Types of Arguments- Inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning goes the opposite direction of deductive reasoning: drawing general conclusions from one or more specific cases or premises. It starts from the small stuff and ends with the big, hence it can be more palatable for your opponent to take in.

Dave wants to convince Todd, his manager at an electronics outlet to adopt a new layout for the store. He argues that the current layout confuses customers, as evidenced by the fact that they are always asking where things are, is a pain for the workers on the sales floor who have to navigate large objects through labyrinthine displays and has led to a recent rash of shoplifting of smaller items in hard-to-access aisles. He concludes that it would be worth it to change the store’s layout to a much better organized one, with wide, clearly labeled aisles and less cloistered areas.

Unlike deductive arguments, where there is a 1:1 correlation between the truth of the premises and of the conclusion, truth of the premises in an inductive argument can only guarantee a greater than 0 probability of the truth of the conclusion. This is because the conclusion drawn from a process of induction might not cover every case outside of its premises. The assumption made when constructing an inductive argument is that the rule derived from the observations is applicable in areas beyond that.

Looking at the individual parts of a situation, for example, it might be assumed that the whole of the situation is similar. Another assumption is that of extrapolation, that other situations can have the same rules applied to them as the one being studied. And yet another is the continuity of conditions in time – that the future will not be significantly different from the past.

There are many ways in which reality could deviate from these assumptions. As an example of the second assumption, just because the management (or “manglement”, as some may choose to call it) at someone’s place of work is incompetent and obstructive to real work being done does not mean that this is true in every other company. Their own company may have a particularly bad corporate culture that puts management on a pedestal at the expense of the rest of the work force, or they might just have terrible hiring sense.

Bringing in more evidence in the form of other cases explainable by the argument raises the level of confidence in it higher, as can generating completely new potential cases through deduction and confirming them in reality.

Science uses induction to generate hypotheses which can then be tested and applied to other natural occurrences. Since it relies on direct observation, there is less room for bias to infiltrate the argument, although interpretations and inferences drawn from observations may differ.

It still provides a good starting point from which to base your arguments since hard facts laid in front of your opponent can hardly be denied. You will need to establish your credibility with your opponent more than you would have to with a deductive argument in order for them to close that gap of probability and accept your conclusions themselves.