Inductive reasoning

This procedure is one of the elementary logical thought processes by which information is systematized. It is called inductive reasoning, and it means that a general rule is framed on the basis of a collection of individual observations (or facts )- Of what use is the inductive process It is an efficient way of remembering. 

Inductive tools are characterized as forward search strategies for identifying the impact of potential process deviations. Inductive tools can support incident investigation. They are especially useful when the evidence and facts of an incident have been exhausted or are not attainable. The team must then rely on inductive reasoning to point to where to search for more information to fill in gaps to understand the causes and occurrences of the incident. A fact hypothesis matrix is described in Chapter 9. 

The next item in the loop is a decision point for possibly introducing the use of inductive reasoning methods into the deliberations. If the deductive process continues to indicate progress, then additional facts are procured or the logic tree is restructured. For example, one witness stated a particular valve was open, yet the post-incident inspection found it to be closed. The team must be careful to ensure that the valve is closed because of the actions taken prior to the incident, and not as a result of post-event response activities. The position of this particular valve may be a critical item in determining which of two scenarios is the more probable case. The incident investigation team would then initiate a short-term action item to conduct a mini-investigation to resolve this question. 

Qualitative concepts of probability (as embodied in the above standards) have long and explicitly influenced jury deliberations as to whether or not a plaintiff has met his burden of persuasion. By contrast, in conventional personal injury litigation, probability and inductive reasoning have not explicitly played a role in fact-finding per se. That is, the facts themselves, defined as elements on which one party has the burden of production, are generally deemed true or false - with a probability of either 0 or 1. For example, the light was either red or green, the brakes either did or did not work, or the pedestrian either did or did not fall. 

The two fundamental types of bioethical tools are deductive and inductive reasoning. There are, however, complexities and adaptations for both of them. Let us first consider the two fundamental systems and then examine their complexities. 

One might assume that deductive reasoning is superior - as it would appear to offer mathematical-style proof . But a law is only as good as the premise on which it is based. Virtually, all scientific laws are derived inductively - from observation. But once the law is established, it is then applied deductively. However, when the original law turns out to be flawed it has usually been disproved inductively. Thus, in bioethics (as in science), the best approach is often a mixture of deductive and inductive reasoning. 

The concept of a "natural kind" is often invoked to settle debates in the philosophy of science and in metaphysics, debates that raise skepticism about a variety of our practices the justifiability of inductive reasoning, the projectibility of predicates, the correct meaning of some of our terms. Thus, for example, the predicates that are pro-jectible are just the ones that are true of natural kind terms. 

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