![]() ![]() ![]() We are hard-wired for these kinds of assumptions, based on inductive thinking, so that we can predict the future of an event. But it doesn’t logically follow, deductively, that the next piece of floor will support my weigh, even though every piece of ground (except perhaps a frozen lake) has always done so. We assume, for instance, that the ground below us will support our weight and so we can progress in the likelihood that it will continue to support our weight. If we weren’t able to predict if a tiger might attack, by the time we’d evaluated all the possibilities, we’d end up as dinner. This sort of assumptive thinking is essential (dare I say critical) for us to be able to move in this world. However, inductive reason allows us to formulate stories and beliefs from our observations and predict what will happen in the future. Inductive reasoning is how we arrive at most of our beliefs and assumptions about things, even if we haven’t necessarily observed them in every possible (that would be impossible) case. The premises support the conclusion, so we believe that our conclusion is justified, even though it doesn’t offer any logical guarantee that if the premises are true then the conclusion will be true. It is, or so it would seem, more likely that all Roses are red. Here the premises are supposed to support, but not logically entail, their conclusions. ![]() You would have a pretty good idea that olives are al green. You have never seen anything other than green olives. the premises must logically entail the conclusion, otherwise, you would have a logical contradiction. The premises must be true and the argument must be valid. Two things are needed for a valid argument. Therefore A = C (assuming A & B are true) Deductive arguments.ĭeductive arguments will normally take the form: Let me start by briefly explaining the difference between Deductive and Inductive thinking as these are the key tools we use to understand the sensations coming in from our senses and our interpretation of the world.Īn argument is made up of one or more claims or premises and a conclusion arranged in such a way that the premises are supposed to support the conclusion. In fact, it’s only our belief that the sun will rise and for that matter, the same applies to many other things too including all our scientific theories. Well, yes probably, but we have no more reason to be certain that the sun will rise than we have to say it won’t, or that a giant bunny will rise instead of it in the east. You’d probably be right to say “the sun has risen every morning for millions of years, so there’s no reason to assume it won’t do the same again tomorrow”. Let me explain because things aren’t quite as they seem.Īccording to the philosopher, David Hume our expectation is irrational, and, as I’ve mentioned before, irrationality is what we do best and goes to the heart of how we think we think. The space on the page wrestles with the eye in an effort to wrench words into fragments so that the letters on the page become images as opposed to linguistic icons.If the sun rises on the eastern horizon every morning, are we right to expect it to do so tomorrow? Howe resists this cultural imprint by creating and acti¬ vating space between letters, setting up, not what the visual arts designate as negative space, but a space that is intrusive, that interferes in the anxious effort to “make sense” of the let¬ ters. We are taught in western cul¬ ture to read from left to right and to group letters according to distance, and so, in Howe’s poetry the eye feverishly endeav¬ ours to serve as a thread between letters and words, suturing them together to permit a reading, an understanding of the poem. While Howe went on to become a poet, the impulse of the visual remains in her poetry, setting up a tension be¬ tween the visual and the literal. She used to in¬ corporate language of various sorts in her pieces, and the story goes that one day she was working in her studio and a friend came in, looked at her work, and said, “This is a poem”1 (Kel¬ ler 5-6). Susan Howe was trained as a visual artist. HINGED, CONTINGENT, JOINED: SUSAN HOWE’S “HINGED PICTURE” ![]()
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