Inductive Vs. Deductive Reasoning

Even if categories like “dog” and ‘table” could be accurately defined with sentences of the form all S is P, they have another important characteristic that makes it difficult for them to support logical reasoning. These categories are created by means of a process called induction, which is fundamentally different from the deduction used in logical reasoning. Deductive reasoning works best when it is applied to mathematics, because mathematical principles are necessarily true. We know, as the philosopher Kant said, not only that they are true, but that they cannot be otherwise. Consequently when…