Daily Mail, and Mostly Details the Arguments

¶ … Daily Mail, and mostly details the arguments made in a book about MH370 that is being released shortly. There are some interesting claims made this book that the article reports on. One such claim is made with the use of deductive reasoning. This goes as follows. The flight data transmitter only transmitted minimal information. There was an upgrade to the software package available, but Malaysian Airlines did not purchase this upgrade.

The logic goes that if they had purchased this upgrade, it would have transmitted more data, and searchers would therefore have been able to find the plane with this data. This logic is not valid. There are a few issues with it from a deductive reasoning perspective. The first issue is that it cannot be tested, because each flight problem is unique.

The author of the premise is attempting to use deductive reasoning, but the uniqueness of the situation means that it is impossible to extrapolate a premise into all possible scenarios. The author's premise therefore relies on the unstated assumption that this software would have allowed for this plane to have been tracked for certain. But because this hypothesis cannot be tested, it is poor deductive reasoning.

The other issue with the deductive reasoning here is it assumed that the first premise -- that this software upgrade would have ensured that the plane would have been found by now -- is highly speculative. The premise has not been shown to be true. The manufacturer might say that it is true, but unless there is clear proof that the premise is true, we have to be wary of both the premise and the conclusion that is drawn from it.

I find the conclusion here to be invalid because the premises are unproven and the hypothesis cannot be proven. The entire argument is speculative, and rests on the fact that we can never test this hypothesis. The problem is that if it cannot be tested, then it poor deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning seeks to prove that the conclusion is probable, which is something that seems to be the key to this argument. The author provides a number of pieces of evidence.

The software upgrade would have contained location information, in contrast to the minimal information that the aircraft broadcast. That lack of location readings was a key factor is not having found the plane yet is also important. The author also presents expert testimony from people involved in the search who support the hypothesis, arguing that it would have easier to find the plane had more location information been transmitted from the plane to the ground. The argument presented in therefore better understood as an inductive argument.

It would be a weak inductive argument, in that the software would have increased the likelihood of finding the airplane by now. However, that is not how the argument was stated. Indeed, it was stated that the plane would have been found, whereas the correct inductive argument would be that with the software upgrade the likelihood that the plane would have.