This chapter contains sections titled: Hume's Problem of Induction Hume's Negative Argument concerning Induction.

Bayesian inference is limited in scope because it cannot be applied in idealized contexts where none of the hypotheses under consideration is true and because it is committed to always using the likelihood as a measure of evidential favouring, even when that is inappropriate. The purpose of this article is to study inductive inference in a very general setting where finding the truth is not necessarily the goal and where the measure of evidential favouring is not necessarily the likelihood. (...) I use an accuracy argument to argue for probabilism and I develop a new kind of argument to argue for two general updating rules, both of which are reasonable in different contexts. One of the updating rules has standard Bayesian updating, Bissiri et al.’s general Bayesian updating, Douven’s IBE-based updating, and Vassend’s ]) quasi-Bayesian updating as special cases. The other updating rule is novel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS HUME A SCEPTIC ABOUT INDUCTION? On a Would-be Revolution in the Interpretation of Hume's Philosophy The history of philosophy does not abound with great philosophers. But the number of those whose preoccupation is with the interpretation of the great philosophers' works is overwhelming. It is not surprising, therefore, that time and again we come upon arguments to the effect that a great philosopher has never been properly understood. (...) What, after all, could better justify one in adding still another paper or book to the number of works published yearly on any great philosopher, than the claim that one put forward a new interpretation; and what could be a more revolutionary interpretation than that which claims that a certain philosophy has been misunderstood altogether. This is not to say that real revolutions in the interpretation of major philosophical works are a priori precluded. It could possibly happen that generations of scholars have again and again been mistaken as to a philosopher's basic intentions. But one should certainly check and double-check any such revolutionary interpretation lest one fall a victim to it. In what follows I shall discuss a recent revolutionary interpretation concerning Hume's attitude toward induction. Hume scholars in the past have been at variance over many a question, but they all agreed that Hume was the first to present the problem of the justification of induction systematically. They also agreed that Hume tried to prove that induction cannot be justified: there is no convincing argument which could (without begging the question) demonstrate that inductively based predictions and theories are reasonable. According to this traditional view Hume's attitude to induction was of course sceptical. But lately T. Beauchamp and T. Mappes argued that this view was totally mistaken. They claim that Hume never grappled with the problem which came to be called the problem of the justification of induction; actually it does not appear in his writings. The view that Hume was bent on proving the impossibility of such a justification is simply erroneous. According to these philosophers had Hume discussed this problem at all he might well have either argued with Strawson that it was a pseudo-problem or tried with Reichenbach to justify induction pragmatically. If this interpretation is correct, we must conclude that the traditional view of Hume as a sceptical philosopher who denied the rationality of inductive inferences is false to the 2 point of being a mere fabrication. I shall analyse here some of the arguments advanced by Beauchamp and Mappes in order to expose some of their weak points. I shall try to show that however revolutionary their interpretation, it is only a would-be revolution. If I still find it worthwhile to discuss it at length, it is because their interpretation - as erroneous as it is raises a very important question about the consistency of Hume's philosophy. My aim is not merely to expose some of the vulnerable points of what I shall call the "revolutionary interpretation" but also to deal with the fundamental question it raises. II Beauchamp and Mappes argue that it never occurred to Hume to dispute the rationality of induction. He could doubt whether certain inductive inferences could pass the test of the established institutional standards of inductive reasoning, but the "external problem" of the justifiability of the entire institution of inductive reasoning was never raised by him. This interpretation is based on two kinds of arguments: the one, a general argument, has to do with the principles of Hume's philosophy and the other with textual considerations. According to the general argument the traditional view that Hume doubted the rationality of the empiricalinductive method is incompatible with well-known facts about Hume, such as his use of this very method, or his assertion that it was the major innovation of the Treatise. "Are we to believe", Beauchamp and Mappes ask, "that the most influential figure in modern empiricism, who wrote a Treatise using the empirical method, binds himself to a procedure whose conclusions cannot be given rational justification of any kind?"3 The textual underpinnings of the revolutionary interpretation are of two kinds: on the negative side it is maintained that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS HUME A SCEPTIC ABOUT INDUCTION? On a Would-be Revolution in the Interpretation of Hume's Philosophy The history of philosophy does not abound with great philosophers. But the number of those whose preoccupation is with the interpretation of the great philosophers' works is overwhelming. It is not surprising, therefore, that time and again we come upon arguments to the effect that a great philosopher has never been properly understood. (...) What, after all, could better justify one in adding still another paper or book to the number of works published yearly on any great philosopher, than the claim that one put forward a new interpretation; and what could be a more revolutionary interpretation than that which claims that a certain philosophy has been misunderstood altogether. This is not to say that real revolutions in the interpretation of major philosophical works are a priori precluded. It could possibly happen that generations of scholars have again and again been mistaken as to a philosopher's basic intentions. But one should certainly check and double-check any such revolutionary interpretation lest one fall a victim to it. In what follows I shall discuss a recent revolutionary interpretation concerning Hume's attitude toward induction. Hume scholars in the past have been at variance over many a question, but they all agreed that Hume was the first to present the problem of the justification of induction systematically. They also agreed that Hume tried to prove that induction cannot be justified: there is no convincing argument which could (without begging the question) demonstrate that inductively based predictions and theories are reasonable. According to this traditional view Hume's attitude to induction was of course sceptical. But lately T. Beauchamp and T. Mappes argued that this view was totally mistaken. They claim that Hume never grappled with the problem which came to be called the problem of the justification of induction; actually it does not appear in his writings. The view that Hume was bent on proving the impossibility of such a justification is simply erroneous. According to these philosophers had Hume discussed this problem at all he might well have either argued with Strawson that it was a pseudo-problem or tried with Reichenbach to justify induction pragmatically. If this interpretation is correct, we must conclude that the traditional view of Hume as a sceptical philosopher who denied the rationality of inductive inferences is false to the 2 point of being a mere fabrication. I shall analyse here some of the arguments advanced by Beauchamp and Mappes in order to expose some of their weak points. I shall try to show that however revolutionary their interpretation, it is only a would-be revolution. If I still find it worthwhile to discuss it at length, it is because their interpretation - as erroneous as it is raises a very important question about the consistency of Hume's philosophy. My aim is not merely to expose some of the vulnerable points of what I shall call the "revolutionary interpretation" but also to deal with the fundamental question it raises. II Beauchamp and Mappes argue that it never occurred to Hume to dispute the rationality of induction. He could doubt whether certain inductive inferences could pass the test of the established institutional standards of inductive reasoning, but the "external problem" of the justifiability of the entire institution of inductive reasoning was never raised by him. This interpretation is based on two kinds of arguments: the one, a general argument, has to do with the principles of Hume's philosophy and the other with textual considerations. According to the general argument the traditional view that Hume doubted the rationality of the empiricalinductive method is incompatible with well-known facts about Hume, such as his use of this very method, or his assertion that it was the major innovation of the Treatise. "Are we to believe", Beauchamp and Mappes ask, "that the most influential figure in modern empiricism, who wrote a Treatise using the empirical method, binds himself to a procedure whose conclusions cannot be given rational justification of any kind?"3 The textual underpinnings of the revolutionary interpretation are of two kinds: on the negative side it is maintained that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:141 HUME AND DEMONSTRATIVE KNOWLEDGE Little could be clearer than that Hume's sceptical arguments concerning induction and causation depend to some considerable extent on his contention that there can be no demonstrative arguments for matters of fact. An understanding of his use of the terms 'demonstration', 'demonstrative reasoning' etc., would seem to be a prerequisite for a satisfactory appraisal of those arguments. What is almost as (...) clear, however, is that these terms have so far evaded much critical discussion and, with one notable exception, it seems to be assumed that we know well enough what they mean. That exception is David Stove, whose book on Hume contains, among many good things, a boldly provocative discussion of these terms in relation to the sceptical argument. Stove has interesting things to say about the terms: I don't think that he is quite right, but then neither is he straightforwardly wrong. I shall present his account, and the one to which he is opposed, and then, after criticising both, I shall try to show why the truth lies elsewhere, and why we begin to approach Hume correctly only when we temper our fascination with the purely formal structures of argument. Inductive scepticism is, of course, that scepticism which claims that there can be neither knowledge nor reasonable beliefs about unobserved matters of fact. Thus inductive arguments, those arguments which attempt to ground beliefs in unobserved matters of fact are, under this scepticism, claimed to 142 be bad arguments. Deductively valid arguments are, of course, often good, but it seems that they are unable to be utilised in justifying beliefs in unobserved matters of fact. The problem of induction is thus that of explaining how these non-valid inductive arguments can be forceful, and Hume's scepticism about induction resides in his believing and arguing, or appearing to believe and to argue, that they cannot. Hume himself does not, however, use the terms 'inductive', 'deductive' and their cognates. Some translation has therefore been employed in getting from his writings to the rough and ready sketch of the problem of induction as presented above. Stove spends some considerable time on this, and there is surely nothing wrong with his careful glossing of Humes 'moral' and 'probable' arguments by our term 'induetive '. There are, however, good reasons to tread carefully where 'demonstrative' is concerned. Stove's remarks here are somewhat contentious, and before giving his version of what Hume's term means, I shall present what may be accounted the standard view. While Hume does not use the term 'deductive', he does make freguent use of 'demonstration' and its derivatives, and he uses these in such a way as to suggest that a gloss via our term 'deduction' will not be far off the mark. Consider, for example, the following passage: Our foregoing method of reasoning will easily convince us, that there can be no demonstrative arguments to prove, that those instances, of which we have had no experience, resemble those, of which we have had experience. We can at least conceive a change in the course of nature; which sufficiently proves, that such a change is not absolutely impossible. To form a clear idea of anything, is an 143 undeniable argument for its possibility, and is alone a refutation of any pretended argument against it. (T 89) His point here seems to be that as alternative states of affairs remain possible, and are thus compatible with all the evidence upon which is based the hypothesis about continuing uniformity, it cannot be claimed that the persistence of such uniformity is established by argument. A similar account will be given of the following passage from the Enquiry: When a man says, I have found, in all past instances, such sensible qualities conjoined with such secret powers: And when he says, Similar sensible gualities will always be conjoined with similar secret powers, he is not guilty of a tautology, nor are these propositions in any respect the same. You say that the one proposition is an inference from the other. But you must confess that the inference is not intuitive; neither is it demonstrative.... (E 37) It is tempting to understand Hume here as once again... (shrink)

Since the mid-1970s, scholars have recognized that the skeptical interpretation of Hume’s central argument about induction is problematic. The science of human nature presupposes that inductive inference is justified and there are endorsements of induction throughout Treatise Book I. The recent suggestion that I.iii.6 is confined to the psychology of inductive inference cannot account for the epistemic flavor of its claims that neither a genuine demonstration nor a non-question-begging inductive argument can establish the uniformity principle. For Hume, (...) that inductive inference is justified is part of the data to be explained. Bad argument is therefore excluded as the cause of inductive inference; and there is no good argument to cause it. Does this reinstate the problem of induction, undermining Hume’s own assumption that induction is justified? It does so only if justification must derive from “reason”, from the availability of a cogent argument. Hume rejects this internalist thesis; induction’s favorable epistemic status derives from features of custom, the mechanism that generates inductive beliefs. Hume is attracted to this externalist posture because it provides a direct explanation of the epistemic achievements of children and non-human animals—creatures that must rely on custom unsupplemented by argument. (shrink)

Since the mid-1970s, scholars have recognized that the skeptical interpretation of Hume's central argument about induction is problematic. The science of human nature presupposes that inductive inference is justified and there are endorsements of induction throughout "Treatise" Book I. The recent suggestion that I.iii.6 is confined to the psychology of inductive inference cannot account for the epistemic flavor of its claims that neither a genuine demonstration nor a non-question-begging inductive argument can establish the uniformity principle. For Hume, (...) that inductive inference is justified is part of the data to be explained. Bad argument is therefore excluded as the cause of inductive inference; and there is no good argument to cause it. Does this reinstate the problem of induction, undermining Hume's own assumption that induction is justified? It does so only if justification must derive from "reason", from the availability of a cogent argument. Hume rejects this internalist thesis; induction's favorable epistemic status derives from features of custom, the mechanism that generates inductive beliefs. Hume is attracted to this externalist posture because it provides a direct explanation of the epistemic achievements of children and non-human animals — creatures that must rely on custom unsupplemented by argument. (shrink)

A conceptual analysis of the problem of induction suggests that the difficulty of justifying probabilistic reasoning depends on a mistaken comparison between deductive and inductive inference. Inductive reasoning is accordingly thought to stand in need of special justification because it does not measure up to the standard of conditional absolute certainty guaranteed by deductive validity. When comparison is made, however, it appears that deductive reasoning is subject to a counterpart argument that is just as threatening to the (...) justification of deductive as to inductive inference. Trying to explain induction in such a way that it satisfies a special justificatory requirement in contrast with deduction is therefore not the way to justify induction. An alternative approach is sought in a style of justification developed by Aristotle for the law of noncontradiction and by Kant for the conclusions of transcendental reasoning that with variations can be used to justify both deduction and induction. This strategy upholds a principle when the principle must be presupposed even to raise doubts about the principle's justification. (shrink)

A conceptual analysis of the problem of induction suggests that the difficulty of justifying probabilistic reasoning depends on a mistaken comparison between deductive and inductive inference. Inductive reasoning is accordingly thought to stand in need of special justification because it does not measure up to the standard of conditional absolute certainty guaranteed by deductive validity. When comparison is made, however, it appears that deductive reasoning is subject to a counterpart argument that is just as threatening to the (...) justification of deductive as to inductive inference. Trying to explain induction in such a way that it satisfies a special justificatory requirement in contrast with deduction is therefore not the way to justify induction. An alternative approach is sought in a style of justification developed by Aristotle for the law of noncontradiction and by Kant for the conclusions of transcendental reasoning that with variations can be used to justify both deduction and induction. This strategy upholds a principle when the principle must be presupposed even to raise doubts about the principle's justification. (shrink)

It has been common wisdom for centuries that scientific inference cannot be deductive; if it is inference at all, it must be a distinctive kind of inductive inference. According to demonstrative theories of induction, however, important scientific inferences are not inductive in the sense of requiring ampliative inference rules at all. Rather, they are deductive inferences with sufficiently strong premises. General considerations about inferences suffice to show that there is no difference in justification between (...) an inference construed demonstratively or ampliatively. The inductive risk may be shouldered by premises or rules, but it cannot be shirked. Demonstrative theories of induction might, nevertheless, better describe scientific practice. And there may be good methodological reasons for constructing our inferences one way rather than the other. By exploring the limits of these possible advantages, I argue that scientific inference is neither of essence deductive nor of essence inductive. (shrink)

An original study of the philosophical problems associated with inductive reasoning. Like most of the main questions in epistemology, the classical problem of induction arises from doubts about a mode of inference used to justify some of our most familiar and pervasive beliefs. The experience of each individual is limited and fragmentary, yet the scope of our beliefs is much wider; and it is the relation between belief and experience, in particular the belief that the future will in (...) some respects resemble the past and the unobserved the observed, which forms the subject of this book. Dr Blackburn's first aim is to state the problem of induction properly, to show that there does exist a genuine problem immune to the solutions in vogue at present, yet no tin principle insoluble. He gives an extended and original account of the concept of a reason and goes on to discuss prediction. In the end Dr Blackburn produces a rationale for belief in certain short-term predictions based on his reinterpretation of the classical principle of indifference. He claims that a justification for induction can be found along the lines he has suggested and must indeed be found there if anywhere. (shrink)

Epistemological naturalists reject the demand for a priori justification of empirical knowledge; no such thing is possible. Observation reports, being the foundation of empirical knowledge, are neither justified by other sentences, nor certain; but they may be agreed upon as starting points for inductive reasoning and they function as implicit definitions of predicates used. Making inductive generalisations from observations is a basic habit among humans. We do that without justification, but we have strong intuitions that some (...) class='Hi'>inductive generalisations will fail, while for some other we have better hopes. Why? This is the induction problem according to Goodman. He suggested that some predicates are projectible when becoming entrenched in language. This is a step forward, but not entirely correct. Inductions result in universally generalised conditionals and these contain two predicates, one in the antecedent, one in the consequent. Counterexamples to preliminary inductive generalisations can be dismissed by refining the criteria of application for these predicates. This process can be repeated until the criteria for application of the predicate in the antecedent includes the criteria for the predicate in the consequent, in which case no further counterexample is possible. If that is the case we have arrived at a law. Such laws are implicit definitions of theoretical predicates. An accidental generalisation has not this feature, its predicates are unrelated. Laws are said to be necessary, which may be interpreted as ‘“Laws” are necessarily true’. ‘Necessarily true’ is thus a semantic predicate, not a modal operator. In addition, laws, being definitions, are necessarily true in the sense of being necessary assumptions for further use of the predicates implicitly defined by such laws. Induction, when used in science, is thus our way of inventing useful scientific predicates; it is a heuristic, not an inference principle. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, cognitive science has identified several forms of reasoning that make essential use of conceptual knowledge. Despite significant theoretical and empirical progress, there is still no unified framework for understanding how concepts are used in reasoning. This paper argues that the theory of conceptual spaces is capable of filling this gap. Our strategy is to demonstrate how various inference mechanisms which clearly rely on conceptual information—including similarity, typicality, and diagnosticity-based reasoning—can be modeled using principles derived (...) from conceptual spaces. Our first topic analyzes the role of expectations in inductive reasoning and their relation to the structure of our concepts. We examine the relationship between using generic expressions in natural language and common-sense reasoning as a second topic. We propose that the strength of a generic can be described by distances between properties and prototypes in conceptual spaces. Our third topic is category-based induction. We demonstrate that the theory of conceptual spaces can serve as a comprehensive model for this type of reasoning. The final topic is analogy. We review some proposals in this area, present a taxonomy of analogical relations, and show how to model them in terms of distances in conceptual spaces. We also briefly discuss the implications of the model for reasoning with concepts in artificial systems. (shrink)

This work explores two lesser known aspects of Georg Lukács's thought: his conception of language and theory of science, and his achievements in literary history. This book defends Lukács's concept of rationality and presents an original argument demonstrating that there are good reasons for choosing rationalism; that is, it is possible to establish the foundations of rationalism. Internationally unknown aspects of Lukács's oeuvre are also investigated, making extensive use of a number of his untranslated writings. János Kelemen's main statement is (...) that, for the reader, the most important motif of Lukács's thought is its defense of reason. Students and scholars of philosophy, political science, literary theory, and the humanities will be interested in this book. (shrink)

This is a commentary on Adrian Heathcote’s interesting paper ‘Hume’s Master Argument’. Heathcote contends that No-Ought-From-Is is primarily a logical thesis, a ban on Is/Ought inferences which Hume derives from the logic of Ockham. NOFI is thus a variation on what Heathcote calls ‘Hume’s Master Argument’, which he also deploys to prove that conclusions about the future (and therefore a-temporal generalizations) cannot be derived by reason from premises about the past, and that conclusions about external objects or other (...) minds cannot be derived by reason from premises about impressions. Heathcote raises an important question. Having (apparently) argued that our inductive inferences are not justified by reason, Hume puts them down to Custom, and seems to suggest that we OUGHT to indulge this propensity but NOt the superstitious propensities that lead to religious belief. (Query: Why is it right to indulge one non-rational propensity but not the others?) Finally Heathcote argues that just as there are valid, but not formally valid, arguments taking us from claims about inferential relations to claims about what we ought to believe, so there may be valid, but not formally valid, arguments taking us from factual claims about some situation to claims about what we ought to do. -/- I reply that Hume does indeed have a Master Argument and that it does rely on logical principles but not on the logic of Ockham which had been largely forgotten by Hume’s day. Instead Hume relies on the idea widely believed in the 18th Century and taught to Hume at Edinburgh by his logic Professor Colin Drummond, that in a logically valid argument the conclusion is contained in the premises. I reconstruct Hume’s Master Argument using this principle. I draw a careful distinction between two theses: 1) that we cannot get from non-moral premises to moral conclusions with the aid of logic alone and 2) that we cannot get from non-moral premises to moral conclusions with aid of analytic bridge principles. Hume believed the first but not the second. What then is the role of NOFI in the larger argument of the Treatise? To show that the truths of ethics cannot be derived via logic from self-evident truths of some other kind and thus that they are not demonstrable. How can we make sense of Hume’s apparent belief that it is sometimes right to transcend reason and sometimes not? In the case of Custom, we live in a world governed by causal regularities, and, in such a world, induction is in fact a fairly reliable belief-forming mechanism. Thus a suitably qualified spectator (one aware of the kind of world we live in) would tend to approve of indulging it, even if it cannot be justified by reason. However, our superstitious propensities are (and can be known to be) unreliable, since they produce different and inconsistent results in different people. Thus it is it is wrong (something a suitably qualified spectator would disapprove of) to indulge the faculty of Superstition. I also take issue with Heathcote’s penchant for valid, but not formally valid, inferences. I supply the missing premises for Heathcote’s Is/Ought inferences and argue that they are either not true or not necessary. (shrink)

Commentaries on Hume's Treatise 1.4.1, "Of scepticism with regard to reason," have focused on the argument that an initial lack of certainty concerning the conclusion of an inference gradually diminishes to zero. In my view, Hume offers this famous argument only after, and as corollary to, a far more interesting skeptical argument concerning demonstrative reasoning, which occurs at the very beginning of Treatise 1.4.1. I focus on this neglected argument, point to its Cartesian roots, and draw a distinction (...) between ordinary doubts and a radical skeptical doubt about the inevitable interference of fallible faculties in our demonstrative inferences. Hume suggests that, in common life and science, solutions to ordinary doubts concerning human fallibility themselves rely on causal reasoning-that we have applied inferential rules correctly in any given instance is a "matters of fact" conclusion, thus it is supported by the only kind of evidence that such a conclusion can have. Hume's argument brilliantly reverses the force of the increased confidence normally acquired on the basis of such causal reasoning. Once we have realized, in the radically skeptical frame of mind, that in our attempts to improve and evaluate demonstrative reasoning we use merely causal reasoning, there is no longer the hope of a progressive adjustment of the exercise of our faculties to an assumed objective validity of our demonstrative rules. The increase in assurance by causal methods only amounts to "the addition of new probabilities," and there is no gradual transition from probability to demonstratively certain knowledge. Hume thereby reaches a radical skeptical doubt regarding the possibility of our ever attaining genuinely certain demonstrative knowledge - and, unlike Descartes, he reaches this doubt without the external device of an all-powerful deceiver. Los comentarios sobre la sección "Of scepticism with regard to reason" en A Treatise on Human Nature de David Hume se han concentrado en el argumento según el cual, la falta inicial de convicción certera acerca de la conclusión de una inferencia cualquiera disminuye gradualmente a cero. Sostengo que Hume ofrece este famoso argumento solamente después y como corolario de un argumento escéptico mucho más interesante acerca del razonamiento deductivo, el cual aparece al principio de esta sección. Me concentro en este primer argumento, señalo sus raíces cartesianas, y establezco una distinción entre dudas comunes y una duda escéptica radical acerca de la interferencia inevitable, en nuestros razonamientos deductivos, de facultades mentales falibles. Hume sugiere que, en la vida cotidiana y en la ciencia, las soluciones a las dudas acerca de la falibilidad humana, en sí mismas se apoyan en razonamientos de carácter causal: si hemos aplicado correctamente una regla inferencial o no, en una instancia específica, es en sí misma una conclusión acerca de lo que Hume llama "matters of fact". Por lo tanto, está basada en el único tipo de evidencia que tal conclusión puede poseer. El argumento brillante de Hume invierte negativamente la confianza creciente que normalmente adquirimos sobre la base de tal razonamiento causal. Una vez que tomamos en cuenta, desde el punto de vista escéptico radical, que en nuestros intentos de mejorar y evaluar razonamientos deductivos usamos meramente razonamientos causales, se cierra la posibilidad de ajustar progresivamente el ejercicio de nuestras facultades mentales a una supuesta validez objetiva de las reglas de deducción. El aumento de la confianza en nuestras inferencias está basado en métodos causales, por lo tanto resulta en "la adición de nuevas probabilidades", y no existe una transición gradual desde la probabilidad más alta hasta el conocimiento certero demostrativo. De esta manera, Hume llega a una duda escéptica radical acerca de la posibilidad de lograr conocimiento demostrativo genuinamente certero. A diferencia de Descartes, Hume obtiene esta duda radical sin apelar a un elemento externo a nuestras facultades mentales, tal como el todopoderoso que engaña en la Primera Meditación de Descartes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Inductive Scepticism and Experimental Reasoning in Moral Subjects in Hume's Philosophy Anne Jaap Jacobson According to its title page, Hume's Treatise Concerning HumanNature is An ATTEMPT to introduce the experimental Method ofReasoning INTO MORAL SUBJECTS."1 And from the first section onwards, Hume makes statements about the human mind which are given an unqualified generality;An Enquiry ConcerningHuman Understanding is marked by a similar assurance that much about human understanding (...) can be known. Because of this, exegesis which attributes to Hume an unrestrained scepticism about the experimental method appears to attribute to him inconsistency on such a scale as to render the interpretation itselfquestionable. Nonetheless, there is, atleast on the face ofit, considerable justification for ascribing to Hume just such a scepticism. In this paper I explore sceptical features, some ofthem important but little noticed, in Hume's treatment of causality and our beliefs about the unobserved. Though I end by suggestinghow to avoidviewing Hume in this area as simply lamentably inconsistent, Hume's use of the experimental method doesremain problematic, as, I suggest, Hume himselfthought. The first three of the following sections in this paper treat connected themes in Hume's philosophy which, when taken together, present us with a very sceptical view of experimental reasoning. I. Necessity as projected impression Hume holds that our beliefs about causality in the objects are in large part the result of a projection of an internal impression of (some kind of) necessity. The thesis ofprojection is not entirely straightforward; to see this, let us ask the question, is the impression which is projected semantically simple or complex? There are excellentreasonsforregarding the impression as simple as Hume conceives of "simple" in this context. Hume himselfappears to sayitis simple (E 64, n. 1). Andmuch of Hume's discussion ofnecessity is driven by the principle that there can be no idea without a preceding impression, and this principle applies only to simple ideas. But the consequent reading is far from satisfactory. To see the problem, let us look at what seems to be the Volume XV Number 2 325 ANNE JAAP JACOBSON most entrenched understanding ofHume, one perhaps amark ofKemp Smith's influence. This is the view that Hume is saying that the impression source of our idea of necessity is a feeling of anticipation. The problem is this: ifa feeling ofanticipation is a simple impression, it is not at all clear that the impression can do the job Hume has for it. Remember that if the impression is in content itselfrelational, then it is not a simple impression on Hume's own account, since ideas of relations are for him complex (T 13). Hence, we might take the impression to be of the sort described by Stroud, according to whom the impression yielding our idea of necessity is semantically unrelated to the elements of the relation. But such a reading robs Hume of the explanatory position he so clearly thinks he has. If we have a semantically simple impression it becomes a mystery why the spreading has the effects that it does: when we transfer the determination ofthe thought to external objects, andsuppose any real intelligible connexion betwixt them. (T 168, my emphasis) Why does spreading some simple, indefinable feeling result in our supposing there is a real intelligible connection between the objects on which the mind has spread? To get this result it looks as though the mind will have tomake two mistakes: thefirstmistake is the spreading, and the second mistake consists in the mind's inferring from the experience of the impression as spread that somehow the causal inference itself is also out there in nature as an intelligible connection. But, while Hume does sometimes seem to suggest we make this sort of two-step error (T 223, for example), such a picture makes it seem that the impression spread is not really the semantic source of (that is, wholly determinate of the content of) our idea ofnecessity. Rather, on the two-step error model, our belief that there are connections enters as a result of an inference following upon the spreading; however, for Hume, an inference is not the way an impression ofX gives rise to an idea ofX... (shrink)

CL diagrams – the abbreviation of Cubus Logicus – are inspired by J.C. Lange’s logic machine from 1714. In recent times, Lange’s diagrams have been used for extended syllogistics, bitstring semantics, analogical reasoning and many more. The paper presents a method for testing statistical syllogisms (also called proportional syllogisms or inductive syllogisms) by using CL diagrams.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume and the Lockean Background: Induction and the Uniformity Principle David Owen Introduction What has come to be called Hume's problem of induction is special in many ways. It is arguably his most important and influential argument, especially when seen in its overall context of the more general argument about causaUty. It has come to be one of the great "standard problems" ofphilosophyandyetis,by most accounts, almost unique in having (...) no ancient precursor. Interestingly, the argument is frequently presented in terms that the author never used. Itis difficult for us not to think of the problem in terms of the contrast between deductive vs. inductive reasoning (or logic, or whatever). But this is a contrast nowhere to be found in Hume: he talks of demonstrative vs. probable (or moral) reasoning. Hume uses the word "induction" only twice in the Treatise1 and in neither case is it clear that the word is used toreportapieceofprobablereasoning.2One ofthefewoccurrences of"deduce" or "deducing" occurs in the second Enquiry, where he talks about "following the experimental method, and deducing general maximsfrom acomparisonofparticularinstances,"3hardlyaparadigm of what we would call deductive reasoning.4 Many modern studies of Hume that make a real attempt to understand what Hume meant by demonstration and probability, in the context of his argument about induction, tend towards the ahistorical,6 treating Hume's writings as contemporary texts. But failure to take into account some of the background concerning the nature of demonstrative and probable reason makes it unlikely, I think, that we can understand Hume's argument. Part ofthe problem is the failure to identify Hume's targets in that famous negative argument about induction (vague reference is sometimes made to the "rationalists") and part of the problem is identifying the role the uniformity principle plays in Hume's famous argumentand thelightitsheds on the conception ofprobablereasoning Hume was attacking. In this paper I want to argue that a careful look at Locke solves some ofthese problems: he has a well developed view ofdemonstrative and probable reasoning, his confidence in conformity as a ground of probability is a Ukely target of Hume's attack and his Volume XVIII Number 2 179 DAVID OWEN accountshedsmuchlightonwhatrole the principleofuniformitymight play in Hume's account.6 Of course, at a certain level of philosophical abstraction it is irrelevant whether we have understood what Hume "really meant." Theproblemofinductionhas emergedas a central onein epistemology, philosophical logic, and philosophy of science. It would be an interesting question in philosophical historiography to trace the development ofthe "problem" from Hume's time to our own but that is not my task here. I trust one needs no justification for taking an historical look at a famous problem rather than tackling the problem head-on in one's own terms. But if one is needed, here is mine: sometimes, by looking at a problem from a different, historical perspective, one sees a different problem or afamiliar problem in a new light. One's philosophical horizons are broadened. Furthermore, one may make an interesting historical discovery, or at least draw some interesting historical connections. I take it as uncontroversial that Locke, following Descartes, rejected a formal, logical account of demonstrative reasoning. Instead ofusing a formal, syllogistic account ofhow two propositions can entail a third, Locke concentrated on the relation two ideas bear one to another.7 Thus a demonstration, for Locke, getsits force, notfrom what we would call a deductive relation between one set of propositions (.the premises) and anotherproposition (the conclusion), butrather from the relation one idea bears to another, either directly, or via a chain of intermediate ideas. It is true that Locke frequently talks of inferring one proposition from another, but this is always cashed out in terms of relations ofideas via a chain ofintermediate ideas.8 It is also true that Locke occasionally uses the terms "deduce" and "deduction." But these are never used in our sense that has to do with formal deductive validity. Rather, they are simply used loosely in the informal sense of "argue" or "infer," and "argument" or "inference."9 In the rest of this paper, all uses ofthe word"deduction" andits cognates shouldbe taken as having the modern sense, unless flagged as having "Locke... (shrink)

Definition of the problem:Truog’s critique of the ”brain death” concept outlines inconsistencies well understood in the U.S. ethical debate, while he is one of the first to suggest returning to the traditional, coherent concept of death, thus breaking with the ”dead-donorrule.” The German transplantation law of 1996 endorses equating ”brain death” with death. A defeated draft, however, had acknowledged that irreversible total brain failure is a death-near state with a zero prognosis; organ harvesting, then, was to be allowed only in (...) case of prior personal consent. The politically effective objection against this concept was its admitted violation of the dead-donorrule and thus its (incorrectly) alleged precedent potential for legalising active euthanasia. Truog’s suggestion to justify organ explantation on the grounds of ”consent and nonmaleficence” would have fuelled German counter-critics had they known it. The problem is how to justify organ harvesting after breaking the dead-donorrule. Arguments: With the allegation that ”imminent death” and ”irreversible coma” allow concluding that there is ”no harm,” Truog ironically returns to the weak arguments traditionally used to support the ”brain death” concept. His suggestion opens the door to a wide array of eligible organ donors (and, indeed, to a precedential case for active euthanasia). The euphemistic tradition of the ”brain death” concept, perhaps a prominent reason for public scepticism towards transplantation, will be perpetuated unless it is acknowledged that the interference of organ explantation with the donor’s dying process does as such constitute ”harm” to this individual. Organ harvesting, then, requires prior personal consent and needs to be clearly differentiable from any act of ”killing” if it is to be compatible with the law, acceptable to surgeons and not a precedent for active euthanasia. A close look at the actual procedure reveals that consent has invariably the effect of prolonging, not shortening the factual life span of the person in whom irreversible total brain failure has been diagnosed. This peculiarity distinguishes organ explantation from all other forms of terminating a person’s life and is not congruent with the ethical and legal notion of ”killing”. Conclusion: Breaking the dead-donorrule by allowing for the donor to give prior personal consent to organ explantation as a procedure that is going to interfere with his or her dying can be justified, informed consent provided, without setting foot on a slippery slope. (shrink)

Medical diagnosis has been traditionally recognized as a privileged field of application for so called probabilistic induction. Consequently, the Bayesian theorem, which mathematically formalizes this form of inference, has been seen as the most adequate tool for quantifying the uncertainty surrounding the diagnosis by providing probabilities of different diagnostic hypotheses, given symptomatic or laboratory data. On the other side, it has also been remarked that differential diagnosis rather works by exclusion, e.g. by modus tollens, i.e. deductively. By drawing on a (...) case history, this paper aims at clarifying some points on the issue. Namely: 1) Medical diagnosis does not represent, strictly speaking, a form of induction, but a type, of what in Peircean terms should be called ‘abduction’ (identifying a case as the token of a specific type); 2) in performing the single diagnostic steps, however, different inferential methods are used for both inductive and deductive nature: modus tollens, hypothetical-deductive method, abduction; 3) Bayes’ theorem is a probabilized form of abduction which uses mathematics in order to justify the degree of confidence which can be entertained on a hypothesis given the available evidence; 4) although theoretically irreconcilable, in practice, both the hypothetical- deductive method and the Bayesian one, are used in the same diagnosis with no serious compromise for its correctness; 5) Medical diagnosis, especially differential diagnosis, also uses a kind of “probabilistic modus tollens”, in that, signs (symptoms or laboratory data) are taken as strong evidence for a given hypothesis not to be true: the focus is not on hypothesis confirmation, but instead on its refutation [Pr (¬ H/E1, E2, …, En)]. Especially at the beginning of a complicated case, odds are between the hypothesis that is potentially being excluded and a vague “other”. This procedure has the advantage of providing a clue of what evidence to look for and to eventually reduce the set of candidate hypotheses if conclusive negative evidence is found. 6) Bayes’ theorem in the hypothesis-confirmation form can more faithfully, although idealistically, represent the medical diagnosis when the diagnostic itinerary has come to a reduced set of plausible hypotheses after a process of progressive elimination of candidate hypotheses; 7) Bayes’ theorem is however indispensable in the case of litigation in order to assess doctor’s responsibility for medical error by taking into account the weight of the evidence at his disposal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hume's Defence of Causal InferenceDon GarrettFred Wilson. Hume's Defence of Causal Inference. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Pp. xii + 439. Cloth, $80.00.According to its introduction, this book "deals solely with the problem of induction [and] solely with the issue of whether Hume is a sceptic with regard to causation and scientific reason" (p. 6). Wilson concludes that although Hume rejects "objective" necessary connections, he is (...) not a sceptic—or at least, no more than a fallibilist "academic" sceptic—about induction. In contrast to several relatively recent commentators, he accepts the traditional view that Hume did pose a general sceptical problem about induction. One of Wilson's many formulations of that problem (111) is this: "How can [inductive] inference habits be justified, shown to be reasonable?" According to Wilson, Hume raised this problem and offered a solution to it. In fact, he holds, Hume provided at least the outlines of the correct solution.The book consists of just three chapters, but each chapter is over one hundred pages long. Not surprisingly, then, it is not really devoted solely to the question of whether Hume was or was not a sceptic about induction. In fact, the book takes up a wide variety of other related topics, incorporating considerable amounts of material [End Page 126] from no fewer than thirteen of Wilson's previously-published articles. It helpfully formalizes arguments wherever possible.The first chapter is a series of set-pieces intended to prepare the way for more tightly focused discussion of Hume's treatment of inductive scepticism. Topics include Hume's two definitions of 'cause,' necessary connections, dispositions, mental activity, the epistemology of scientific instruments, and Hume's treatment of "scepticism with regard to the senses." One recurring theme is that Hume is no proto-Kantian about mental activity or the universality of causation; another is the importance to Hume of his "Rules by which to judge of causes and effects."The second chapter is the centerpiece of the book, for it is here that Wilson tries to show how Hume justifies inductive scientific reasoning. The justification, as Wilson reconstructs it, has two steps. The first step is to argue that we ought to make inductive inferences on the grounds that (as a matter of psychological necessity) we must make such inferences. But this is only half the battle, since there are various ways to make inductive inferences and various strategies and influences that might or might not be allowed to affect the outcome. Hume's chosen way of making inductive inferences, Wilson argues, is the scientific method of "eliminative induction," as embodied in the "Rules by which to judge of causes and effects." Hume's strategy for justifying this method, according to Wilson, is to show that it is "reasonable" by showing that it is the method best suited for a particular practical purpose—namely, the purpose of satisfying our passion of "curiosity." This passion aims not only at the pleasure of exercising our faculties, but also at the achievement of truth, or at least (what seems rather different) of a system of beliefs that will prove "satisfactory to the mind." Accordingly, Wilson takes Hume to argue that using the method of eliminative induction embodied in the "Rules" constitutes "the best we can do" by way of discovering the truth of generalizations and that experience shows other methods to be less satisfactory in attaining the truth. Of course, a method's being the best we can do does not in itself entail that it is good enough to warrant adoption; and to treat the past successes or failures of a particular method as indicative of its future success or failure is to rely on induction itself. Presumably, then, Wilson's Hume is meant to regard the inductive arguments showing the "reasonableness" of the "Rules" as themselves among the inductions that any human being ultimately must accept, regardless of specific methods, strategies, or influences.The book's third and final chapter takes up the challenge posed by the section of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature entitled "Of scepticism with regard to reason," in which Hume argues that "all the rules of logic... (shrink)

Inductive thinking is a universal human habit; we generalise from our experiences the best we can. The induction problem is to identify which observed regularities provide reasonable justification for inductive conclusions. In the natural sciences, we can often use strict laws in making successful inferences about unobserved states of affairs. In the social sciences, by contrast, we have no strict laws, only regularities which most often are conditioned on ceteris paribus clauses. This makes it much more difficult (...) to make reliable inferences in the social sciences. In particular, we want knowledge about general causal relations in order to be able to determine what to do in order to achieve a certain state of affairs. Knowledge about causal relations that are also valid in the future requires experiments or so called ‘natural experiments’. Only knowledge derived from such experiences enable us to draw reasonably reliable inferences about how to act in order to achieve our goals. (shrink)

Abduction, deduction and induction are different forms of inference in science. However, only a few attempts have been made to introduce the idea of abductive reasoning as an extended way of thinking about clinical practice in nursing research. The aim of this paper was to encourage critical reflections about abductive reasoning based on three empirical examples from nursing research and includes three research questions on what abductive reasoning is, how the process has taken place, and how knowledge about abductive reasoning (...) based on the examples can inform nursing research and clinical practice. The study has a descriptive and explorative approach using a convenience sample of three empirical studies from nursing research. The three studies illustrate different ways to enter the abductive reasoning process in steps. They represent new caring models, which offer visual and cognitive maps for expanding nursing research, education and thus informing care. Therefore, we suggest that abductive reasoning may be beneficial for different ways of knowing and demonstrates scientific innovation to shed new light on health phenomena, which can help researchers and practitioners to gain a broader and deeper understanding of nursing care inquiry. However, more studies are needed to broaden this scope. (shrink)

Over the last three years Hume’s use of the term “a priori” has suddenly become very topical. Three discussions, by Stephen Buckle, myself, and Houston Smit, all focusing on Hume’s argument concerning induction in Section IV of the Enquiry, have independently picked up on this question, which seems previously to have gone almost unnoticed.1 That there is an issue here can be seen by examining what Hume says when considering the foundation of our inferences concerning matter of fact; why, (...) for example, we expect a billiard ball to move in a particular way when struck by another: “I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of [cause and effect] is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience … Let an object be presented to a man of ever so strong natural reason and abilities; if that object be entirely new to him, he will not be able, by the most accurate examination of its sensible qualities, to discover any of its causes or effects. … No object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to the senses, either the causes, which produced it, or the effects, which will arise from it; nor can our reason, unassisted by experience, ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact.” (E 27, 4.6) In this passage Hume is clearly allowing an object’s “qualities which appear to the senses” as being available to Reason “unassisted by experience”. So what he counts as “experience” seems essentially to involve some memory of prior experience, rather than merely current experience. (shrink)

Advance directives (ADs) have for some time been championed by ethicists and patient associations alike as a tool that people newly diagnosed with dementia, or prior to onset, may use to ensure that their future care and treatment are organized in accordance with their interests. The idea is that autonomous people, not yet neurologically affected by dementia, can design directives for their future care that caregivers are morally obligated to respect because they have been designed by autonomous individuals. In this (...) paper, we first criticize the idea that ADs can retain moral authority in severe dementia by arguing that it is paradoxical. Second, we consider two arguments that initially seem to refute this critique of ADs, but we eventually dismiss them. The first argument states that ADs retain moral authority in severe dementia because autonomously formed interests, for example, ADs, can only be appropriately discarded by autonomous persons. This we term the historical autonomy argument. We dismiss it by demonstrating how we, in analog cases, are not obligated to continue to respect autonomously formed interests even though they have been discarded under nonappropriate conditions. The second argument is that ADs can be justified by what we term external interests. While we agree that people with severe dementia plausible can be said to have external interests, we show that ADs cannot express such interests and hence cannot be justified by them. We conclude that none of the discussed arguments support the use of ADs and because of this, the idea of ADs should be reassigned. (shrink)

Hume’s view of reason is notoriously hard to pin down, not least because of the apparently contradictory positions which he appears to adopt in different places. The problem is perhaps most clear in his writings concerning induction - in his famous argument of Treatise I iii 6 and Enquiry IV, on the one hand, he seems to conclude that “probable inference” has no rational basis, while elsewhere, for example in much of his writing on natural theology, he seems happy (...) to acknowledge that such inference is not only reasonable, but is even a paradigm of reasoning against which the theistic arguments must be judged. In the face of this apparent contradiction, many recent commentators have proferred “non-sceptical” interpretations of Hume’s argument concerning induction, but in this paper I sketch an alternative and perhaps less radical method of resolving the problem, by identifying a major threefold ambiguity in Hume’s use of the word “reason”. On this interpretation, Hume indeed sees induction as a paradigm of reasonableness in what is arguably the most important sense, but he nevertheless believes induction to be entirely non-reasonable in another sense, which though less important in common life is nevertheless very significant philosophically. A comparison with Locke can help to illuminate Hume’s position, which though indeed not entirely sceptical about induction, is by no means entirely non-sceptical either. (shrink)

This dissertation develops, justifies, and examines the jurisprudential implications of a non-monotonic theory of common law legal reasoning. Legal rules seem to have exceptions but identifying all of them is difficult. This hinders attempts to formalize legal rules using classical logics. Non-monotonic logics allow defeasible inference, permitting rules that hold generally but can be defeated in the presence of exceptions. This ameliorates the problem of characterizing all exceptions to a rule, because exceptions can be added piecemeal while the rule remains. (...) The first portion of the dissertation rebuts a prominent criticism leveled at a large class of theories of legal reasoning that includes my theory. The charge is that no coherent theory can recognize both the difference between distinguishing and overruling, and the constraint of precedent. The critics argue that is more important than and that can only be explained by monotonic legal rules. Drawing on cognitive psychology as well as legal theory, I show that coherent theories, such as my own, can accommodate both and. The second chapter provides motivation for understanding precedential constraint in terms of non-monotonic default rules and introduces my positive theory, which elaborates on John Horty's work in treating legal rules as prioritized defaults involving reasons. I motivate and implement a relaxation of Horty's restrictions on the form of rules to allow a more fine-grained characterization of precedent. Finally, I explore the relationship between these relaxations and the concept of precedent. The final section explains how my theory fits into the traditional jurisprudential ecosystem. I demonstrate that, contrary to assertions in the legal theory literature, this non-monotonic approach is entirely compatible with positivism's commitment to extracting rules from authoritative legal sources, namely court opinions. I also suggest how it might be attractive to law and economics theorists, pragmatists, and followers of Dworkin. (shrink)

Inferences from the absence of evidence to something are common in ordinary speech, but when used in scientific argumentations are usually considered deficient or outright false. Yet, as demonstrated here with the help of various examples, archaeologists frequently use inferences and reasoning from absence, often allowing it a status on par with inferences from tangible evidence. This discrepancy has not been examined so far. The article analyses it drawing on philosophical discussions concerning the validity of inference (...) from absence, using probabilistic models that were originally developed to show that such inferences are weak and inconclusive. The analysis reveals that inference from absence can indeed be justified in many important situations of archaeological research, such as excavations carried out to explore the past existence and time-span of sedentary human habitation. The justification is closely related to the fact that archaeology explores the human past via its material remains. The same analysis points to instances where inference from absence can have comparable validity in other historical sciences, and to research questions in which archaeological inference from absence will be problematic or totally unwarranted. (shrink)

We are often justified in acting on the basis of evidential confirmation. I argue that such evidence supports belief in non-quantificational generic generalizations, rather than universally quantified generalizations. I show how this account supports, rather than undermines, a Bayesian account of confirmation. Induction from confirming instances of a generalization to belief in the corresponding generic is part of a reasoning instinct that is typically (but not always) correct, and allows us to approximate the predictions that formal epistemology would make.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Hume's Skepticism about Inductive Inference N. SCOTT ARNOLD IT HAS BEEN A COMMONPLACE among commentators on Hume's philosophy that he was a radical skeptic about inductive inference. In addition, he is alleged to have been the first philosopher to pose the so-called problem of induction. Until recently, however, Hume's argument in this connection has not been subject to very close scrutiny. As attention has become focused (...) on this argument, a debate has been shaping up concerning just what Hume intended to establish here. The principal purpose of this article is to settle this interpretive issue as decisively as the texts permit. I should also like to locate Hume's main argument about induction in the larger context of his discussion of skepti- cism in book 1 of the Treatise. I shall suggest that arguments for the radical skepticism commonly attributed to Hume can be found only very late in book 1 of the Treatise and that the most famous argument about inductive inference establishes and is intended to establish only a relatively modest form of skepticism. The argument under consideration can found in book l, part 3, section 6 of the Treatise. It can also be found in essays 4 and 5 of the Enquiries and in the abstract of the Treatise published anonymously by Hume. I shall concen- trate on the Treatise version since it is the first and perhaps most explicit formulation of the argument and because part of my purpose is to place this argument in the larger context of book 1 of the Treatise. The received opinion concerning Hume's argument has it that Hume was highly skeptical about the mind's claims to knowledge about the future (or, more generally, about the unobserved). All beliefs arrived at via inductive I should like to thank M. G. Anderson, John Bahde, Jon Nordy, and Robert Paul Wolff, as well as David Fate Norton and a referee for the Journal of the History of Philosophy, for helpful comments on earlier drafts on this article. 32 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY inferences are unreasonable or unjustified. The alternative interpretation, to be defended below, is that Hume held that no such belief is or can be rendered certain relative to past experience and that such beliefs are not, upon that account, unreasonable or unjustified. Something like this inter- pretation has been defended by Tom L. Beauchamp, Thomas Mappes, and Alexander Rosenberg. ~ My view differs from theirs in that I shall argue that Hume did offer arguments for the more radical skepticism commonly attri- buted to him (though it is unclear whether he regarded them as decisive). These arguments, however, come at the end of book ~ of the Treatise and are independent of the more famous argument to be discussed below. Defenders of the received view are both numerous and distinguished. Versions of this interpretation of the main argument can be found in the writings of Karl Popper, Wesley Salmon, F. L. Will, and Norman Kemp Smith; most recently a variation on the standard interpretation has been defended by Barry Stroud. The fullest and most elaborate defense of the standard interpretation can be found in a monograph by D. C. Stove. '~ Stove's discussion is perhaps the most impressive because of his painstaking efforts to lay bare the structure of Hume's reasoning and to give a line-by- line analysis of the argument. This has the effect of bringing more clearly into focus the main grounds for the standard view. If this standard interpre- tation is correct, then Hume's position is that scientific method is epistemically no better than "superstition" and "enthusiasm." And, Hume would be among those for whom this claim, if true, would be very bad news, because one of his primary purposes in the Treatise is to construct a science of man. Thus, this argument is of considerable internal significance because, if my opponents are correct, Hume appears to have cut the ground out from under what he took to be one of his most important projects -- the construc- tion of a science of man. The other feature of this argument that makes it worthy of serious con- sideration is that it is philosophically... (shrink)

With his new riddle of induction, Goodman raised a problem for enumerative induction which many have taken to show that only some ‘natural’ properties can be used for making inductive inferences. Arguably, however, (i) enumerative induction is not a method that scientists use for making inductive inferences in the first place. Moreover, it seems at first sight that (ii) Goodman’s problem does not affect the method that scientists actually use for making such inferences—namely, classical (...) statistics. Taken together, this would indicate that (iii) ‘naturalness’ is not such a relevant concept for the problem of induction, after all. I have no objections against (i) and (iii). But, contrary to (ii), I argue that classical statistics does face a version of Goodman’s problem, which I call the statistical riddle of induction. Given that his problem merely is an instance of the more general problem of underdetermination, this is hardly surprising. Perhaps more importantly, I also show how my riddle can be used for exposing a common fallacy in probabilistic reasoning, without relying on Bayesian assumptions. (shrink)

According to the Feigl–Reichenbach–Salmon–Schurz pragmatic justification of induction, no predictive method is guaranteed or even likely to work for predicting the future; but if anything will work, induction will work—at least when induction is employed at the meta-level of predictive methods in light of their track records. One entertains a priori all manner of esoteric prediction methods, and is said to arrive a posteriori at the conclusion, based on the actual past, that object-level induction is optimal. Schurz’s refinements largely solve (...) the notorious short-run problem. A difficulty is noted, however, related to short-run worries but based on localized disagreement about the past, a feature characteristic of real debates (especially early modern) involving induction in intellectual history. Given the evidence about past events, _unfiltered by induction_, meta-induction might support a partly non-inductive method—especially as judged by proponents of esoteric prediction methods, who presumably believe that their methods have worked. Thus induction is justified meta-inductively in contexts where it was uncontroversial, while not obviously justified in key contexts where it has been disputed. This objection, momentarily sensed by Reichenbach regarding clairvoyance, is borne out by the Stoics’ use of meta-induction to justify both science and divination and by ancient Hebrew examples of meta-induction. Schurz’s recently introduced criteria for acceptance of testimony play a crucial role in arriving at object-level induction using meta-induction, but one might question them. Given the need for judgment in accepting testimony, it is unclear that the subjectivity of Howson’s Bayesian answer to Hume’s problem is overcome. (shrink)

There is a prevailing opinion that conjectural knowledge (zann) cannot be taken as a basis in determining the fundamental theological principles among the theologians. However, from which sources and how to obtain certainty (yaqīn) and which types of knowledge are definitive (qat‘ī) have been discussed extensively. Certain and conjectural knowledge meet at a common point in terms of relying on evidence. Conjectural knowledge obtained via reasoning and/or religious scripture that do not express certainty. While conjectural knowledge has been essentially related (...) to the concepts of estimation, doubt, belief and knowledge, by its in term of value, it is stands closer to the concepts of knowledge and belief. Conjectural knowledge contains different degrees of certainty. When it is chosen to be more certain, it is considered as a valid conjecture, when it is disregarded, it is considered as erroneous conjecture. If there is no choice for its certainty, then it is called doubt (shakk). If the information/judgment obtained through reasoning becomes fixed, unchangeable and in a coherence that does not allow it to be otherwise, then it is called definitive (qat‘ī) knowledge. To achieve that, theologians generally used methods of argumentations like syllogism, induction, exhaustive investigation and disjunction (al-sabr wa’l-taqsīm) to provide such knowledge about divinity and prophethood. Theologians have used conjectural knowledge, which are based on endoxic (mashhūrāt), already granted (musallamāt) and acceptance of authority (maqbūlāt), in their dialectics to persuade their discussants, rather than to justify the fundamental theological issues of religion. While theologians mostly use rational proofs in theological issues, they also gave significant place to the scriptural narrative that determines the creed. In this context, theologians accepted the narrated evidence as binding and decisive, as long as it is certain in terms of both authenticity and implication. Ultimately, the fundamental theological principles of religion are based on these narrative evidences. Although the theologians do not accept single reports (khabar al-wahid) for their questionable authenticity, they also made inferences regarding subjects of traditions (sam‘iyyāt). Acting from this perspective, theologians tried to justify with narrative evidence rather than rational arguments on these issues such as torment in grave, intercession (shafā‘ah) and sirât, which are mostly matters of eschatology and the unseen (ghayb). Finally, it has been concluded that the conjectural knowledge is still valid in some secondary theological issues and the assumption that the conjectural knowledge has no deduction value in theology is not absolute. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:66 IN DEFENCE OF KEMP SMITH D. C. Stove argues against Kemp Smith's contention that Hume's philosophy "was intended not to subvert but to endorse our natural beliefs" in general, and our belief in the Causal Principle in particular. His arguments are insufficient. Kemp Smith does not need to deny that the falsity of the Causal Principle is believed by Hume to be possible in the strongest of Stove's (...) three suggested 2 senses: it is not merely self-consistent, but the Principle is unverifiable and unconfirmable in the sense that no empirical proposition is relevant to its truth. However, to say flatly that its falsity is possible is to say that it is not impossible in any way at all; and that is what is at stake both in Hume's letter to Stewart and in the use Kemp Smith makes of it. If Hume had written a letter to Stewart or to any scientific enquirer urging him to desist from his labours on the ground that "something may begin to exist, or start into being without a cause," he would have been a fool, and in representing Hume's position in this way Stewart is in fact calling Hume a fool. It is not surprising that Hume is indignant. The problem is whether, and how, one can hold both that the Causal Principle is undeniably true and that it can be supported neither by deductive nor by inductive argument, and whether Hume on the most reasonable interpretation of his published works held both these views. Clues to the answer lie in the in tradition of sceptical philosophy, and in the difference between a cause and a reason. Hume's philosophy is indeed, as he says, 'very sceptical'. But scepticism is a kind of philosophy with a long history, from Sextus Empiricus to Bayle, and it is reasonable to suppose that Hume was aligning himself with this position, especially since so much of the argument in 67 the Treatise is derived from Bayle. But sceptics do not behave otherwise than ordinary men. Scepticism is not directed against everyday beliefs but again.st arguments: this is a point on which Sextus insists." It would not be the part of a sceptic to doubt that every event has a cause, but to refute all arguments purporting to show that such is the case. To assert "that any thing might arise without a Cause" would not be scepticism, but an inverse dogmatism: to infer from a philosophical argument a belief about the real world that is at variance with everyday belief. The crucial step in Stove's argument occurs in his gloss of Hume's claim that he had maintained "that our Certainty of the Falsehood of that Proposition proceeded neither from Intuition nor Demonstration; but from another Source" phrase "sic., experience, of course". This could be misleading. It could mean that Hume here claims that experience gives us reason to believe that the Causal Principle is true; and this Hume has denied, as Stove urges ad loc. But nothing in what Hume says in his letter requires us to interpret him thus. And his sceptical principles tell against it: an argument from experience, whether inductive or by analogy or whatever, is still an argument and thus liable to sceptical attack. What Hume could mean, and what Kemp Smith took him to mean, is that our experience causes us to regard the principle as necessary: experience is not a premise in any sort of argument at all, but a causal explanation for a universal propensity to believe in the Causal Principle. It is true that Hume's citation as analogues of such empirical affirmations as "That Caesar existed" is misleading. But it is not in fact the case that Hume represents these as in any way 'parallel' with the Causal Principle: he says only that, like it, They are believed without recourse to Reason and Intuition. In 68 point of fact, Stove is going a bit far when he says that this is (like "There is such an Island as Sicily") an observation-statement; but that point is hardly relevant here. It is worth noting that in the offending passage... (shrink)

PREFACEProf. Göran Sundholm of Leiden University inspired the group of Logic at Lille and Valparaíso to start a fundamental review of the dialogical conception of logic by linking it to constructive type logic. One of Sundholm's insights was that inference can be seen as involving an implicit interlocutor. This led to several investigations aimed at exploring the consequences of joining winning strategies to the proof-theoretical conception of meaning. The leading idea is, roughly, that while introduction rules lay down the conditions (...) under which a winning strategy for the Proponent may be built, the elimination rules lay down those elements of the Opponent's assertions that the Proponent has the right to use for building winning strategy. It is the pragmatic and ethical features of obligations and rights that naturally lead to the dialogical interpretation of natural deduction.During the Visiting Professorship of Prof. Sundholm at Lille in (2012) the group of Lille started delving into the ways of implementing Per Martin-Löf's Constructive Type Theory with the dialogical perspective. In particular, Aarne Ranta's (1988) paper, the first publication on the subject, was read and discussed during Sundholm’s seminar. The discussions strongly suggested that the game-theoretical conception of quantifiers as deploying interdependent moves provide a natural link between CTT and dialogical logic. This idea triggered several publications by the group of Lille in collaboration with Nicolas Clerbout and Juan Redmond at the University of Valparaíso, including the publication of the book (2015) by Clerbout / Rahman that provides a systematic development of this way of linking CTT and the dialogical conception of logic. However the Clerbout / Rahman book was written from the CTT perspective on dialogical logic, rather than the other way round. The present book should provide the perspective from the other side of the dialogue between the Dialogical Framework and Constructive Type Theory. The main idea of our present study is that Sundholm's (1997) notion of epistemic assumption is closely linked to the Copy-Cat Rule or Socratic Rule that distinguishes the dialogical framework from other game-theoretical approaches. One way to read the present book is as a further development of Sundholm’s extension of Austin's (1946, p. 171) remark on acts of assertion to inference. Indeed, Sundholm (2013, p. 17) gave the following forceful formulation: When I say therefore, I give others my authority for asserting the conclusion, given theirs for asserting the premisses.Per Martin-Löf, in recent lectures, have utilized the dialogical perspective on epistemic assumptions to get out of a certain circle that threatens the explanation of the notions of inference and demonstration. A demonstration may be explained as a chain of (immediate) inferences starting from no premisses. That an inference J1... Jn—————Jis valid means that the conclusion J can be made evident on the assumption that J1, …, Jn are known. The notion of epistemic assumption thus enters in the explanation of valid inference. We cannot, however, in this explanation understand 'known' in the sense of demonstrated, for then we are explaining the notion of inference in terms of demonstration, whereas demonstration has been explained in terms of inference. Martin-Löf suggests that we here understand 'known' in the sense of asserted, so that epistemic assumptions are judgements others have made, judgements for which others have taken the responsibility; that the inference is valid then means that, given that others have taken responsbility for the premisses, I can take responsibility for the conclusion:The circularity problem is this: if you define a demonstration to be a chain of immediate inferences, then you are defining demonstration in terms of inference. Now we are considering an immediate inference and we are trying to give a proper explanation of that; but, if that begins by saying: Assume that J1, …, Jn have been demonstrated – then you are clearly in trouble, because you are about to explain demonstration in terms of the notion of immediate inference, hence when you are giving an account of the notion of immediate inference, the notion of demonstration is not yet at your disposal. So, to say: Assume that J1, …, Jn have already been demonstrated, makes you accusable of trying to explain things in a circle. The solution to this circularity problem, it seems to me now, comes naturally out of this dialogical analysis. […]The solution is that the premisses here should not be assumed to be known in the qualified sense, that is, to be demonstrated, but we should simply assume that they have been asserted, which is to say that others have taken responsibility for them, and then the question for me is whether I can take responsibility for the conclusion. So, the assumption is merely that they have been asserted, not that they have been demonstrated. That seems to me to be the appropriate definition of epistemic assumption in Sundholm's sense. One of the main tenets of the present study is that the further move of relating the Socratic Rule rule with judgemental equality provides both a simpler and more direct way to implement the constructive type theoretical approach within the dialogical framework. Such a reconsideration of the Socratic Rule, roughly speaking, amounts to the following. 1.A move from P that brings-forward a play-object in order to defend an elementary proposition A can be challenged by O. 2.The answer to such a challenge, involves P bringing forward a definitional equality that expresses the fact that the play-object chosen by P copies the one O has chosen while positing A. For short, the equality expresses at the object-languaje level that the defence of P relies on the authority given to O to be able to produce the play-objects she brings forward. More generally, according to this view, a definitional equality established by P and brought forward while defending the proposition A, expresses the equality between a play-object (introduced by O) and the instruction for building a play-object deployed by O while affirming A. So it can be read as a computation rule that indicates how to compute O's instructions. Let us recall that from the strategic point of view, O's moves correspond to elimination rules of demonstrations. Thus, the dialogical rules that prescribe how to introduce a definitional equality – correspond – at the strategic level – to the definitional equality rules for CTT as applied to the selector-functions involved in the elimination rules. So, what we are doing here is extending the dialogical interpretation of Sundholm's epistemic assumption to the rules that set up the definitional equality of a type.The present work is structured in the following way:•In the Introduction we state the main tenets that guide our book•Chapter II contains a brief overview of Constructive Type Theory penned by Ansten Klev with exercises and their solutions. •Chapter III offers a novel presentation of the dialogical conception of logic. In fact, the first two sections of the chapter provide an overview of standard dialogical logic – including solved exercises, slightly adapted to the content of the present volume. The rest of the sections develop a new dialogical approach to Constructive Type Theory. •Chapters IV and V contain the main body of our study, namely the relation between the Socratic Rule, epistemic assumptions, and equality. The chapter provides the reader with thoroughly worked out examples with comments. •After the Final Remarks the book containsa.An appendix containing a an overview of all the rules for the new formulation of dialogical approach to constructive type theory developed in the book; b.a brief outline of Per Martin-Löf's informal presentation of the demonstration of the axiom of choice.c.two examples of a tree-shaped graph of an extensive strategy. Acknowledgments: Many thanks to Mark van Atten (Paris1), Giuliano Bacigalupo (Zürich), Charles Zacharie Bowao (Univ. Ma Ngouabi de Brazzaville, Congo), Christian Berner (Lille3), Michel Crubellier (Lille3), Pierre Cardascia (Lille3), Oumar Dia (Dakar), Marcel Nguimbi ((Univ. Marien Ngouabi de Brazzaville, Congo), Adjoua Bernadette Dango (Lille3 / Alassane Ouattara de Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire), Steephen Rossy Eckoubili (Lille3), Johan Georg Granström (Zürich), Gerhard Heinzmann (Nancy2), Muhammad Iqbal (Lille3), Matthieu Fontaine (Lille3), Radmila Jovanovic (Belgrad), Hanna Karpenko (Lille3), Laurent Keiff (Lille3), Sébastien Magnier (Saint Dennis, Réunion), Clément Lion (Lille3), Gildas Nzokou (Libreville), Fachrur Rozie (Lille3), Helge Rückert (Mannheim), Mohammad Shafiei (Paris1), and Hassan Tahiri (Lisbon), for rich interchanges, suggestions on the main claims of the present study and proof-reading of specific sections of the text. Special thanks to Gildas Nzokou (Libreville), Steephen Rossy Eckoubili (Lille3) and Clément Lion (Lille3), with whom a Pre-Graduate Textbook in French on dialogical logic and CTT is in the process of being worked out – during the visiting-professorship in 2016 of the former. Eckoubili is the author of the sections on exercises for dialogical logic, Nzokou cared of those involving the development of CTT-demonstrations out of winning-strategies. Special thanks also to Ansten Klev (Prague) for helping with technical details and conceptual issues on CTT, particularly so as author of the chapter introducing CTT. (shrink)

The 'no-supervenience' theorem (Reason, 2019; Reason and Shah, 2021) is a proof that no fully self-aware system can entirely supervene on any objectively observable system. I here present a simple, non-technical summary of the proof and demonstrate its implications for four separate theories of consciousness: the 'property dualism' theory of David Chalmers; the 'reflexive monism' of Max Velmans; Galen Strawson's 'realistic monism'; and the 'illusionism' of Keith Frankish. It is shown that all are ruled out in their current (...) form by the no-supervenience theorem, except for Chalmers' theory, which I show requires humans to behave irrationally. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions on causal inference in medicine are stuck in dyadic camps, each defending one kind of evidence or method rather than another as best support for causal hypotheses. Whereas Evidence Based Medicine advocates the use of Randomised Controlled Trials and systematic reviews of RCTs as gold standard, philosophers of science emphasise the importance of mechanisms and their distinctive informational contribution to causal inference and assessment. Some have suggested the adoption of a pluralistic approach to causal inference, and an (...) class='Hi'>inductive rather than hypothetico-deductive inferential paradigm. However, these proposals deliver no clear guidelines about how such plurality of evidence sources should jointly justify hypotheses of causal associations. We here develop such guidelines by first giving a philosophical analysis of the underpinnings of Hill’s viewpoints on causality. We then put forward an evidence-amalgamation framework adopting a Bayesian net approach to model causal inference in pharmacology for the assessment of harms. Our framework accommodates a number of intuitions already expressed in the literature concerning the EBM vs. pluralist debate on causal inference, evidence hierarchies, causal holism, relevance, and reliability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Logic of Probabilities in Hume's Argument against Miracles Fred Wilson The position is often stated that Hume's discussion of miracles is inconsistent with his views on the logical or ontological status oflaws ofnature and with his more general scepticism. Broad, for one, has so argued.1 Hume's views on induction are assumed to go somethinglike this. Any attempt to demonstrate knowledge ofmatters offact presupposes causal reasoning, but the latter (...) is based not on any perception of necessary connections, but on an unreasoned expectation that because events have been constantly conjoined in the past they will be constantly conjoined in the future. The fact that our past experience gives rise to certain expectations provides absolutely no reason to think that these expectations will be fulfilled. But this is forgotten as soon as he turns to the topic of miracles where the argument requires certain assumptions about laws of nature. Here he claims that the laws of nature arebased upon afirm andunalterable experience and dismisses what he apparently admits to be strong evidence for miracles on the basis of the claim that such events are absolutely impossible. The inconsistency between the discussion of miracles and the earlier discussions of induction and causality is clear. Nonetheless, there is a certain implausibility to this claim that makes it a difficult one to entertain seriously, since it is unlikely that a philosopher as careful as Hume would have failed to recognize the inconsistency if it existed. What I propose here to argue is that there is in fact no inconsistency, and that this becomes clear once one places the discussion ofmiracles in the broader context ofthe overall argument ofthe first Enquiry. In particular, the charge ofinconsistency disappears once one eliminates the caricature ofHume's views on causal reasoning upon which it rests. To come to grips with the discussion of miracles in Hume it is necessary to place that discussion in its historical context. In the generally empiricist atmosphere that developed in Britain following the mid-seventeenth century civil wars, the general defence of the reasonableness of Christianity consisted of two parts. First, it washeldthatrational argument, whether causal or teleological orboth, could yield a reasonable belief that a deity ofa more or less traditional sort existed. Then, second, in order to establish further that Jesus was the Son ofGod it was held that one could rely upon a chain oftestimony Volume XV Number 2 255 FRED WILSON leading back from the present to the past to infer the existence of miracles testifying to the divinity ofJesus. Hume attacks this second inference in the essay on miracles andthe first in the essay that follows in the Enquiries on God's particular providence (the themes of which are developed more fully in the Dialogues on Natural Religion). Given the central place that the appeal to miracles held in Christian apologetics in the 17th and 18th centuries, Hume's systematic attack on the argument from miracles constituted a clear attack on Christianity. To be sure, Hume's argument would never have persuaded JohnWesley, but that would hardly have surprised Hume himself, nor should it surprise us: those in the grips of religious enthusiasm, whether it be John Wesley or Jimmy Swaggart, will hardly be persuaded by rational argument, however much it is still true that they ought to be persuaded by it. The appeal to miracles tojustify specifically Christian beliefs had a long history. One can find it already in the late Roman period in Eusebius. Muslim thinkers were to challenge this traditional defence by arguing that chains oftestimony become more unreliable the longer they become. As for their own Islamic beliefs, these they admitted had also to be justified by an appeal to miracles, but there was, it was claimed, a unique self-justifying miracle in the Koran, the specially revealed Word of God. The critical theme of the Muslim apologists, that the longer a chain of testimony the less assurance it gives of the fact that a miracle had occurred, was developed in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries.6 It seems to have been introduced by the Oxford orientalist Edward Pocock who had discovered this line of Muslim apologetics while... (shrink)

Most philosophers hold that the use of our deductive powers confers an especially strong warrant on some of our mathematical and logical beliefs. By contrast, many of the same philosophers hold that it is a matter of serious debate whether any inductive inferences are cogent. That is, they hold that we might well have no warrant for inductively licensed beliefs, such as generalizations. I argue that we cannot know that we know logical and mathemati- cal truths unless we (...) use induction. Our confidence in our logical and mathematical powers is not justified if we are inductive scep- tics. This means that inductive scepticism leads to a deductive scep- ticism. I conclude that we should either be philosophical sceptics about our knowledge of deduction and induction, or accept that some of our inductive inferences are cogent. (shrink)

Is the use of animals in undergraduate education ethically justifiable? One way to answer this question is to focus on the factors relevant to those who serve on Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees . An analysis of the debate surrounding the practice of dissection at the undergraduate level helps shed light on these issues. Settling that debate hinges on claims about the kind of knowledge gained from dissection and other “hands-on” kinds of experiences, and whether such knowledge is needed (...) to meet educational goals. Most undergraduate courses will probably lack a sufficient justification for the use of animals for dissection, since the educational goals can be met with non-animal alternatives. In addition, there are some general guidelines that can be extrapolated from this debate, which should be of assistance in deciding whether a sufficient justification has been given for animal use. One guideline is that justifications for animal use should require demonstrating that the use adds value to the educational experience in a way that is directly tied to the course objectives. Furthermore, the use of animals should not be simply built into the objectives of a course in such a way that the use is merely assumed, with no actual justification provided. One must beware of putative standards for justification that would fail to rule out any possible animal use. (shrink)

In his Logic, Pierre Gassendi proposes that our inductive inferences lack the information we would need to be certain of the claims that they suggest. Not even deductivist inference can insure certainty about empirical claims because the experientially attained premises with which we adduce support for such claims are no greater than probable. While something is surely amiss in calling deductivist inference "probabilistic," it seems Gassendi has hit upon a now-familiar, sensible point—namely, the use of deductive reasoning in (...) empirical contexts, while providing certain formal guarantees, does not insulate empirical arguments from judgment by the measure of belief which we invest in their premises. The more general point, which distinguishes Gassendi among his contemporaries, is that the strength shared by all empirical claims consists in the warrant from experience for those claims we introduce in their support. (shrink)

Science and engineering rely on the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge to make discoveries and create new designs. Discovery-driven genome research rests on knowledge passed on via gene annotations. In response to the deluge of sequencing big data, standard annotation practice employs automated procedures that rely on majority rules. We argue this hinders progress through the generation and propagation of errors, leading investigators into blind alleys. More subtly, this inductive process discourages the discovery of novelty, which remains essential in (...) biological research and reflects the nature of biology itself. Annotation systems, rather than being repositories of facts, should be tools that support multiple modes of inference. By combining deduction, induction and abduction, investigators can generate hypotheses when accurate knowledge is extracted from model databases. A key stance is to depart from ‘the sequence tells the structure tells the function’ fallacy, placing function first. We illustrate our approach with examples of critical or unexpected pathways, using MicroScope to demonstrate how tools can be implemented following the principles we advocate. We end with a challenge to the reader. (shrink)

We propose that people typically reason about realistic situations using neither content-free syntactic inference rules nor representations of specific experiences. Rather, people reason using knowledge structures that we term pragmatic reasoning schemas, which are generalized sets of rules defined in relation to classes of goals. Three experiments examined the impact of a “permission schema” on deductive reasoning. Experiment 1 demonstrated that by evoking the permission schema it is possible to facilitate performance in Wason's selection paradigm for subjects who (...) have had no experience with the specific content of the problems. Experiment 2 showed that a selection problem worded in terms of an abstract permission elicited better performance than one worded in terms of a concrete but arbitrary situation, providing evidence for an abstract permission schema that is free of domain-specific content. Experiment 3 provided evidence that evocation of a permission schema affects not only tasks requiring procedural knowledge, but also a linguistic rephrasing task requiring declarative knowledge. In particular, statements in the form if p then q were rephrased into the form p only if q with greater frequency for permission than for arbitrary statements, and rephrasings of permission statements produced a pattern of introduction of modals totally unlike that observed for arbitrary conditional statements. Other pragmatic schemas, such as “causal” and “evidence” schemas can account for both linguistic and reasoning phenomena that alternative hypotheses fail to explain. (shrink)

Hilary Kornblith (1993) has recently offered a reliabilist defense of the use of the Law of Small Numbers in inductive inference. In this paper I argue that Kornblith's defense of this inferential rule fails for a number of reasons. First, I argue that the sort of inferences that Kornblith seeks to justify are not really inductive inferences based on small samples. Instead, they are knowledge-based deductive inferences. Second, I address Kornblith's attempt to find support in (...) the work of Dorrit Billman and I try to show that close attention to the workings of her computational model reveals that it does not support Kornblith's argument. While the knowledge required to ground the inferences in question is perhaps inductively derived, Billman's work does not support the notion that small samples provide a reliable basis for our generalizing inferences. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently tried to define natural kinds in epistemic terms only. Given the persistent problems with finding a successful metaphysical theory, these philosophers argue that we would do better to describe natural kinds solely in terms of their epistemic usefulness, such as their role in supporting inductive inferences. In this paper, I argue against these epistemology-only theories of natural kinds and in favor of, at least partly, metaphysical theories. I do so in three steps. In the (...) first section of the paper, I propose two desiderata for a theory of natural kinds. In the second section, I discuss one example of a ‘general’ epistemology-only theory, proposed by Marc Ereshefsky and Thomas Reydon, and argue that theories like theirs fail to provide adequate criteria of natural kinds. In the third section, I focus on one example of a ‘specific’ epistemology-only theory, proposed by P. D. Magnus, and use it to show why such theories cannot justify the claim that the proposed epistemic criteria account for the naturalness of kinds. (shrink)

In this classic work of philosophy, Thilly provides a comprehensive overview of inductive reasoning and its role in scientific inquiry. With clear examples and lucid prose, Thilly's text remains an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand the nature of knowledge and the scientific method. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States (...) of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The idea of the uniformity of nature, as a solution to the problem of induction, has at least two contemporary versions: natural kinds and natural necessity. Then there are at least three alternative ontological ideas addressing the problem of induction. In this paper, I articulate how these ideas are used to justify the practice of inductive inference, and compare them, in terms of their applicability, to see whether each of them is preferred in addressing the problem of induction. (...) Given the variety of contexts in which inductive inferences are made, from natural science to social science and to everyday thinking, I suggest that no singular idea is absolutely preferred, and a proper strategy is probably to welcome the plurality of ideas helpful to induction, and to take pragmatic considerations into account, in order to judge in every single case. (shrink)

Conscious macrostates are usually assumed to be emergent from the underlying physical microstates comprising the brain and nervous system of biological organisms. However, a major problem with this assumption is that consciousness is essentially nonmeasurable unlike all other proven emergent properties of physical systems. In an earlier paper, using a no-go theorem, it was shown that conscious states cannot be comprised of processes that are physical in nature (Reason, 2019). Combining this result with another unrelated work on causal emergence (...) in physical systems (Hoel, Albantakis and Tononi, 2013), we show in this paper that conscious macrostates are not emergent from physical systems and they also do not supervene on physical microstates. An important implication of our work is that there must be some form of violation of energy conservation in biological systems that are conscious. (shrink)

Cosmology raises novel philosophical questions regarding the use of probabilities in inference. This work aims at identifying and assessing lines of arguments and problematic principles in probabilistic reasoning in cosmology. -/- The first, second, and third papers deal with the intersection of two distinct problems: accounting for selection effects, and representing ignorance or indifference in probabilistic inferences. These two problems meet in the cosmology literature when anthropic considerations are used to predict cosmological parameters by conditionalizing the distribution of, (...) e.g., the cosmological constant on the number of observers it allows for. However, uniform probability distributions usually appealed to in such arguments are an inadequate representation of indifference, and lead to unfounded predictions. It has been argued that this inability to represent ignorance is a fundamental flaw of any inductive framework using additive measures. In the first paper, I examine how imprecise probabilities fare as an inductive framework and avoid such unwarranted inferences. In the second paper, I detail how this framework allows us to successfully avoid the conclusions of Doomsday arguments in a way no Bayesian approach that represents credal states by single credence functions could. -/- There are in the cosmology literature several kinds of arguments referring to self- locating uncertainty. In the multiverse framework, different "pocket-universes" may have different fundamental physical parameters. We don’t know if we are typical observers and if we can safely assume that the physical laws we draw from our observations hold elsewhere. The third paper examines the validity of the appeal to the "Sleeping Beauty problem" and assesses the nature and role of typicality assumptions often endorsed to handle such questions. -/- A more general issue for the use of probabilities in cosmology concerns the inadequacy of Bayesian and statistical model selection criteria in the absence of well-motivated measures for different cosmological models. The criteria for model selection commonly used tend to focus on optimizing the number of free parameters, but they can select physically implausible models. The fourth paper examines the possibility for Bayesian model selection to circumvent the lack of well-motivated priors. (shrink)