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Preferred term

induction and confirmation  

Definition

  • The Problem of Induction As David Hume observed, first in his Treatise on Human Nature (1739) and then, more succinctly, in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), there is no contradiction in thinking that the future will be unlike the past in any way one cares to specify or in thinking that unobserved features of the world may behave very differently than those observed. But what philosophers call “the problem of induction” runs, as Hume himself made clear, much deeper than the mere failure of past history to logically entail any consequence about the future and the unobserved. [Source: Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences; Induction and Confirmation]

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URI

http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/N9J-ZG8ZDNKL-B

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