Hostname: page-component-599cfd5f84-ncv4z Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-07T05:36:03.771Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Getting from P to Q: Valid Inferences and Heuristics1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Norman Swartz
Norman Swartz
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Epistemologists have known for two-and-a-half centuries that there are serious difficulties surrounding non-demonstrative inference. The best-known problem, the problem of induction, was first diagnosed by Hume (1739) in the Treatise. In our own century, several more problems were added, e.g., by Hempel (1945)—the paradox of the ravens—and by Goodman (1955)—the “new,” or exacerbated, problem of induction. But an even greater blow lay ahead: within the decade after Goodman's problem appeared, Gettier (1963) was to publish his famous challenge to the traditional analysis of knowledge which, again, underscored how problematic inductive inferences are.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , Fall 1993 , pp. 689 - 702
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brown, D. G. 1955a “Misconceptions of Inference.” Analysis, 14 (June): 135–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, D. G. 1955b “The Nature of Inference.” Philosophical Review, 114, 3 (July): 351–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gettier, Edmund 1963 “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Analysis, 23: 121–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman, Nelson 1955 Fact, Fiction and Forecast. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl G. 1965 “Studies in the Logic of Confirmation.” 1945. Rpt. in his Aspects of Scientific Explanation, pp. 3–51. New York: Free Press. Originally published in 1945 in Mind, 54: 1–26 and 97–121.Google Scholar
Hume, David 1960 A Treatise of Human Nature. 1739. Rpt. 1888. Edited by Selby-Bigge, L. A.. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Langley, Pat, Simon, Herbert A., Bradshaw, Gary L. and Zytkow, Jan M. 1987 Scientific Discovery: Computational Explorations of the Creative Process. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latcha, Alfred G. 1970 How Do You Figure It?: Modern Mental Exercises in Logic and Reasoning. Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes.Google Scholar
Nidditch, P. H. 1957 Introductory Formal Logic of Mathematics. London: University Tutorial Press.Google Scholar
Rescher, Nicholas 1976 Plausible Reasoning. Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
Sterelny, Kim 1990 “Arguing with Don Todd.” In Jennings, Raymond E., ed., Being and Somethingness: Essays in Honour of John Tietz, pp. 17–23. Burnaby, BC: Simon Fraser University.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1953 Philosophical Investigations. Translated by Anscombe, G. E. M., New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar