Is the principle of uniformity of nature an abduction or an analogy?
To what type of reasoning does the principle of uniformity of nature belong? Is it abduction, analogy, deduction?
Here they refer to the principle of the uniformity of nature.
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/15135/52276
What type of reasoning is used in this argument?
Is the principle of uniformity of nature an abduction or an analogy?
To what type of reasoning does the principle of uniformity of nature belong? Is it abduction, analogy, deduction?
someone may hold the principle because:
or even some other reason(s) that doesn't necessarily match any particular form of reasoning/inference, and there may be no final word on the matter
Principle of uniformity of nature is a principle that is derived from two claims:
Kant calls the first principle 'the first analogy of experience' and the second principle 'the second analogy of experience'. In James Clerk Maxwell's formulation the principle says the following: laws of nature are uniform regardless of our position in space and time.
NOTE 1: Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker noticed an interesting link between Noether's theorem and Kant's 'first analogy' (here). As another user pointed out, there is a deepconnection between certain consequence of Noether's theorem and "Uniformity of Nature".
NOTE 2: It is important that we speak in this formulation of states or properties, i.e. ways in which various objects, situations etc. can resemble eachother. If we speak of mere sets or classifications of objects, there are infinitely many, arbitrary ways in which we might draw the distinction, and this leads to what Nelson Goodman calls "The New Riddle of Induction", the inability to infer anything about the future from claims about the past, cf. N. Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast.
The argument that Kant uses to establish these principles is a transcendental argument: he says that if these principles weren't true, certain features of our perception of time couldn't be made, in his words, 'objective'. This means, for example, that we couldn't have an intersubjective account of which event follows another temporally. In other words, he posits that these principles are conditions of possibility of experience.
NOTE: The principles themselves are called 'analogies' because they establish analogies between what happens in time and pure time-determinations (persistence, successivity, simultaneity). But the reasoning itself isn't an analogy.
This only establishes, however, as Kant is aware, certain heuristics regarding formulation of scientific theories which cannot be definitely proved or disproved by any finite amount of data. Kant's word for it is: 'regulative principle'. The argument also relies, very explicitly in fact, on a view of time associated with Newtonian physics that has been later challenged by quantum mechanics.
Indeed, a big problem appears if we deny that there are indeed exceptionless laws of nature or when we posit retrocausality (future states affecting past states). There are viable interpretations of quantum mechanics which make these changes to our view of the world. Other interpretations say that the very states aren't determinate before measurement takes place. In fact, according to results like the famous Bell's theorem, one of these disjuncts has to be true, i.e. either the results of measurements aren't defined before the measurement takes place, there are causal connection from the future to the past or the principle of locality (in a huge simplification: "law of causality") is violated. Although the idea is intact, Kant's original formulation is impossible to preserve.
Further reading:
To begin with, the terms abductive and inductive are so ill-defined that the SEP has an entire article that tries (and in my view fails) to give an account of the difference between the two types of reasonings, and concludes that it is an unsettled question, so best of luck with that.
Loosely speaking, reasoning is abductive if it is making a judgement about the best explanation for a set of observations, which might or might not involve analogy. Perhaps a worked example might help. Let's consider the question of whether other people have minds. You can reason that they do in at least two ways, for instance:
You might observe that since you are a member of the same biological species as the rest of mankind, and since we all have the same basic ingredients (with a few exceptions), such as a head, two eyes, brain, heart, etc etc etc, and since we all function in more or less the same way, it would be odd if you were the only human to have a mind. That would be reasoning by analogy.
You might instead consider the hugely varied range of phenomena associated with human activity, such as language, industry, the arts, chess, the Large Hadron Collider, political debates, my immensely clever and funny novels, and so on and so on endlessly, and conclude that it would be impossible to imagine a better explanation for them than the assumption that people have minds. That would be reasoning by abduction.
See Wesley Salmon, The Uniformity of Nature (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1953):
The attempt to establish the doctrine which as been known as the "uniformity of nature" is a method which some of Hume's successors has used to circumvent his "skeptical conclusions" regardinig induction. The suggestion of this method is to be found in Hume's work itself, ss when he says:
"... all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past, and that similar powers will be conjoined with similar sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion."
It is to be noted, of course, that although Hume regards belief in the uniformity of nature as a necessary condition of the possibility of inductive inference, he does not commit himself to saying that it is a sufficient condition.
There are three possible ways in which the doctrine of the uniformity of nature might be incorporated into a philosophical systemt.
First, it might be regarded as an empirically established truth. John Stuart Mill is the outstanding historical proponent of this view. Second, it might be regarded as a truth which is established a priori. Kant, of course, maintains this position. Third, it might be held to be a postulate of knowledge, impossible to establish as true, but necessary to assume in order that inferences may be made. [...] Bertrand Russell in his book Human Knowledge (1923), gives it its latest important expression.
It is a mixture of induction and abduction (a word I had not known to have that meaning, but then I'm not alone).
Uniformity is the result of induction because we don't have contradicting evidence. The very foundation of science is that experiments are (in principle) reproducible, which implies that they yield the same result at different times and usually in different places. Additionally, our examination of the observable universe indicates that the laws of nature as we know them have been the same through most of the universe, spatially and temporally.
Uniformity is also the result of abduction because our observations are incomplete; the simplest assumption for the places and times we have not or cannot observe is that nature works just the same there as well. Of course, as is the case with all abduction, this is only a hypothesis.
One should point out the circular nature of the concept that nature is uniform: By definition, only reproducible traits are uniform! In practice, no experiment is exactly reproducible. The world is full of chaos and non-linear interactions. For example, every time we perform a billiard ball collision to demonstrate Newtonian mechanics the balls will bounce of slightly differently. But we "define the deviations away" and focus on the essence, the part that is reproducible, and declare that part as uniform.
Is the principle of uniformity of nature an abduction or an analogy?
To what type of reasoning does the principle of uniformity of nature belong? Is it abduction, analogy, deduction?
The principle itself is an observation about reasoning about the universe: we can reason about natural objects and phenomena that we cannot directly observe only by assuming that those objects and phenomena we have and do observe serve as adequate models.
I'm prepared to accept that, itself, as an axiom, but if you wanted an argument for it then that would be an exercise in logic -- deductive reasoning from premises that you choose to accept as more fundamental.
As for using the Principle, inductive reasoning (about nature) is the most direct application, but the principle underlies pretty much all natural reasoning. Without it, we have no way to ascribe any broader meaning to any of our observations, so as to reason abductively or deductively about them, either. This is ultimately a question of what it means to "reason".
Here they refer to the principle of the uniformity of nature.
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/15135/52276
What type of reasoning is used in this argument?
It is best characterized as deductive reasoning from a particular application of uniformity of nature. The argument is:
I observe in myself characteristics that I define collectively as "consciousness". [definition]
I observe a class of natural organisms, which includes me, that I call "human beings". [(loose) definition]
Human beings exhibit sufficient external and behavioral similarity to myself to justify assuming uniformity with respect to consciousness. [uniformity of nature, plus additional assumptions]
Since I am conscious, it follows that other humans must be too. [deduction from 1 & 2, based on 3]
Note well that I am just summarizing the argument made by the author of the referenced post, not asserting it myself. Even its author acknowledges that appealing to uniformity is a weak point of that argument, which it is, but there isn't much else to it. Overall, it rests on unsupported assumptions -- not uniformity itself, but that uniformity is applicable in this particular situation.
