Almost every website that talks about it says, “Inductive reasoning is a bottom up” approach while “deductive is a top down approach”.
Can anyone explain to me the THE DIFFERENCE? What makes these two forms of reasoning so different? Examples are always appreciated as well.
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Easy way of describing it: deductive reasoning is a sort of mathematical certainty. If all of the premises/evidence holds up, and the logical structure is valid, then the conclusion *must* be.
“All dogs are cute, Amelia is a dog, therefore Amelia is cute.”
It’s bulletproof. If the first two parts are true, the next one *has* to be.
Inductive reasoning on the other hand is based more on arguing a conclusion is more likely, or better supported. It doesn’t have the same level of ironclad logic, but is still useful if not necessary all the time in day to day life.
“Organization A’s members tend to agree that *this* product does a better job at managing my symptoms than *that* product, Organization A’s members are experts in this field, so they’re probably correct.”
That argument hasn’t strictly “proven” anything; even if both premises are true the conclusion could still be false because experts can be wrong about stuff. But, it’s not trying to prove anything definitively, just lay out that the evidence leans in one particular direction.
Bonus points, if you were to try and frame the logic of an inductive argument to made a deductive one, that’s the most common type of logical fallacy. Taking that last one and changing the conclusion to say “so they *must* be correct”, you would have changed it to a deductive argument, and committed the Appeal to Authority fallacy.
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