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The Problem of Social Induction
Scottish philosopher David Hume — a skeptic’s skeptic, and not exactly a vaunted figure around here — is famous, in part, for his criticism of inductive reasoning. (Induction involves moving from a particular (or a series of particulars) to some general conclusion.) We tend, for instance, to use inductive reasoning when linking cause and effect. If I lift a ball and let go, the ball falls. The ball behaves this way every time I release it. As far as I know, every single human who hoists a ball into the air and drops it notices the same thing. The ball invariably plunges toward the earth. I conclude, therefore, that a causal relationship exists between my letting go and the ball’s descent.
But, according to Hume, my reasoning is faulty.* No matter how many times I observe one phenomenon following another, I can never be certain that the first causes the second. To do so — to achieve certainty — would require knowledge of the principles underlying that causal chain. But I have no such knowledge. I don’t know, and can’t know, whether there is a causal chain.
Humean skepticism has its problems, of course. But so does induction. Some inductive conclusions are simply wrong — as in the famous case of swan color. Flawed inductive reasoning has a particular habit of creeping into the social and political spheres. What do I mean? I’ll explain:
I am, alas, a Millennial (albeit barely). I attended public school. I spent considerable time, therefore, around not-so-educated teenagers who reflexively threw their support behind a variety of trendy causes. When pressed, they resorted to inductive explanations. They justified their enthusiasm for a given movement not by defending its principles, but by analogy — because the fight for suffrage was a righteous one, and because the evils of Jim Crow demanded sit-ins, marches, and boycotts, any similar social movement must be worth supporting, too. After all, what does resistance to the moral zeitgeist say about a person? “Would you have cheered on the lynching of Emmett Till?” they asked. “Would you have wanted to deprive women of their right to vote?”
This is dangerous reasoning. The form and style of a particular political cause exist independently of its goals and motivations. The mere fact that movements A, B, and C share rhetoric doesn’t make them equivalent, and it certainly doesn’t make them equally righteous. To assume that today’s moral fights are no different from yesterday’s — and that both deserve our unqualified praise — is to assume that society can move in only one direction — toward enlightenment and perfection. Assigning such a teleology to history may be fine for Hegelians and Marxists, but it’s utter tripe for the rest of us. It springs from a failure to understand that inductive reasoning has limits.
Sloppy induction also seeps into other cultural discussions. It’s common, and has long been common, for older adults to complain about the youth. I’d venture to say that it’s equally common for the cleverer youth to retort, “Ah! But your parents said the same thing about you, and you didn’t turn out so terrible, did you?” Fair enough. Society’s gatekeepers have always turned a skeptical eye to those who seek to change it. Whinging about the loss of tradition is a tradition in itself. This doesn’t mean, though, that there won’t come a time when the crotchety old men are absolutely, undeniably right about those darn kids, or even that history’s curmudgeons were entirely wrong. After all, Beethoven’s popular “Ninth Symphony” gave way to Lil Pump’s popular “Gucci Gang,” and the old tendency to Latinate neologizing is now matched by the lazy “verbing” of “adult.” These are changes, are they not?
* Hume wasn’t the first figure in world history to reach this conclusion. Many centuries prior, in medieval Baghdad, Sunni theologian Al-Ashʿari pioneered his theory of occasionalism, which posits (rather disastrously, I think) that cause-and-effect relationships are illusory, and that only God can bring about any one event. Some Muslim philosophers went so far as to describe the flow of time as a series of disconnected “snapshots” — none having any relation to another, and all created by God for His own arbitrary purposes. Yikes!
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Great post. You’re right about Hume – he’s brilliant, but he can be frustrating. I think he and Descartes would be fun to have over for dinner. I’d like to see if those two could agree on anything.
Great comment, Doc. Commenting is a lot of work, and you have saved me having to comment.
(Adnoto ergo cogito? Non sequitur.)
All kidding aside, I really liked this article, Christopher.
I dig the rock n’ roll as much as the next guy, but I do wonder sometimes if all the old folks weren’t right to worry about Elvis’s hip shaking. Talk about a snowball effect. If only I could travel back in time and tell my 1995 self, “Put all your money in tattoo ink and nose rings. Yes, it’s going to get that bad, but at least you’ll be rich.”
This gets fun when you throw in Frequentist vs Bayesian probability models.
If ever there is a different occurrence, does repeating the experiment ad infinitum cause the chances of the ball falling to approach a certainty?
Or… what are the chances of the ball falling vs other observable consequences?
Can nothing be gleaned from this information that approaches surety?
I think I just outed myself as a statistician. I never would have thought I was. Statistics and probability are innately inductive … that by observation and data modeling, we can come up with a pretty good idea of what will happen when you let go of the ball… even if occasionally it doesn’t behave as expected.
P.s., but why do several people here spell whining as whinging? What is the origin of that spelling?
“Whining” and “whinging” are different words (though they share an origin). “Whinge” is British slang, whereas “whine” is widely used throughout the Anglosphere.
Why did I use “whinging”? Because, sometimes, I have trouble keeping my Anglophilia from showing. But don’t fret! I firmly believe that American English grammar is infinitely superior to its British counterpart. (Have you read the BBC? Talk about shoddy editing!)
Huh. I had no idea there was another word. Thanks.
I used to do requirements management and documentation for a UK program and for years afterwards, I would spell words the Anglo way. So I get the anglophile thing.
My favorite 18th-century philosopher.
A big one is that, while it may be logical, it’s impossible to live as a Humean skeptic. Yes, it’s conceivable the ball will float off in some random direction when I drop it tomorrow, but to try to prepare beforehand for all the infinite, possible movements the ball might make in some future world would be ridiculous.
If accepting a particular belief has no effect on my life or it makes my life worse, it’s probably not something I want cluttering my mind.
Mr. Riley,
How good of you to bring up Mr. Hume. He is one of philosophy’s most persistent and creative skeptics. Not only does he undermine any simple view of an absolute knowledge of the physical world but he demonstrates the Is / Ought dichotomy making moral & ethical arguments very difficult.
It is Mr. Hume’s skepticism that Immanuel Kant is specifically answering with his new philosophical system. Good questions make for good answers.
Regards,
Jim
Dennis Prager often talks about the idiotic left-wing motto: Change!
I think right-wingers should adopt the motto: Improve!
Question for all you philosophy gurus: Did Hume deny the existence of capital T, transcendent truths, or just our ability to comprehend such truths?
Brilliant post. I don’t think we’ve really scratched the surface of this one yet. One doesn’t need to accept the intellectual radicalism or the daily life impossibility of extreme inductive skepticism to see that many of our cherished political go-to’s are based on sloppy induction.
I recognize the value of comparative advantage and am wary of Trump’s excessive zeal for tariffs. Yet “no one ever wins a trade war” is uttered with such conviction despite its sloppy induction. In general, freer trade is the better course. And freer trade is related to economic growth. But it is not an iron law. The United States created the modern economy behind a rather stalwart tariff regime.
Likewise with taxes. There is a pretty compelling relationship between hiking taxes and depressing growth. Yet the Clinton taxes were followed by a boom and the Bush tax cuts (following soon upon freer trade with China) were followed by a rather moribund economy.
There was a pretty reliable and distressing relationship between the loosening of moral standards in pop culture and rates of pre-marital sex, abortion and sex crimes in the United States. Over the past 20 years that pop culture has become more pervasively obscene, violent and dystopic. Yet rates of teen sexual activity, violence, drug abuse and alcoholism have dropped.
I still support freer trade, lower taxes and upper middle class bourgeois cultural values but they are based on sloppy induction at times.
Remember when the entire American political and intellectual class used sloppy inductive reasoning (as well as other imperfect cognitive analysis) to state categorically in the summer of 2015 that Donald Trump could never win the Republican nomination and be elected president?
What is the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning ?
i.e.
Collect statements by any POTUS and infer : he is inconsistent because some of his statements are valid and others invalid.
Then, propose: any POTUS will express both valid and invalid statements. As a result of a collection of statements, the conclusion : true.
The difference, though, after deduction, it ends : evidence supports the theory.
Induction, however does not have the same limiting principle. It allows, not only “he is inconsistent,” but also “he is a moron;” or “unfit for office,” etc. Maybe; maybe not.
Now, instead of statements, take the result of actions.
e.g.
Lower taxes : higher growth, more employment.
Another example : “I think; therefore I am” vs. “I am; therefore I think.”
British word, I believe. I used it myself just the other day–and I am not even English.
Now that I recognize it as a new word, I kinda like it. Complaining peevishly vs the sound one makes when complaining peevishly. Looks like “whine” is an onomatopoeia word. I always wondered that you couldn’t say it without whining.
Does it matter?
Of course it can. This is what drives me batty about so much philosophy, and especially epistemology. We all navigate the world by relying on information that approaches surety in everything that we do. If I step outside, I believe to a near certainty that a meteor is not going to fall on my head, because that never happens to me or anyone I have heard of. That doesn’t mean it is a transcendent Truth that a meteor won’t fall on my head. Any inductive conclusion is necessarily tentative so long as there is the possibility that it will be contradicted by further data. (Which is all Hume was saying.) But that doesn’t mean that we get paralyzed by uncertainty. I accept as a working truth that a meteor is not going to fall on my head, and I just go on outside and don’t worry about it. This seems to be good enough for everyone in the world, except philosophers.
Hume was essentially the most brilliant, elevated and effective troll in the history of Western thought.
Quake,
Right you are. Kant’s major works were done later in life. He actually said that it was Hume who awoke him from his slumber and forced him to respond.
Regards,
Jim