The Problem of Abduction

Abstract

I said in the previous chapter that the inductive logic project would be too much to try to take on in a single chapter. As anyone knows who has undertaken to move that project ahead, this is an understatement. At the conclusion of that chapter, I proposed that the badness of hasty generalization should not be attributed to the badness of all inductions, hasty or not. This clearly presupposes that some inductions are good. How this assumption can be made to square with Hume’s infamous argument that induction as such lacks a justification is the business of the present chapter to determine. The reader may be puzzled by our decision to get this determination going by way of discussion of abduction, rather than induction. But, as will be seen, it is the right way to go.