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Articles

Induction: The Problem Solved

In our second contribution on the problem of induction, John Shand argues that there is no problem, because there is no such thing as an inductive argument.

When people talk about the problem of induction, they mean the problem of justifying the rationality of inductive arguments. My eliminative answer is to argue that there is no problem of justifying inductive arguments because there is no such thing as an inductive argument. Socalled inductive arguments as such have no logical force. Nevertheless I will contend that there is such a thing as an inductive procedure whose statements are true and track facts in the world; but such procedures aren’t arguments because the statements involved aren’t linked by deductive relations.

What I will say in fact applies to any less-than-deductive putative argument.

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