Abstract
The main objective of inductive logic is to give a satisfactory analysis of the intuitive relation of confirmation, which relates two sentences when one supports the other without the truth of the first one being however logically (in the sense of deductive logic) inconsistent with the falsity of the second one. Carnap has tried to build such an inductive logic, the seminal idea of which was the conformity of the relation of confirmation to the principles of the calculus of probability. This attempt gave rise to many difficulties, and it is today widely considered as a dead end. I would like to show that this opinion is not definitely well-founded, and that Carnap’s construction may be cleared from much of this criticism provided some slight alterations are accepted.
A first draft of the §§3.1–3.3 of the present paper has been published in French in Dubucs (1990). I would like to thank M. Baron, L. Bertrand, C. Howson, D. Miller, J. Vickers, D. Zwirn and H. Zwirn for helpful discussion on this draft. The usual disclaimer applies.
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Dubucs, JP. (1993). Inductive Logic Revisited. In: Dubucs, JP. (eds) Philosophy of Probability. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 56. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8208-7_5
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