Natural Freedom

Hempel’s paradox is a paradox of induction. Induction is method of reasoning we use to make generalisations about the world.

Consider all the ravens you have seen in your life time. Hopefully they were all black. Now on the basis of seeing nothing but black ravens, it would be reasonable to generalise and claim that all ravens are black. This is a natural step – and it forms the basis to all our scientific reasoning.

Now consider the following statement: ‘All non-black things are not ravens’. This statement is logically equivalent to our generalisation. For if all ravens are black, then something which is not black can not be a raven. We could then go observe non-black things – and each time we saw that a non-black thing was not a raven, we would confirm that all ravens are black.
So it seems by observing a pink flamingo – it would confirm that all ravens are black.

But hold up! Seeing a pink flamingo would also confirm the statement: ‘All non-white things are not ravens’ and this is logically equivalent to ‘All raven’s are white.’ So it seems that the observation of a pink flamingo seems to confirm both that all ravens are white and that all ravens are black. But this is a contradiction!

Again I will leave it to the interested reader to go seek out the solution.

Raven Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox

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For the above see also:
Inductive Reasoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning

Inductive Inference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_inference

Problem of Induction (Inductive Reasoning): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

Related is Falsibiability: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

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see also:
Sophism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophism

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The Surprise Quiz Paradox: Your teacher tells you she's going to give the class a surprise exam next week, and you won't be able to work out beforehand on which day it will be. Using this information, you work out that it can't be on Friday (the last day), or else you'd be able to know this as soon as class ended the day before, contrary to the second condition. With Friday excluded from consideration, Thursday is now the last possible day, so we can exclude it by the same reasoning. Similarly for Wednesday, Tuesday, and finally Monday. So you conclude that there cannot be any such exam. This chain of reasoning guarantees that when the teacher finally gives the exam (say, on Wednesday), you're all surprised, just like she said you'd be.

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The Heap: Would you describe a single grain of wheat as a heap? No. Would you describe two grains of wheat as a heap? No. ... You must admit the presence of a heap sooner or later, so where do you draw the line?

The Bald Man: Would you describe a man with one hair on his head as bald? Yes. Would you describe a man with two hairs on his head as bald? Yes. ... You must refrain from describing a man with ten thousand hairs on his head as bald, so where do you draw the line?

The Hooded Man: You say that you know your brother. Yet that man who just came in with his head covered is your brother and you did not know him.

The Liar: A man says that he is lying. Is what he says true or false?

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Then we have some of the other branches:
Abductive Reasoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning
Deductive Reasoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning

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In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject.He keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. Perfection is not when there is no more to add,but no more to take away.

this is weird

why nobody mentions black things?

are all black things ravens?

I don't get this either..

Most black and white thinkers don't.

To clarify, black and white thinking is not a bad thing...it's just not very helpful for matters of critical thinking and analysis.

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EVERYTHING in life is conditional...EVERYTHING.

Pimposophy Revisited is now finally available on Amazon in all territories!

Well I'm too stupid to understand the logic of that wikipedia article, or I don't knowwhat.. I thought about it lot, read it few times, I don't see how is that supposed to (not ?) work. But I know that black/white thinking is not really useful...

This reminds of when I was having dinner with my cousin who has a complete scientific mind way of thinking. He also happens to think he's God. During the riots in London we sat down to dinner and he suddenly mentions that three boys upon leaving a mosque was run over by a car driven by a black man.

Every cell in my body stated "NO". So I simply stated 'That's not true".
'What do you mean that's not true?"
"It didn't happen"

I told him there was no way he could prove such a statement to be true, nor could he be sure if his source was reliable. He got very angry and stated to me "Not everyone thinks like you, you know". Clearly, the irony of his statement was lost on him. He then told me that a car had been found and that the boys had been run over early in the morning and then gave some moralistic speech about how this man had lost three of his 'little children'. He then stated '"sometimes, it's good to watch the news". This was him having a pop at my non-news-watching lifestyle.

The next day I looked at the BBC News website. Acording to the website, three people had indeed been killed. Their ages were 21, 31 and 33. There was no report of them leaving a mosque or being killed by a black man (though I think this part may have been later corroborated). Most importantly of all, they had engaged in the riots in order to protect some part of the area. I showed this report to my cousin, who upon looking at the report simply stated that all parts of the report that did not match the story he told me last night were simply 'misconstrued'.

Though I think he got my point.

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Sparkling All Over

inductive reasoning is good. However, most people use deductive reasoning or some form they try to stick together. It's funny as hell. I took an entry level logic class and don't remember anything useful besides creating ways to look at things.