The Paradox of Induction
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Attempts to solve the paradox of induction
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There would appear to be no possibility of solving the paradox of induction by justifying induction by deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is not a kind of deductive reasoning. There is no reputable Western philosopher who attempts to do this. Furthermore, the problem with inductive reasoning is that it is unsound. The case of the chicken illustrates this. The chicken was wrong to believe it always would be fed because it always has been fed. So no deductive argument could demonstrate that induction was sound. Likewise, any attempt to justify inductive reasoning by appeal to inductive reasoning would be circular. Russell discusses this possibility in his chapter in The Problems of Philosophy about induction. "It has been argued that we have reason to know that the future will resemble the past, because what was the future has constantly become the past, and has always been found to resemble the past, so that we really have experience of the future, namely of times which were formerly future, which we may call past futures. But such an argument really begs the very question at issue. We have experience of past futures, but not of future futures, and the question is: Will future futures resemble past futures? This question is not to be answered by an argument which starts from past futures alone." It could be argued that such a process attempts to justify particular uses of induction by appeal to a general principle of induction – a rule of all-encompassing generality, such as "the past future has always resembled the past past, therefore, the future will always resemble the past." Yet it is clear that this process of reasoning is strictly circular.
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Contents of
The Paradox of Induction
1 Prescriptive philosophy of science
2 The problem or paradox of induction
3 Hume and the formulation of the paradox of induction
4 Attempts to solve the paradox of induction
5 The paradox of induction and the claim that probability is all we ought to seek
6 Swinburn and confirmation theory
7 Falsificationism and the paradox of induction
8 Extrapolation and interpolation
9 Occam razor and the paradox of induction
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