Abstract

Julien Tricard tackles the abductive solution to the problem of induction. In order to best explain the regularities that can be observed in nature, should one assume that they necessarily result from natural laws, without which they would be improbable cosmic coincidences? By examining David Armstrong's and John Foster's versions of this inference, Julien Tricard shows that it is based on the confusion of two incompatible concepts of “regularity”. From this he derives a conception of induction that is neither the empiricists’ factual generalization, nor the abduction of nomic necessities from observed regularities, but the operation of constituting particular facts as regular instances of laws.