A Pragmatic Justification of Deduction

Abstract

I will attempt to draw analogies between the problems of inductionand problems of deduction with Carroll’s paradox and Susan Haack’sarguments. These analogies either strengthen a justification of induction by showing that deduction faces similar problems, or weaken our justification of deduction by showing it is not entirely justified. I will show that although deduction does face similar problems any justification that can work for induction will also be applicable to deduction, but not vice versa. Finally, I will show that Reichenbach’s system of vindicating induction will also provide vindication for deduction, and argue that deduction preserves truth to a greaterextent than induction.

Keywords

• induction
• deduction
• pragmatism