeavours to give you what is true by using deductive logic to form a conclusion, it cannot be ignored that these laws of motion like inductive reasoning have flaws. How do you know if something would not interfere with the earth to make it stop spinning? In the same way, if we look at our everyday lives we expect things to happen in a certain way until one thing happens to ruin our day. For this reason, scientific explanations are not a guarantee as well. Perhaps this is because over time there is a gradual build-up of evidence that does not fit into the accepted paradigm of scientific revolutions. This allows a new set of explanations to emerge that may explain the problems with the previous ones. For example, we used to believe the earth was flat which contrasts to the accepted belief today that it is round. As I have shown that deductive reasoning has

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