What did hume really show about induction?

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 51, Issue 204, 2001, Pages 307-327

  Okasha, Samir ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 33846887104     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9213.00231     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. H. Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction (Chicago UP, 1938), p. 347
2. R. Carnap, 'Inductive Logic and Inductive Intuition', repr. in I. Lakatos (ed.), The Problem of Inductive Logic (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1968), pp. 258-67, at p. 258
3. Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 36
4. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 139; my italics
5. W. Salmon, 'The Justification of Inductive Rules of Inference', repr. in Lakatos (ed.), The Problem of Inductive Logic, pp. 24-66, at pp. 29 and 30
6. P. Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 14 and 12
7. and J.L. Mackie, The Cement of the Universe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974)
8. and on the other, B. Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977). My interpretation of Hume's argument is similar to Stroud's
9. B. van Fraassen, 'Empiricism in the Philosophy of Science', in P. Churchland and C. Hooker (eds), Images of Science (Univ. of Chicago Press), pp. 245-308
10. Laws and Symmetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)
11. and 'The False Hopes of Traditional Epistemology', Philosophy and Phenomenologkal Research, 60 (2000), pp. 253-79
12. P. Teller, 'Conditionalization and Observation', Synthese, 26 (1973), pp. 218-58
13. F. Jackson, 'Grue', Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1975), pp. 113-31, at p. 113. Jackson is using the expression 'straight-rule' in a loose and generic sense; what he calls the 'straight-rule' is not identical with the straight-rule of Reichenbach, who introduced the expression
14. n-1 & k) must tend to 1 as n grows without limit, as J. Earman shows: see his Bayes or Bust: a Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory (MIT Press, 1992), p. 78
15. Salmon, 'Replies', in Lakatos (ed.), The Problem of Inductive Logic, pp. 74-97, at pp. 77 and 83
16. I.J. Good, 'The White Shoe is a Red Herring', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 17 (1967), p. 322
17. C. Hempel, 'The White Shoe: No Red Herring', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 18 (1967), pp. 239-40
18. See in particular R. Rosenkrantz, 'Does the Philosophy of Induction Rest on a Mistake?', Journal of Philosophy, 79 (1982), pp. 78-97
19. van Fraassen, 'Theory Confirmation: Tension and Conflict', in P. Weingartner and M. Czermak (eds), Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Proceedings of the Seventh International Wittgenstein Symposium (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1983), pp. 319-29
20. and E. Sober, 'A Bayesian Primer on the Grue Problem', in D. Stalker (ed.), Grue! the New Riddle of Induction (La Salle: Open Court, 1994), pp. 225-40
21. See van Fraassen, Laws and Symmetry
22. and C. Howson and P. Urbach, Scientific Reasoning: the Bayesian Approach (La Salle: Open Court, 1989), for good accounts of the insuperable difficulties that the principle of indifference faces
23. But see Rosenkrantz, Inference, Method and Decision (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1977), for a dissenting view
24. See M. Hesse, The Structure of Scientific Inference (Univ. of California Press, 1974)
25. P. Horwich, Probability and Evidence (Cambridge UP, 1982)
26. Rosenkrantz, Inference, Method and Decision, Howson and Urbach, and Earman, for Bayesian explanations of these methodological preferences, and of others like them
27. P.F. Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory (London: Methuen, 1952)
28. M. Black, 'Self-Supporting Inductive Arguments', in R. Swinburne (ed.), The Justification of Induction (Oxford UP, 1974), pp. 127-44, at p. 128
29. K.R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959)