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Genericity and Inductive Inference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2022

Henry Ian Schiller
Henry Ian Schiller*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
*
Email: h.i.schiller@sheffield.ac.uk
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Abstract

We are often justified in acting on the basis of evidential confirmation. I argue that this is because inductive inference supports belief in non-quantificational—or generic—generalizations, rather than universally quantified generalizations. I show how this account supports, rather than undermines, a Bayesian account of inductive inference. Induction from confirming instances of a generalization to belief in the corresponding generic is part of a reasoning instinct that is typically (but not always) correct, and allows us to approximate the predictions that formal epistemology would make.

Type
Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , July 2023 , pp. 539 - 557
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association

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