I don't have education in this area (or in anything much, really) but I find induction an extremely useful means of investigation because reality is fractal in nature, based on self similarity. So one can expect to find interesting similarities between, say, black holes, solar systems and atoms - each being basically an area of extreme mass and its surrounds and effects. Such natural metaphors that arise were essentially how humans comprehended nature before the scientific method, eg. The Sun was like a leader or emperor, the Moon his mistress, the Earth as a mother.Wirius wrote: ↑July 16th, 2016, 1:31 pmFor me, I believe it is the problem of induction. How do I rationally demonstrate that one induction is more logical or reasonable than another? Sure, intuitively we believe it is more reasonable that the sun will rise again tomorrow, than the sun will not rise again tomorrow. But, rationally, why is this? If we could discover a rational construct of thought which could evaluate the rationality of inductions, I believe epistemology would be in a better place.
The traps for induction are time and emergence. Regarding time, the Sun might not be seen to rise tomorrow because a rogue black hole has disturbed the solar system's gravitational balance; the unexpected can happen over time, meaning that induction is really an educated guess. The other issue, emergence, means that the logical assumption/induction during the first two billion years on Earth that all of the microbes will simply continue to give rise to more microbes would obviously be wrong.
Induction looks to me to be just one means of trying to understand reality, along with deduction and abduction.