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The Uniformity Principle vs. the Disuniformity Principle

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Abstract

The pessimistic induction is built upon the uniformity principle that the future resembles the past. In daily scientific activities, however, scientists sometimes rely on what I call the disuniformity principle that the future differs from the past. They do not give up their research projects despite the repeated failures. They believe that they will succeed although they failed repeatedly, and as a result they achieve what they intended to achieve. Given that the disuniformity principle is useful in certain cases in science, we might reasonably use it to infer that present theories are true unlike past theories. Hence, pessimists have the burden to show that our prediction about the fate of present theories is more likely to be true if we use the uniformity principle than if we use the disuniformity principle.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Ludwig Fahrbach, Tanya Hall, and anonymous referees of this journal for useful comments. This paper was completed while I was visiting Department of Philosophy, University of California – San Diego in 2015. I thank Craig Callender, the Department Chair, for his hospitality.

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Correspondence to Seungbae Park.

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Park, S. The Uniformity Principle vs. the Disuniformity Principle. Acta Anal 32, 213–222 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-016-0302-3

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