#8 - A leap of faith?

(Continuing on Post #7... There's some good words in the mix, so enjoy)

Now you and your brother are walking down the long road toward Know ledge. You can barely process what's going through your own mind, let alone your brother's.

"You're seriously going to jump off that ledge." You say incredulously.

"Sure, with this nylon rope I got from the garage."

"Stop smiling, this isn't funny anymore."

"It kinda is."

"Why?!"

"Dramatic irony... you think you can know everything by deducing it all. You don't realize that you wouldn't be anywhere if it weren't for five things."

"I know what you're gonna say... the senses, right?"

"Exactly. Just think about a world in which we could not see, hear, taste, smell or feel. It would be a pretty boring world. At least, I think so."

"Sure it would be boring. But the thing is that our senses really can't be trusted. When it comes to knowledge - certain knowledge - we can only trust what we can show deductively."

"Oh really?"

You thought for a second. Then you came up with what was sure to hurt his contention:

"Yeah, I mean, I could reproduce the answer to a question a million times using deduction. But no matter how many times you observe something, you can never guarantee that it will happen the next time, can you? The sun has risen every morning, does it mean that it has to rise tomorrow? Every time you drop something it has fallen. Does that mean it will fall the next time? It certainly doesn't. There is no logical reason why we can assume that past observations will hold in the future. For centuries people thought the Earth was flat. They were so sure because of what they saw. And yet, they were still wrong. The past is easy. It's the future that is hard. How do you know that your observations aren't leading to erroneous conclusions, or resting on incomplete data? How can you rely on what's passed in order to justify what you think will happen? In order to make any sort of general conclusion using induction, you have to make a leap of faith."

"Watch me."

You didn't realize it, but while you were intently arguing your point, you both had

arrived at the ledge. He set his stuff down and intently started to rummage through a bag of various things he had brought. The nylon rope was stretched out along the craggy ledge. A small segment was even hovering over the side.

"What if that leap is in a life or death situation? It's certainly quixotic of you to think that your observations will always lead you to the right conclusions."

"Hey, I never said my observations would always lead me to right conclusions." He said as he began tying the rope around the bottom half of a gigantic boulder near the edge.

"Then how can you risk your life knowing that? And doesn't that show that deduction is better since it can, after all, guarantee the right conclusions?"

Your brother paused. He then finished tying an intricate knot around the rock. He paused again as if in deep thought. You thought he wasn't going to respond. It seemed like he had no response he could give. After all, how could he put so much confidence into something he knew was fallible? He proceeded to tie an extra special knot around his waist. A knot that made you think of Alexander the great and the Gordian Knot that he once boldly cut. 

"This amount of rope seems about right," your brother said, completely ignoring the question posed to him. He took a couple steps out towards the edge of the ledge. You saw the wind intermittently blowing his hair from side to side, as if it were desperately gasping for air, as you almost were. Your brother then said,

"The thing is, you don't see how we all need induction every day. Without it, we wouldn't be able to function at all. If we were all to suddenly question everything we we had ever seen, we would never make progress. What if every morning I checked extensively to make sure their wasn't a bomb in my cereal box. Well, that would certainly slow my morning down quite a bit don't you think? What if I was always thinking about the possibility of something not falling when dropped? I would never be able to make any conclusions at all. Always hinging on something which has never been disproved and has always been shown to be true slows down progress. In many cases, progress grinds to a halt because of it. When you solved that problem about how many meters of rope someone would need when jumping of the ledge, you yourself assumed that the person would in fact fall. We need induction." He took another step forward. The wind picked up. "Induction. Experiment. Experience. This is how we learn." He looked around. He seemed confident, like he was doing calculations in his mind about the impending drop and they were all checking out.

"One thing I don't get though..."

"Yeah?"

"Why do you still choose experience over theory, when-"

"Because" he interrupted you, "as I see it, a theory is no good to us if we can't put it into practice. And also, as philosopher David Hume once said, 'The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.'"

There was momentary silence, only broken by the pitter-pattering of feet against dirt. He was running for it. Prepared to take the leap, when...

"WAIT!!"

The conclusion is up next. See you soon. (How's that for a cliffhanger?)

Faithfully,

Quentin