Induction

Ilkka Niiniluoto

pp. 521-545

in: Ilkka Niiniluoto, Matti Sintonen, Jan Woleński (eds), Handbook of epistemology, Berlin, Springer, 2004

Abstract

Induction is a mode of inference which has important links with many epistemological problems. It is a common feature of the different varieties of induction that they are not necessarily truth-preserving. Thus, induction is weaker than logical deduction or entailment. However, unlike deduction, inductive inference is ampliative in the sense that at least part of the content of its conclusion is not explicitly or implicitly present in the premises. Hence, if there is a rational answer to Hume's problem concerning the justification of induction, inductive inferences can be claimed to be knowledge-increasing, i.e., they allow us to expand the domain of our rationally warranted beliefs. As responses to these challenges, philosophers have given probabilistic reconstructions of different types of induction and analysed their role in the methodology of the empirical sciences.