Is Statistical Induction a Proof?

The big hole in Behe’s logic is he is assuming his conclusion. Nowhere has Behe ever established any biological features are PURPOSEFUL. Biological systems are certainly FUNCTIONAL but that is not the same thing. “Purpose” implies something was deliberately done with planning and forethought. That’s what ID is trying to establish. Behe is trying to sneak in his Designer and hopes no one notices the subterfuge.

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@Timothy_Horton

He is using INDUCTIVE LOGIC to get his audience to conclude there is a DESIGNER.

We need to start calling him out on this “leap of logic”.

Another problem is there is a perfectly reasonable alternative to “it was designed with intent” when we see something that has the appearance of being for some purpose: Natural selection. It thus can’t be the case that seeing something that has the appearance of being for some purpose, that we must conclude it is most likely to have been intentionally designed to do so. Particularly in light of the fallacy of exclusion: Things that give the appearance of being for some purpose, and are known to have been designed, were designed by humans. But humans cannot have designed the things in biology we see, as they all predate the origin of humanity.

You can’t even get to the inductive logic step since the original proposition is false.

@Jordan

Unfortunately, I never took epistemology classes… so I am quite ill-equipped with the right terminology.

I can only assume that we use DEDUCTIVE LOGIC to conclude that E = mc2 is a valid equation.

As @swamidass has pointed out, DEDUCTIVE logic is not infallible. But it is categorically more reliable than INDUCTIVE logic, wouldn’t you agree?

@Timothy_Horton

You need to “hear these words” from the viewpoint of a Christian. There is a shared presupposition … which saves a step for Behe.

But certainly we can and should exploit the logical vulnerability!

I don’t think the problem lies with the use of Inductive generalizations.

Behe’s argument, besides being very poorly and informally stated, suffers from two foundational issues:

  1. Designers are not the only thing known to produce things that have the attribute of appearing to be designed for a purpose. Natural selection is known to do that too.
  2. All the things that have the attribute of appearing to be designed by a purpose and for which we know they were designed, were designed by human beings.

In ignoring these two crucial pieces of evidence in his (very poorly stated) inductive generalization, Behe’s argument violates the inductive rule of total evidence and thus commits the fallacy of exclusion(also known as the fallacy of suppressed evidence).

Rather than complain specifically about the fact that Behe is using a sort of inductive generalization to guide his beliefs, we can point out that he’s not actually abiding by the rules of proper inductive inference. His “argument” commits the fallacy of exclusion twice.

That makes considerably more sense than how @Swamidass stated it. If that is what he was getting at he didn’t do a very good job of making that clear. I get that it is not always easy to think out on the spot, while on stage, a good way to express your thoughts.

Maybe if given more time to think about what he wanted to say, he might have intended something along the following lines:
“As a Christian I too think that X was designed by God, but that the process of evolution is how that was accomplished. The problem is I don’t think science is able to say that there was intent behind something, as I do not see how science could determine, say, how certain historical mutations that occurred were caused to happen. So as a Christian I believe that X was designed by God for a purpose, but as a scientist I think evolution is how X was designed”

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@Rumraket

Aren’t you just describing the problems inherent to INDUCTIVE reasoning?

I don’t think so. They’re specific problems with Behe’s argument, but not all inductive arguments commit the fallacy of exclusion.

@Rumraket

Okay, so Joshua tells us that Deductive arguments can be flawed.
And you want to make sure we know that not all inductive arguments commit the fallacy of exclusion.

But these aren’t relevant complaints.

I think ALL Inductive Reasoning, no matter how strong, are weaker than a good deductive conclusion.

Surely there are plenty of examples of Inductive Reasoning that incorrectly predict the conclusion.

But let’s assess this distinction you are making:

Is Deductive Reasoning as vulnerable to the Fallacy of Exclusion as Inductive Reasoning?

Yes. So what?

There certainly are. Of course. There are also plenty of examples of deductive arguments that reach false conclusions. Some times even though the structure of the argument is formally valid, the conclusion is false, because one or more of the premises are false.

Yes. For example suppose you made the classic example:
P1: All men are mortal.
P2: Socrates is a man.
C: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Now suppose it was the case that Socrates is fictional. It turns out not all fictional men are mortal. And Socrates really might be an immortal fictional man. Hence the argument has reached a false conclusion with a formally valid structure, by excluding relevant evidence in the premises.

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@Rumraket

And yet, this reasoning will always be STRONGER than an inductive version with similar facts, yes?

I don’t know what you mean by STRONGER. By definition, the conclusions in deductive arguments are certain to follow from the premises, if the argument is formally valid. That doesn’t mean the truth of the conclusion is certain. An important distinction.

In inductive arguments, the conclusions are not certain to follow from the premises, they are merely implied to the degree they are implied by the premise.

You should understand that deductive reasoning is for mathematics and logic, not science. Deduction can be at most a lemma for a scientific argument. I also imagine you have been told before that science doesn’t do proof.

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What do you mean by proof?

It’s a term in logic. Is it possible you also haven’t heard that science doesn’t involve proof?

I am familiar.

I am asking @gbrooks9 what he means

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If you have a question for @gbrooks, you should hit the “reply” button to a comment from him, or you should put his name into the post. Because that came out as a question for me.

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Right - I hit the reply button on the OP, but it didn’t seem to work?