Philosophy of Science 1 - Induction and Naive Inductivism 

We need to clarify the conclusion of that argument. When we say that "bileless animals are long lived", we might mean (1) All bileless animals are long lived or (2) Some bileless animals are long lived. In case (1), the argument isn't deductive. We're drawing a conclusion about all things of type X on the basis of knowledge of two Xs. In case (2), the argument is deductive, but the conclusion doesn't tell us anything more than what is in the premises. Indeed, it tells us less, since if you know the premises, you know specifically which bileless animals are long lived, namely humans and horses. You don't know that if all you know is that some bileless animals are long lived.

Kane B Thanks. I went through the source again. It is a very old paper, 1922, comparing Bacon and Aristotle, published in Philosophical Review. Please see first page in link below. The arguments were "It is known that Man, horse, mule are long lived. Man, horse, mule are billeless animals. Assuming that man, horse, mule exhaust the list of bileless animals (???), we can say that: Man, horse, mule are long lived. All bileless animals are man, horse, mule. All bileless animals are long lived." Ok, so I see that no new knowledge is being added. But I couldnt understand paper's explanation in subsequent pages that why Aristotle thought that a few samples can represent all cases. And what was the major flaw in Aristotle's reasoning in general that made many of his ideas wrong? From the paper, I could gatger that 'false initial premises due to accepting popular opinion or rushed induction' and 'rushing to generalisation of conclusion' were the major causes of his errors. www.jstor.org/stable/2179507 Also please clarify the last part of the above query that if Aristotle's and others' primary method was deduction, how was new knowledge generated and where did all the ideas proposed by Aristotle and others come from? Was it because the first principles were derived inductively that required observations or guesses? Sorry if my questions are naive!

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