It's adequate justification for saying that he has apparently always been correct and, consequently, that it's very likely that he will continue to be correct in the future, but it doesn't deductively prove that he will be correct in the future, and I'd assert that deductive proof is required for absolute certainty. That's the difference between deductive and inductive justification; the first gives certainty, while the second gives, at best, so high of a probability that it's near-certain. You haven't caught me in a logical conundrum because I'm not going to assert that inductive justification is bivalent or that the range of its values even includes absolute certainty, whether that certainty is positive or negative. Even the scientific method doesn't rely upon induction to disprove hypotheses; if a hypothesis, h, has testable consequences, c, such that (h -> c), then if we conduct a sufficiently reliable experiment that shows ~c, we are deductively justified in concluding ~h; however, if our repeated experiments show c, this provides only inductive confirmation, not proof, of the hypothesis; it's the duty of the scientist to try to come up with subtler experiments so as to disprove the hypothesis, in its current form, and arrive at a more precise formulation of the laws of nature. That's basically Popper's epistemology.
Once again, you've completely and totally missed the point.
Until such time as he is incorrect, he is always right. At such time as he is not right, he will cease to be always right and beomce merely *mostly* right.
The future exists as probabilities inherent in the present. "Is always" (or "always is") therefore includes those probabilities; since those probabilities are not inductively provably certain, "is always" is not a justifiable assertion. What you should say is "Until such time as he is incorrect, he always has been correct." That's analytically true, but "he is always correct" is a timeless statement, given the meaning of "always".
It reminds me of my 7th Grade Math Teacher trying to explain induction vs deduction.... using Purple Ducks...
She said that assume, no one in this classroom had ever seen a duck before, but we had an idea what ducks looked like. One day, a purple duck walks into the room. Then another one, then another one. All in all, 100% of the Ducks we've seen are purple. One of the students, there for concludes/exclaims "All Ducks are Purple!" Just after that, a green duck walks into the room.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-31 07:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-31 07:22 pm (UTC)But that would be a damn cool basis for a religion.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-31 07:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-31 07:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-31 07:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-31 07:50 pm (UTC)Inaccurate Icon; Lose a Point
Date: 2005-08-31 08:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-31 08:19 pm (UTC)Until such time as he is incorrect, he is always right. At such time as he is not right, he will cease to be always right and beomce merely *mostly* right.
And the icon is cool. Deal with it.
Maybe We're Both Missing Each Other's Point
Date: 2005-08-31 08:31 pm (UTC)What you should say is "Until such time as he is incorrect, he always has been correct." That's analytically true, but "he is always correct" is a timeless statement, given the meaning of "always".
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-31 10:43 pm (UTC)She said that assume, no one in this classroom had ever seen a duck before, but we had an idea what ducks looked like. One day, a purple duck walks into the room. Then another one, then another one. All in all, 100% of the Ducks we've seen are purple. One of the students, there for concludes/exclaims "All Ducks are Purple!"
Just after that, a green duck walks into the room.