ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the more philosophical issue of whether the evidence of inductive test-results can really support a universal hypothesis. The older conceptions of the problem of induction seem to regard some such reduction as being required, and the older methods of trying to justify induction may be viewed as trying to achieve this. Validations normally sought to present inductive reasoning as relying solely on the logical or mathematical criteria of valid reasoning that are invoked in deduction from non-controversial premisses. The ratification of induction requires the discovery of analogies between deduction and induction that can justify us in including the latter within the domain of certain terms, such as ‘valid reasoning’, which are commonly applied to the former. A problem is created by the fact that inductive support is a matter of degree, not of all or nothing, whereas in deductive logic there are no gradations.
