and
beg the question in the course of one and the same argument.
[Footnote 1: Cp. Mr. Sidgwick's instructive treatise on
Fallacies, International Scientific Series, p. 199.]
CHAPTER IX.
FORMAL OR ARISTOTELIAN INDUCTION.--INDUCTIVE ARGUMENT.
The distinction commonly drawn between Deduction and Induction is
that Deduction is reasoning from general to particular, and Induction
reasoning from particular to general.
But it is really only as modes of argumentation that the two processes
can be thus clearly and fixedly opposed. The word Induction is used in
a much wider sense when it is the title of a treatise on the Methods
of Scientific Investigation. It is then used to cover all the
processes employed in man's search into the system of reality; and in
this search deduction is employed as well as induction in the narrow
sense.
We may call Induction in the narrow sense Formal Induction or
Inductive Argument, or we may simply call it Aristotelian Induction
inasmuch as it was the steps of Inductive argument that Aristotle
formulated, and for which he determined the conditions of validity.
Let us contrast it with Deductive argument. In this the questioner's
procedure is to procure the admission of a general proposition with a
view to forcing the admission of a particular conclusion which is in
dispute. In Inductive argument, on the other hand, it is a general
proposition that is in dispute, and the procedure is to obtain the
admission of particular cases with a view to forcing the admission of
this general proposition.
Let the question be whether All horned animals ruminate. You engage to
make an opponent admit this. How do you proceed? You ask him whether
he admits it about the various species. Does the ox ruminate? The
sheep? The goat? And so on. The bringing in of the various particulars
is the induction ([Greek: epagoge]).
When is this inductive argument complete? When is the opponent bound
to admit that all horned animals ruminate? Obviously, when he has
admitted it about every one. He must admit that he has admitted it
about every one, in other words, that the particulars enumerated
constitute the whole, before he can be held bound in consistency to
admit it about the whole.
The condition of the validity of this argument is ultimately the
same with that of Deductive argument, the identity for purposes of
predication of a generic whole with the sum of its constituent parts.
The Axiom o
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