Conditionals and Future Contingents

Conditionals must be, by their very nature, unsound. They're unsound because they are non-deductive. They express what could be the case, not what is the case. What could be the case isn't what is the case.

Sometimes conditionals are about what will be the case or what is necessarily the case. These conditionals can rely on a certain amount of sound and deductive reasoning. Though even what will be the case isn't the case now. And many sound and deductive systems wouldn't concern themselves with what will be the case in the future. That wouldn't be the domain of deductive logic; even if the future could, as it were, be deductively inferred.

Future Contingents

Many philosophers say that “future contingents” can't be either true or false. Thus this would create a problem for deductive logics.

What about conditionals which tell us what will necessarily be the case now or what is necessarily the case now? Even these cases would be about the future, strictly speaking.

That is, if I say,

“If I drop this stone it will necessarily fall to the ground.”

the falling stone (hitting the ground) is still in the future when the statement is actually made. Thus it's still a future contingent. The future it concerns itself with is just the very near future.

Conditionals don’t deal with what is the case now and what has already been the case. These kinds of necessities aren't the concern of conditionals. You can't, for example, say:

“It's necessarily the case now [i.e., 2006] that if in 1912 someone had dropped a stone it would have necessarily fallen to the ground.”

We can say that it was necessarily the case; though that wouldn’t be a conditional at all (not even on the surface).

Similarly if someone says the following:

“If someone had added 2 + 2 in 1912, then he would necessarily have got 4.”

That appears to be some kind of conditional in that it uses the argument-form “if…then...”. However, it's only an appearance. How could a particular past mathematical addition be verified? Perhaps certain adders were poor adders. Thus not every act of addition would have come out correctly. Of course we could add the qualification:

“If someone had added 2 + 2 correctly…”

Though that isn't an if-then scenario at all: it's a statement that 2 + 2 necessarily equals 4. The truth of the arithmetical addition doesn't depend on any conditions. And conditionals are, of course, about (possible/hypothetical) conditions.

Take this present-moment statement:

“When someone adds 2 + 2 correctly now, he will necessarily get 4.”

This too is about the near future; though still the future. In addition, not all additions can be verified. However, if we're again talking about the necessary truth that 2 + 2 = 4, then this has nothing to do with conditions, as such.

Acceptable Unsound Reasoning

 

Despite the problems with unsound reasoning, most of us (or everyone!) who use such reasoning will still require that our unsound inferences be reliable to some unspecified degree. There'd be no point otherwise.

Zero reliability would make unsound reasoning useless. Alternatively, 100% reliability is impossible. Thus the reliability ratio may be, at times, somewhere in the middle.

This reliability of unsound inferences is sometimes expressed in terms of the reliability of predictions; the explanatory power of its conclusions; whether or not it relies on false, true or unknown assumptions; and what the precise status of the observations utilised are. (E.g., are they good, bad, clear or unclear?)

What also matters with unsound reasonings is the power and utility of the conclusions derived from them. Do unsound inferences and conclusions help us in any way? Are they practical? And so on.

No prediction is foolproof. Who knows what the future may bring? Even predictions about future necessities are philosophically problematic to many philosophers.

Of course inductive reasoning must rely on observations; though that doesn’t stop the inductivist asking questions about the nature and status of his or other people’s observations. How were they experienced? Can we trust those who had them? Was the observational equipment working correctly at the time? Is the observer biased? What assumptions did the observer bring to his observations? What previous observations were required in order to make sense of the observations we're now commenting upon? Were they genuine observations at all? And so on.

There's another way of saying that certain correct/valid forms of reasoning don't lead us to truths. This doesn’t entirely matter because they're still valid/correct (if not sound).

If we observe ten white swans, it's largely correct to infer that swans are white. However, the statement “All swans are white” is still unsound. That is, it's possible that there may be black swans. In addition, the means used to come to that conclusion didn't depend on deductive inferences and the premises might included  past observations; not axiomatic truths or deductively-derived premises.

What other kinds of unsound reasoning are there?

The inductive form is simply one of generalisation. This is something that's of vital importance not just to science and philosophy, but to everyday life as well.

One observes a finite numbers of objects or events, and from that finite (or limited) amount one generalises about what will probably be the case with all other unobserved objects or events. Without such generalisations, we'd need to wait until we'd observed every example (or sample) of the thing in question. This would be impossible to do (in most cases) in a finite amount of time.

Of course mistakes are made when we generalise, as every scientist knows. However, it's still impossible to do without generalisations, both within philosophy and without. Even those philosophers who claim never to generalise do so. In fact that very claim is a generalisation and it's also false.

There are dangers which result from generalising, not just in philosophy.

For example, “All blacks are criminals”, “No blacks are criminals”, “Hegel is a generaliser” and so on. However, never generalising would also be very problematic. Or at least it would be if anyone actually completely abstained from generalising.