The Raven Paradox Analysis

The Raven Paradox stresses the idea of the logic of confirmation, in which observational data and evidence leads to the confirmation of hypotheses. Through The Raven Paradox, Carl Hempel examines the paradoxical consequences that arise from such logic. As noted in the first premise, the assumption “All ravens are black” is logically equivalent to “All non-black things are non-raven.” The logical equivalence of these hypothesis implies that despite being phrased differently, the hypotheses continue to convey the same meaning, and thus both hypothesis must be true or false in all the same situation. The second premise introduces the Nicod’s Criterions, in which “All F’s are G’s” is confirmed by the observation of positive instance, an object that is both F and G. Such Criterion is a universal generalization that is confirmed by the …show more content…
The logical equivalence (1) allows our hypothesis “All non-black things are non-raven” to be confirmed by simply looking at positive instances (2) such as a white shoe or any particular object in the world that is not black and not a raven. Absurdly, the equivalence condition (3) between the two hypotheses acknowledges that the white shoe or all non-black objects that are not a raven will evidently confirm the hypothesis that “All ravens are black.” Such conclusion appears to be paradoxical since it does not make intuitive sense to accept the observations of non-black non-raven objects as incremental evidence to confirm the hypothesis “all ravens are black” when such observations are not related nor did it ever observe black ravens. Moreover, the fact that the Nicod’s Criterion (2) only considers positive instances that increments evidence to confirm the hypothesis makes the conclusion even more absurd. There is no possibility that we can disconfirm the hypothesis since such disconfirming evidence is being