Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T12:04:11.530Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

For Universal Rules, Against Induction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

John Worrall
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay criticizes John Norton's 2010 defense of the thesis that “all induction is local.” Norton's local inductions are bound, if cogent, to involve general principles, and the need to accredit these general principles threatens to lead to all the usual problems associated with the ‘problem of induction’. Norton, in fact, recognizes this threat, but his responses are inadequate. The right response involves not induction but a sophisticated version of hypothetico-deduction. Norton's secondary thesis—that if there is a general account of cogent scientific reasoning, then it is certainly not the one supported by personalist Bayesians—is also criticized.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 77 , Issue 5 , December 2010 , pp. 740 - 753
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

I am grateful to my fellow symposiasts, Peter Achinstein, Thomas Kelly, and John Norton, and to Carl Hoefer and an anonymous referee.

References

Achinstein, Peter. 2010. “The War on Induction: Whewell Takes On Newton and Mill (Norton Takes On Everyone).” Philosophy of Science, in this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glymour, Clark. 1980. Theory and Evidence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gosse, Philip H. 1857. Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot. London: van Voorst.Google Scholar
Harper, William H. 1991. “Newton's Classic Deductions from the Phenomena.” In PSA 1990: Proceedings of the 1990 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 2, ed. Fine, Arthur, Forbes, Micky, and Wessels, Linda, 183–96. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association.Google Scholar
Kelly, Thomas. 2010. “Hume, Norton, and Induction without Rules.” Philosophy of Science, in this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi, Isaac. 1980. The Enterprise of Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. 1980. “A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance.” In Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, Vol. 2, ed. Richard C. Jeffrey, 263–93. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Norton, John D. 1993. “The Determination of Theory by Evidence: The Case for Quantum Discontinuity, 1900–1915.” Synthèse 97:1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, John D.. 1995. “Eliminative Induction as a Method of Discovery: How Einstein Discovered General Relativity.” In The Creation of Ideas in Physics, ed. Leplin, J., 29–69. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, John D.. 2003. “A Material Theory of Induction.” Philosophy of Science 70:647–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, John D.. 2005. “A Little Survey of Induction.” In Scientific Evidence, ed. Achinstein, Peter, 9–34. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Norton, John D.. 2010. “There Are No Universal Rules for Induction.” Philosophy of Science, in this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Fraassen, Bas C. 1981. The Scientific Image. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Worrall, John. 1999. “Two Cheers for Naturalised Philosophy of Science; or, Why Naturalised Philosophy of Science Is Not the Cat's Whiskers.” Science and Education 8:339–61.Google Scholar
Worrall, John. 2000. “The Scope, Limits and Distinctiveness of the Method of ‘Deduction from the Phenomena’: Some Lessons from Newton's ‘Demonstrations’ in Optics.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51:45–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Worrall, John. 2006. “History and Theory-Confirmation.” In Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave, ed. Cheyne, Colin and Worrall, John, 31–61. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Worrall, John. 2011. “Miracles and Structural Realism.” In Structure, Object and Causality, ed. Landry, Elaine and Rickles, Dean. Berlin: Springer, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Zahar, Elie G. 1980. Einstein's Revolution: A Study in Heuristic. LaSalle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar