Blogpost 4: The Power of Deduction

There is no such thing as perfect life. Living here on Earth consists of ups and downs, and full of uncertainty. We do not know exactly what will happen later, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and so on. All people also live through problems such as financial problems, problems in love, problems in life, problems in school, problems in health, and a lot more. We can't run away forever without facing our problems. And of course, we have to face and solve these problems so that our life can go on smoothly. We solve these by elevating our limited observations and our plausible opinions to the level of sure facts and infallible conclusions.

The main character of Detective Conan named Shinichi Kudo who was transformed to a kid with a pseudonym of Conan Edogawa solves a lot of complicated criminal cases. He solves these by using deductive reasoning or simply deduction.

According to Harvey Bluedorn who wrote an article about "Two Methods of Reasoning" in the website triviumpursuit, deductive reasoning moves from general to the particular. It works from a general premise to a more specific conclusions. It is a lot different from inductive reasoning because induction works the other way, moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. The two methods of reasoning have a very different processes in conducting a research and yield distinctive results.

Living here in 20^th century, I am somehow aware of how 20^th century generation people solve uncertainty about certain knowledge or information. Twentieth century generation people, just like Conan Edogawa, do some researches and evaluate concrete observations in answering and in deciding assumptions. I got curious about how early philosophers and thinkers come up with their conclusions about certain knowledge. And I found this article entitled "Deductive and Inductive Reasoning" by Andrew at the website articlesbase. According to this article, the issue about certain knowledge or fact is traced back to Aristotelian logic. Aristotle's works are the oldest known official studies of knowledge that were ever found that still share a lot of common with current theory of logic.

"Aristotle's subject of logic progresses essentially around deduction." - Andrew

The most important scientific law of deductive reasoning is the assurance that our assumptions or hypotheses about a topic of interest can be guaranteed if it is resulting from necessity. To make sure that the deductions work, the result, which is the necessity, follow the circumstances or the basis, which is the premise.

It is really amazing that people can conduct such reasoning either deductive or inductive. I just wander if animals can also do reasoning like humans in order for them to survive. I saw this article "Study Shows that Monkeys Can Do Deductive Reasoning" written by Mike Adams. I found this at the website naturalnews. According to this article, Jonathan Flombaum who is a graduate student in the Psychology Department at Yale University and colleague Assistant Professor Laurie Santos did the test to assess the visual perspectives of others. They did this by initiating two experiments that all involved a human holding a grape next to a curios monkey. For the first experiment, the human grape holder stood either facing or turned away from monkey. And for the final experiment, the human held up a small rectangular cut-out that blocked either the human's eyes or his mouth. The conclusion of their experiment stated that monkey can really do deduction.

"Monkeys can deduce what other monkeys and humans think, want and see based on visual clues." - Mike Adams

Just by seeing the title of the article, I really got interested and I am surprised that monkeys can really do deductions just like humans. And the other thing is that the research about monkeys helps other researchers and scientists to learn more about autism among people.

To sum all up, I have learned that with the application of a little logic, rationality and observation, we can solve problems in our own lives without resorting help from others. Just like in Conan Edogawa's adventure together with the most complicated criminal cases turns out in the end to have an absurdly simple solution.