So if the size of the set of examples is too large to list, for the
inductive argument to be properly formed one must consider a representative sample.
The explanation of an
inductive argument offered by students in the video was not articulated as clearly as was the Case 1 Argument and, thus, required more attentive listening to make sense of what the students were trying to say, as they elaborated on the pattern that they noticed and why it worked, to explain the doubling of the number of towers as their height increased by one.
What we loosely refer to as good judgment is, in fact, proficiency with
inductive arguments gained through experience with value principles.
It is fairly widely acknowledged that
inductive arguments for the reliability of induction are in some sense unacceptably circular, even if the arguments do not involve the premise that induction is a truth-conducive inference form.
The ID
inductive argument can therefore be restated as follows:
It outlines Hume's skeptical critiques which show the
inductive argument form to be invalid, thereby generating the problem of induction.
The thesis that nature is uniform is contingent, so the claim that the premises of an
inductive argument are reasons to believe its conclusion if nature is uniform is an example of misconditionalisation.
The connection with decision theory is close, for just as in decision theory, when measuring expected utility, we should employ objective chances rather than subjective probabilities expressing our beliefs about them, so too what matters for the warrant of an
inductive argument is the objective chance of its conclusion being true rather than the subjective probability which expresses our belief that it is true.
It reorders different kinds of
inductive arguments for better flow between topics, reorganizes some sections, and omits the more difficult and confusing topics.
In other words, premises of
inductive arguments are experienced but their conclusion is not experienced.
E McKenzie's "Printers of the Mind" (1969) and his challenge to the
inductive arguments of the New Bibliographers, supported by documents reporting the work of actual compositors in real printing houses.
Another section that should prove valuable to those who are interested in the logic and force of
inductive arguments based upon experience concerns what Tuominen dubs the "sorties" argument (pp.
