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A material dissolution of the problem of induction

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Abstract

In a formal theory of induction, inductive inferences are licensed by universal schemas. In a material theory of induction, inductive inferences are licensed by facts. With this change in the conception of the nature of induction, I argue that the celebrated “problem of induction” can no longer be set up and is thereby dissolved. Attempts to recreate the problem in the material theory of induction fail. They require relations of inductive support to conform to an unsustainable, hierarchical empiricism.

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Notes

  1. While the problem is often labeled “Hume’s problem of induction,” my concern is limited to the modern version of the problem as described in Sect. 3. No Hume exegesis is attempted.

  2. That is, it is common amongst sympathetic colleagues who have undertaken informally to explain to me why the theory is wrong.

  3. For an analysis of a comparably vague term, “likely,” see (Norton (2011), Sect. 3.1.2).

  4. This last claim is supported in the places already cited by displaying the factual warrant that underwrites inductive inferences of many different types. For further examples, see Norton (2010).

  5. The discussion that follows elaborates briefer remarks made in (Norton (2003, 2005), §6; pp. 30–31).

  6. I have labeled this “anthropological” since this events envisaged must predate recorded history and their study belongs more to anthropology than history of science.

  7. In addition, we should be skeptical of the very idea of direct sense experience, expressible in a language in which distinctions as refined as that between induction and deduction are possible. This issue will be taken up in a later section under the Sellar’s “myth of the given.”

  8. As with the problem of induction, the relevant literature in epistemology is enormous. For an entry into it, see Moser (2002), especially Goldman (2002), Fumerton (2002), and Bonjour (2002).

  9. The following sections will take up the issue of whether such an approach runs into difficulties.

  10. Developed very briefly in (Norton (2003), p. 668).

  11. As, for example, (Hempel (1965), §2).

  12. A referee has pointed out a similarity with Otto Neurath’s non-hierarchical epistemology. It is captured in the memorable metaphor of Neurath’s boat (1921). Its sailors can never take it to port to rebuild it. They reshape it at sea, replacing each board by another, relying on the support of all the others, at each step.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Jim Bogen for comments and for first suggesting that I apply the material approach to the problem of induction; for much stimulating discussion from Peter Achinstein, Thomas Kelly and John Worrall at a symposium at PSA 2008; for discussion by the Center for Philosophy of Science Reading Group, April 12, 2010 (Natalie Gold, Slobodan Perovic, Wolfgang Pietsch, Susan Sterrett, Tad Szubka); and from Anil Gupta.

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  1. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    John D. Norton

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Norton, J.D. A material dissolution of the problem of induction. Synthese 191, 671–690 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0356-3

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