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Full Idea
All positive reasoning is judging the proportion of something in a whole collection by the proportion found in a sample. Hence we can never hope to attain absolute certainty, absolute exactitude, absolute universality.
Gist of Idea
Reasoning is based on statistical induction, so it can't achieve certainty or precision
Source
Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II)
Book Ref
Peirce,Charles Sanders: 'Philosophical Writings of Peirce', ed/tr. Buchler,Justus [Dover 1940], p.56
A Reaction
This is the basis of Peirce's fallibilism - that all 'positive' reasoning (whatever that it?) is based on statistical induction. I'm all in favour of fallibilism, but find Peirce's claim to be a bit too narrow. He was too mesmerised by physical science.
Related Idea
Idea 6352 Enumerative induction gives a universal judgement, while statistical induction gives a proportion [Pollock/Cruz]
| 12569 | Knowledge by senses is less certain than that by intuition or reason, but it is still knowledge [Locke] |
| 14768 | Infallibility in science is just a joke [Peirce] |
| 14770 | Reasoning is based on statistical induction, so it can't achieve certainty or precision [Peirce] |
| 19107 | Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog [Peirce] |
| 22870 | No belief can be so settled that it is not subject to further inquiry [Dewey] |
| 17637 | The most obvious beliefs are not infallible, as other obvious beliefs may conflict [Russell] |
| 12897 | To say S knows P, but cannot eliminate not-P, sounds like a contradiction [Lewis] |
| 2755 | If senses are fallible, then being open to correction is an epistemological virtue [Dancy,J] |
| 6898 | Fallibilism is the view that all knowledge-claims are provisional [Mautner] |
| 19701 | Fallibilism is consistent with dogmatism or scepticism, and is not alternative to them [Dougherty] |
| 19700 | It is best to see the fallibility in the reasons, rather than in the agents or the knowledge [Dougherty] |
| 19702 | We can't normally say that we know something 'but it might be false' [Dougherty] |
| 19718 | Indefeasibility does not imply infallibility [Grundmann] |