Inductive Reasoning: How Reliable Is It and What Are Its Limitations?

Inductive reasoning is a method of drawing general conclusions from individual facts and is widely used in everyday life and science. However, there are exceptions, and inductive reasoning with humans requires caution and has the potential to violate human rights.

 

We often see things as they are. We place a lot of faith in visible phenomena, so when we meet a person, we place a lot of importance on first impressions. We form an impression of a person by observing their usual behavior patterns and how they treat others. Finally, we get to know a person through direct conversations and activities with them. Even in direct conversations and activities, we are constantly observing and eventually evaluating the person based on their behavior and interpretation of it, which is imprinted in our minds.
This phenomenon happens frequently in various places in our daily lives, and we tend to put our faith in it. This is due to inductive reasoning, one of the methods of reasoning. Inductive reasoning is a way of drawing general conclusions from individual, specific facts or phenomena to include those cases, and it is a way of thinking that generalizes the results of various human experiences, practices, experiments, etc. For example, if we know that “Friends A and B work for a very good company in Korea, earn a huge salary, and live in a nice house,” and “Friends C and D live in the United States, where they live in a house with a swimming pool and drive a nice car,” and “Friends A, B, C, and D have all studied abroad in the United States,” then we have the idea that people who have studied abroad in the United States live a very luxurious life, and that Friend E, who is about to study abroad in the United States, will also have a secure future. This is how we use inductive reasoning in our daily lives.
Inductive reasoning is also very active in science. A successful example of inductive reasoning is Newton’s discovery of the law of universal gravitation. He observed an apple falling to the ground one day and wondered why it was falling down. He deduced that there must be a pull from the center of the earth, and to prove it, he conducted an experiment in which he dropped light and heavy objects from a height, proving the principle of gravity and acceleration that heavier objects fall faster. The results of these experiments were recognized as the law of universal gravitation because the results were the same everywhere and at all times.
While inductive reasoning has contributed greatly to the advancement of science, it is fallible. It derives general principles from many observations and phenomena, but when an exception is found, the principle is no longer used. There are always exceptions to inductive reasoning. The movie Minority Report illustrates this fallacy of inductive reasoning. In the movie Minority Report, there are three seers. They foresee future murders in their dreams, which are then displayed on a monitor, and the crime prevention bureau that watches them tries to stop the murders and arrest the suspects before they happen. The premise behind this is that the murders in the dreams of the seers have always happened before the crime prevention department, so their dreams always turn out to be real. Based on this, suspects are captured and imprisoned for murders that may or may not actually occur. The possibility that these would-be killers might change their minds and not commit the murders is completely ignored. Later in the movie, this inductive logic is broken without inevitability. It begins when John Enderton, a lieutenant in the Crime Prevention Bureau, is named as a suspect in a murder. He believes in the idea that he will not commit the murder and takes one of his seers to the murder scene to prove it. And he changes his mind at the murder scene and does not commit the murder. This is the moment when a solid system of inductive reasoning is broken.
In science, other principles, including these exceptions, can be derived by inductive reasoning from observation. However, the fallacy of inductive reasoning when it comes to people, such as in the Crime Prevention Bureau system, is absolutely unacceptable. This is because it is based on the higher premise that human rights must be guaranteed. Therefore, the cause of promoting public safety through crime prevention cannot exist if human rights are not respected. To illustrate this point, let’s take the example of stop-and-frisk. A stop and frisk is when a police officer stops and questions a person whom he or she has reasonable cause to suspect has committed or is about to commit a crime based on suspicious behavior or other surrounding circumstances. However, the reason or scope of a stop and frisk is not always clear. For example, on the day of a college rally, police may stop passersby and search their bags and IDs because they suspect that the people around them are students who are planning to attend the rally. Of course, if the person is a student who will be attending the rally, they can be stopped and searched. However, the inductive reasoning that they are all going to be at the rally just because they are around the rally is wrong. The passersby whose IDs and bags are exposed have had their human rights violated.
The limited use of inductive reasoning methods, which are frequently used in everyday life and science, in their own fields is an opportunity for advancement. However, in the name of the common good, inductive reasoning performed on people violates their human rights. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize the fallibility of inductive reasoning performed on people and limit its use.