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Inductive Reasoning
(redirected from Inductive argument)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Wikipedia 0.01 sec.
Inductive reasoning
The attempt to use information about a specific situation to draw a conclusion.

Inductive Reasoning
A way of forming reasonable conclusions by gathering evidence and then forming principles based upon them. For example, if one wishes to find out how a stock will perform, one gathers as much evidence on that stock as possible and makes a conclusion based on that, regardless of one's feelings or suppositions beforehand. The advantage of inductive reasoning is that its evidence offers applicability to "real world" scenarios; however, a disadvantage is that one's evidence may be inaccurate or anecdotal. It is sometimes difficult to know how much evidence is needed to justify coming to a general conclusion. See also: Deductive reasoning, Analogy.


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They consider competing views, make bottom-up inductive arguments from an array of facts and doubt the power of Big Ideas.
the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Aristotelian fables, serve as the beginning of an inductive argument to a general truth and thus are philosophy in the first three of the above senses.
Important evidence that would undermine an inductive argument is excluded from consideration.
 
 
 
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