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Letters
Letters
Often Reasonable • Genetic Variation • Remembering Wonderland • Multiple Multiverse Problems • Social Rights • Imagining Kafkaland • Midgley’s Far Reach
Often Reasonable
Dear Editor: Eugene Earnshaw in Issue 119 provides a lively discussion of induction. Precise definition is essential to both deduction and induction. Consider deduction: all who commit murder should be hanged; he committed murder; he should be hanged. Unless we define murder precisely, the conclusion might be that someone who unintentionally killed by misadventure should be hanged – perhaps not what even the most ardent supporter of capital punishment would want. Or take the inductive argument that all swans are white; therefore the swans on your lake will be white.
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