Talk:Inductivism

Prescriptive statement
"Future scientific breakthroughs ought to be produced more by scientists who have mastered both their own specialties and basics of philosophy of science, including method." - I don't think an encyclopedia should be making "prescriptive" statements ("ought") like this. So this should be either removed or reformulated so that it just documents that "notable person XYZ made this prescription".


 * Prescription is not the meaning of ought in use there. Not saying what scientists should do so, it's forecasting what will happen. It's like saying, "It ought to rain tomorrow". Perhaps one disagrees, but asserting that we don't want rain is merely off topic. — Occurring (talk) 12:40, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

To be honest, that whole paragraph seems a bit fishy: "Frequently unable to defend their works from intellectual attacks, scientists also generally cannot optimize methods and productivity." That is such a general and meaningless statement. Scientists can't generally optimize productivity? What? --2A02:8071:2BD3:E300:689A:D30B:A237:A918 (talk) 03:20, 10 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Of course it's a general statement. That's the very purpose of it. Yet it is hardly meaningless. In the practice of science, scientists are often exceedingly slow to pursue avenues or protocols of research that only eventually, years later, appear obvious, a slowness partly due to vague apprehension of their own philosophical presumptions and premises underlying their approaches. Further, by operating without any articulated philosophy of scientific method, the newer generations of scientists, no longer philosopherscientists such as Einstein, often miscommunicate, overstate, or neglect the bases and merits of their own work in discussions with the public or with institutions. — Occurring (talk) 12:40, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * What the fuck does this even mean? Are you in high school? Genuinely asking. Uhhuhuhuh (talk) 10:56, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Is this how I wrote when I was in high school? Good lord. Uhhuhuhuh (talk) 10:56, 6 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I've revised the article to at least largely heed the above criticisms, which are reasonable and apparently reveal potentially common readings. — Occurring (talk) 13:46, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Induction & deduction
WP DEPENDS ON INDUCTION & DEDUCTION. THEIR MEANING SHOULD BE FIRM. This encyclopedia accepts the premise of enumerative induction that the more editors who agree on the content of an article, the more accurate and useful that content. Induction is practiced on every TALK page. Editors generalize from a few observations, and deduce concrete conclusions from their generalizations.

WP contains 4 repetitive and fragmentary articles on induction: [Inductive reasoning], [The problem of induction]; [New riddle of induction],[Inductivism]. I would like to rectify this chaotic situation by rewriting and merging these 4 articles, retaining only the reasoning title. I ask you—a participant in relevant TALK pages—to judge my rewrite/merge project: SHOULD I PROCEED? Below is the current proposed outline:

Definitions. Induction generalizes conceptually; deduction concludes empirically.

[David Hume], philosopher condemner.

[Pierre Duhem], physicist user.

[John Dewey], philosopher explainer.

[Bertrand Russell], philosopher condemner.

[Karl Popper], philosopher condemner.

Steven Sloman, psychologist explainer.

Lyle E. Bourne, Jr., psychologist user.

[Daniel Kahneman], psychologist user.

[Richard H. Thaler] economist user.

Please respond at Talk:Inductive reasoning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TBR-qed (talk • contribs) 16:03, 5 January 2020 (UTC)


 * What you call "enumerative induction" is inductive reasoning, not enumerative induction. Enumerative induction is merely the inference from examined cases to all cases, including unexamined. The four articles that you name represent four different issues—"Inductive reasoning", "The problem of induction", "New riddle of induction", and "Inductivism"—which all involve induction, but are distinct issues with distinct origins, historical consequences, and applications.


 * Inductive reasoning is merely probabilistic reasoning, inferring what appears likely, versus deductive reasoning, identifying logical necessity if the premises are true. The problem of induction, crudely defined, is David Hume's noting the ultimate illogicality, in a deductive sense, of enumerative induction unless we assume the unproven truth of the premise uniformity of nature. The new riddle of induction is Nelson Goodman's identification of a specific, apparent contradiction that arises with a particular type of definition even if we presume the uniformity of nature.


 * This article, here, is about the philosophy of scientific method termed inductivism, whose basis is enumerative induction and its nexus of assumptions. Disputing inductivism is not disputing inductive reasoning and its merits in decisionmaking, a practicality that perhaps no serious philosopher has disputed. It is about whether scientists truly develop scientific theories, let alone metaphysically true scientific theories, by a scientific methodology classifiable as inductivism, whether Baconian inductivism, even with Mill's methods, or the positivism. — Occurring (talk) 12:49, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

"Succumbing" to the zeitgeist
"In the 19th and 20th centuries, inductivism succumbed to hypotheticodeductivism—sometimes worded deductivism—as scientific method's realistic idealization."

Given that wikipedia’s epistemology is based off whatever the popularly agreed upon opinion is, I’m not sure there is enough justification to declare that Deductivism was “succumbed” to.

For all wikipedia knows, Inductivism is the current zeitgeist which people are “succumbing” to.

Is there anyway to soften the language so the article appears less opinionated? Maybe something like “In the 19th and 20th centuries Deductivism was favored.”

Reading the article currently doesn't give me hope that the author is unbiased, as they are using colored language to paint a competing theory in a bad light. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.24.154.43 (talk) 12:43, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

A significant portion of this page is incoherent to a point where I cannot even parse the intended meaning of individual sentences well enough to edit them. Incomplete sentences, non-sequiturs, missing verbs etc. This is not a case of opaque language or minor grammatical mistakes. I’d say a good 80% of the sentences on this page are structurally lacking to such an extent that they are effectively meaningless. It is simply not English. I dont know of any nicer way to put that. Someone (not me) who is familiar with Inductivism and has a functioning understanding of the English language needs to swoop in and rewrite this from scratch. Except the introduction. It’s generally decent. Uhhuhuhuh (talk) 10:25, 6 April 2024 (UTC)


 * There’s also a lot of truly bizarre word usage and excessive punctuation. Complexity and access to a thesaurus does not a good sentence make. Please, for the love of god and all that is holy, remove the unnecessaries. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish by affecting this high school pseudo-literary style, but I guarantee you this is not how academics write. The primary purpose of the written word (particularly on Wikipedia) is to communicate ideas, not to impress, although you certainly are not impressing anyone with this. If this were a middle school paper I would give it an F and a big see me after class. God, I’m sorry, this is already bordering on bullying, but seriously, you need some remedial English lessons. If you’re an ESL learner, maybe you should put down the dictionary and pick up the grammar workbook. Uhhuhuhuh (talk) 10:46, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I went back and read the into, and I genuinely do not know why I said it was decent. It isn’t. The first paragraph is of a quality slightly higher than the rest of the article in that I can actually read it and extract meaning from the sequence of words. but it is still barely serviceable writing. Uhhuhuhuh (talk) 10:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I’m sorry. I’m being really mean. It’s late, I can’t sleep, I really have no idea how I ended up here.
 * But seriously. Someone needs to rewrite this. I probably could. Will I? No. Uhhuhuhuh (talk) 10:51, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Grammar and content
This is a continuation of the comments I made under “Succumbing to the zeitgeist” because I’m new to Wikipedia editing and I didn’t really know which text box to use. You should go read those before reading this. Anyways, this page is barely English; near every sentence is poorly constructed…to put it mildly. Also, as someone who knows a bit about inductive reasoning, uh, this page, even the portions that are syntactically correct ENOUGH to convey some meaning, is just complete gibberish. This person does not know what inductive reasoning is or how it functions. Or why.

Now, why did I type all of this up instead of editing the document itself? Go ask someone else, I don’t know. Uhhuhuhuh (talk) 11:13, 6 April 2024 (UTC)