Abstract
This paper pursues a thorough-going instrumentalist, or means-ends, approach to the theory of inductive inference. I consider three epistemic aims: convergence to a correct theory, fast convergence to a correct theory and steady convergence to a correct theory (avoiding retractions). For each of these, two questions arise: (1) What is the structure of inductive problems in which these aims are feasible? (2) When feasible, what are the inference methods that attain them? Formal learning theory provides the tools for a complete set of answers to these questions. As an illustration of the results, I apply means-ends analysis to various versions of Goodman's Riddle of Induction.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Bub, J. (1994). Testing models of cognition through the analysis of Brain-damaged performance, British J. Philos. Sci. 45: 837–855.
Case, J. and Smith, C. (1983). Comparison of identification criteria for machine inductive inference, Theoret. Comput. Sci. 25: 193–220.
Earman, J. (1992). Bayes or Bust? MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Freivalds, R. and Smith C. (1993). On the role of procrastination in machine learning, Inform. and Comput. 107: 237–271.
Gärdenfors, P. (1988). Knowledge In Flux: Modeling the Dynamics of Epistemic States MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Glymour, C. (1994). On the methods of cognitive neuropsychology, British J. Philos. Sci. 45: 815–835.
Gold, E. (1967). Language identification in the limit, Inform. and Control 10: 447–474.
Goodman, N. (1983). Fact, Fiction and Forecast. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Howson, C. and Urbach, P. (1989). Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach, Open Court, La Salle, IL.
Hume, D. (1984). An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. C. Hendell, Collier, New York.
Jain, S. and Sharma, A. (1997). Elementary formal systems, intrinsic complexity and procrastination, Inform. and Comput. 132: 65–84.
James, W. (1982). The will to believe, in H. S. Thayer (ed.), Pragmatism, Hackett, Indianapolis.
Juhl, C. (1997). Objectively reliable subjective probabilities, Synthese 109: 293–309.
Kelly, K. (1996). The Logic of Reliable Inquiry, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Kelly, K. and Schulte, O. (1995). The computable testability of theories making uncomputable predictions, Erkenntnis 43: 29–66.
Kelly, K., Juhl, C. and Glymour, C. (1994). Reliability, realism, and relativism, in P. Clark (ed.), Reading Putnam, Blackwell, London.
Kelly, K., Schulte, O. and Juhl, C. (1997). Learning theory and the philosophy of science, Philos. Sci. 64: 245–267.
Kitcher, P. (1993). The Advancement of Science, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Kuhn, T. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Laudan, L. (1977). Progress and Its Problems, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Osherson, D., Stob, M. and Weinstein, S. (1986). Systems That Learn, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Osherson, D. and Weinstein, S. (1988). Mechanical learners pay a price for Bayesianism, J. Symbolic Logic 53: 1245–1252.
Popper, K. (1968). The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Harper, New York.
Putnam, H. (1963). 'Degree of confirmation' and inductive logic, in A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, Open Court, La Salle, IL.
Putnam, H. (1965). Trial and error predicates and a solution to a problem of Mostowski, J. Symbolic Logic 30: 49–57.
Schulte, O. (1997). Hard choices in scientific inquiry, Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University.
Schulte, O. (forthcoming). Means-ends epistemology, British J. Philos. Sci.
Schulte, O. and Juhl, C. Topology as epistemology, The Monist 79: 141–148.
Sextus Empiricus (1985). Selections from the Major Writings on Skepticism, Man and God, ed. P. Hallie, trans. S. Etheridge, Hackett, Indianapolis.
Sharma, A., Stephan F. and Ventsov, Y. (1997). Generalized Notions of Mind Change Complexity, Proceedings of the Conference of Learning Theory (COLT).
Sober, E. (1994). No model, no inference: A Bayesian primer on the grue problem, in D. Stalker (ed.), Grue!, Open Court, Chicago, IL.
Van Fraassen, B. (1980). The Scientific Image, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schulte, O. The Logic Of Reliable And Efficient Inquiry. Journal of Philosophical Logic 28, 399–438 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004443206028
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004443206028