Abstract
1. The fundamental doctrine which underlies all theories of induction is the doctrine of the primacy of repetitions. Keeping Hume’s attitude in mind, we may distinguish two variants of this doctrine. The first (which Hume criticized) may be called the doctrine of the logical primacy of repetitions. According to this doctrine, repeated instances furnish a kind of justification for the acceptance of a universal law. (The idea of repetition is linked here, as a rule, with that of probability.) The second (which Hume upheld) may be called the doctrine of the temporal (and psychological) primacy of repetitions. According to this second doctrine, repetitions, even though they should fail to furnish any kind of justification for a universal law and for the expectations and beliefs which it entails, nevertheless induce and arouse these expectations and beliefs in us, as a matter of fact—however little ‘justified’ or ‘rational’ this fact (or these beliefs) may be.
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Notes
[Not included here.]
Some illustrations of this argument, so far as it is directed against the doctrine of temporal primacy of repetitions (that is, against Hume) may be found in sections iv and v of my paper ‘Philosophy of Science: A Personal Report’, in British Philosophy in the Mid-Century, ed. by C. A. Mace, 1957.
Cf: my papers ‘A Note on Berkeley as a Precursor of Mach’, B. J. P. S. 4, 1953, and ‘Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge’ in Contemporary British Philosophy iii, ed. by H. D. Lewis, 1956. See also sections *11 to * 15 of my Postscript [unpublished].
Since it is a singular statement, it is less incorrect to speak here of a symmetry between non-verifiability and non-falsifiability than in a case of universal statements; for in order to falsify it, we have to accept another singular statement, similarly non-verifiable, as true. But even here, a certain asymmetry remains. For quite generally in assuming the truth, or the falsity, of some test-statement, we can only establish the falsity of the statement under test, but not its truth. The reason is that the latter entails an infinite number of test statements. See also section 29 of the book [not included here], and section * 22 of my Postscript.
The argument is contained in a paper which I contributed in January 1955 to the Carnap volume of the Library of Living Philosophers, ed. by P. A. Schilpp [‘The Demarcation Between Science and Metaphysics’, The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1963), pp. 183-226]. As to the circularity of the operational definition of length, this may be seen from the following facts: (a) the ‘operational’ definition of length involves temperature corrections, and (b) the (usual) operational definition of temperature involves measurements of length.
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Popper, K. (1978). Universals and Dispositions. In: Tuomela, R. (eds) Dispositions. Synthese Library, vol 113. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1282-8_9
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