Is there a little paradox here?

Mull briefly on this claim:

Any argument which stems ultimately from induction, because it is based on generalizing from a limited observation rather than from the whole set of data, cannot be verified to be true.

Is it self-referencing, self-refuting, defensible, or something else?

One thought on “Is there a little paradox here?

  1. Curious. For me, “Any” was the real hairy word here, because, if the statement is true, arguments from induction are unverifiable (or, if you dislike verification, let’s use a weaker term like “justifiable”). Yet this statement generalizes, having not observed the entire class of statements which are based in induction. Thus, until EVERY inductive statement can be shown to fail the test of verification, this statement has extrapolated from a potentially unfairly-generalized inductive observation. If, however, the original claim was shown to be true by examining every possible such statement, it was shown to be verifiable even when the statement was only an inductive generalization (and thus, simultaneously false)…maybe?

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