A practical or pragmatic justification (“vindication”) applies to actions. The action concerned in the case of induction is the making of predictions, and—philosophically of prime importance—the adoption of such rules of procedure as will make the predictions maximally successful. Clearly all ordinary cases of the justification of actions utilize, and in this sense presuppose, inductions. (A prospector looking for gold presupposes that there is gold to be found somewhere in the area of his search. If he had no reason whatever for expecting gold there, we should call his belief irrational, a product of wishful thinking. Inductive evidence for the presence of gold is required.) When philosophers ask for a ground of induction in general the answer cannot be inductive evidence. This would be plainly circular or lead to an infinite regress. Hence we are here dealing with a limiting or degenerate case of justification. It is true that one important component of the meaning of such words as “reasonable” or “rational” is indeed the employment of inductive procedures. Many analytic philosophers rest their case right here and consider the quest for a justification of induction as a pseudo problem because, in their view, this quest comes down to asking “is it reasonable to be reasonable?” But—because of an ambiguity of the term “reasonable”—it is precisely here where the distinction between validation and vindication is helpful and points the way to one more step that can be taken in the overall justification of inductive inference.