[lit-ideas] Re: What Darwin Inferred, What Darwin Implied
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 11:53:42 +0100 (BST)
JLS' post still doesn't put any edible flesh on the bare bones of the assertion
that Darwin's theory is somehow "inductive".
The idea that distinguishing what D inferred or implied helps us here is wrong,
it just leads us all up a linguistic cul-de-sac.
'Induction' is a supposed process of reasoning etc. The question is whether
Darwin's theory depends on such a process - either in its context of discovery
or its context of justification - that is, in how it was arrived at or in how
it is shown to be true.
Nothing in JLS' post even begins to explain how D's theory depends on such a
process - in either of the ways mentioned, or in any other way at all.
Instead JLS rests his case on something so flimsy - a kind of appeal to
self-evidence and his own ability to discern the manifest truth as to how
propositions are "reached" - it would be whimsical in a fairy-tale account of
the history of science as written by a philosopher whose understanding of
science is merely that of an analyst of language who has never fully confronted
his own philosophical make-believe that there is such a thing as a process of
'induction' and that we need 'induction' to explain science and how science
works:-
________________________________
>I was suggesting that, as a Griceian, you give me an instance of
"p" (for any proposition "p") and I can tell you, by mere inspection of
"p", whether "p" was reached inductively, deductively, abductively, or what
not.
And I was suggesting that, since OBVIOUSLY Darwin's "p" is of the type it
is, Darwin MUST have arrived at it "inductively". >
Or not, of course,>
Of course not.
Donal
London
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