The (counter)inductivist Turkey - a presentation

Most of you probably know the story of the inductivist turkey (originally a chicken) depicted by Bertrand Russel in “The problems of Philosophy” to refute inductive reasoning and traditional empiricism, then reformulated by Popper, and hereby reported in the version of A.F. Chalmers. It's the story of a turkey that decides to create for himself a scientific vision of the world, and it goes like this:

This turkey found that, on his first morning at the turkey farm, he was fed at 9 a.m. However, being a good inductivist, he did not jump to conclusions. He waited until he had collected a large number of observations of the fact that he was fed at 9 a.m., and he made these observations under a wide variety of circumstances, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, on warm days and cold days, on rainy days and dry days. Each day, he added another observation statement to his list. Finally, his inductivist conscience was satisfied and he carried out an inductive inference to conclude, “I am always fed at 9 a.m.”. Alas, this conclusion was shown to be false in no uncertain manner when, on Christmas eve, instead of being fed, he had his throat cut.

Now, it's been a while that I feel like I'm “in the turkey's shoes”, a condition that, by deduction, generalization and egotism, it seems plausible to me to extend to the whole human race. We're all inductivist turkeys: we wake up, we keep ourselves busy, we live “waiting for Christmas”. Being aware of the ineluctability of our mortal condition is the only factor that put us on a different step - not sure if higher or lower admitting this difference makes sense – in comparison to Russel's chicken: we know that Christmas eve is coming, but we must pretend to ignore it, to suffocate the constant background noise of this absurdity not to be squashed or paralized by it, and move on. We're inductivist the wrong way (shall I say counterinductivist? Hope Mr. Feyerabend won't resent me): we know that things will fall apart but we keep on going pretending to stand firm, but if we venture out with a speck of honesty in search of a meaning for our everyday actions we must admit that, at the end, there's no one. Circumstances force us to narrow our horizons to the vision of the turkey, if we want to keep on going and avoid panic.

The point of life is live, love if you can, and pass it on
(Kate Tempest, We Die)

The sense of this pages doesn't want to go beyond the depiction of this everyday deception, beyond the narration of the things and events I personally use to distract my attention and carry on. And I do it in many ways, like all of you, (counter)inductivist turkeys. This is just a series of tales of any December 26th.

Yours sincerly,

Turk

As you might have noted, English is not my native language but sometimes wearing something different helps me to express myself. I use the language I feel more comfortable with the moment I write. Feel free to correct me, I appreciate.