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What is the ‘Problem of Induction’?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

E. J. Lowe
E. J. Lowe
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

This paper falls into three parts. In the first I retrace the steps which, have led many to consider that there is a ‘problem of induction’ which may have only a sceptical solution. In the second I explain why I think we cannot rest content with such a solution. In the third I try to show how a new approach to certain key concepts in the philosophy of science—in particular the concept of natural law—may help towards a non-sceptical resolution of the problem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 62 , Issue 241 , July 1987 , pp. 325 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1987

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References

1 Cf. P. F., Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory (London: Methuen, 1952), 23.Google Scholar

2 Cf. W., Kneale, Probability and Induction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), 44.Google Scholar

3 Op. cit. note 1,235.

4 Ibid.

5 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, L. A., Selby-Bigge (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 35–6.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 34.

7 B., Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 34.Google ScholarPubMed

8 See further my ‘Instantiation, Identity and Constitution’, Philosophical Studies 44, No. 1 (July 1983), 45-59.Google ScholarPubMed

9 See K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1968), 63.Google ScholarPubMed

10 For an account of some of the ways in which I think formal logic needs reforming, see my ‘Laws, Dispositions and Sortal Logic’, American Philosophical Quarterly 19, No. 1 (January 1982), 41-50.Google Scholar

11 I discuss this point in more detail in my ‘Sortal Terms and Natural Laws’, American Philosophical Quarterly 17, No. 4 (October 1980), 253-260.Google Scholar

12 Cf. G. E. M., Anscombe and P. T., Geach, Three Philosophers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), 102.Google Scholar

13 See further my ‘Laws, Dispositions and Sortal Logic’, op. cit. note 10.

14 Cf. H., Putnam, ‘The Meaning of “Meaning”’, in his Mind, Language and Reality(Cambridge University Press, 1975).Google Scholar