Talk:Problem of induction

message: Karl Popper did in fact claim to have resolved the problem of induction through his deductive approach to science, but I think that as the paragraph appears in the article at the current moment, it is biased toward proponents of Popper's insistence on his having done away with induction.  The debate as it actually stands is not so definitively in favor of Popper.  Many of his critics have pointed out that induction is implicit in his method of deduction as the falsification of a theory is itself a scientific claim, and as such, for a falsification to be so incontrovertibly accepted as Popper believed it should, it would have to rely on induction since  induction would necessarily be the manner of logical inference used to demonstrate the universality of a theory about another theory having been falsified.  Batman Jr. 03:52, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popper 

message: I'm thinking David Stove should be mentioned here, because he marshals arguments against Hume, Popper, and Goodman, all of whom are mentioned in this article. I wish I were able to present his views myself, but his technical writing is beyond me. Two complete topical works of his are available online: [Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Facility/4118/dcs/popper/popper.html], and [Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Facility/4118/dcs/hume/hume.html].
:I think that this should be included in the main article as a critique of Popper.  Wesley Salmon argues this point very well.  The problem with Hempel is that he agrees that falsification says nothing about what is true, just what is not.  Corroboration is not confirmation.  But what grounds do we have then to trust a corroborated theory over a none corroborated theory?  If one uses a corroborated theory to act on he/she is still guilty of induction.  Reesebw (talk) 05:27, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stove 

message: The following submission was recently placed by ananymous IP user at the head end of page, and I have moved it into normal positioning on the page...Kenosis 03:02, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi all, where's Bayesian inference?  It was my (limited) understanding that many philosophers appeal to Bayes to explain why they hold belief that the sun will rise tomorrow.  No matter what the initial a priori probability is that the sun will rise, the a posteriori probability eventually converges to 1 after many many dawns.  Bayes is referenced and discussed in inductive reasoning.  Is there an expert that can help, or tell me that I'm all wet?  Thanks.--63.138.93.195 02:25, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good point. Shall we copy some of the content from the Sunrise Problem to here? --winterstein (talk) 14:29, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Bayesian inference

message: From the discussion above, and from the reverts that have been occurring, I think we need to be clear on the distinction between Induction and "the problem of induction". So: the "problem" is determining whether or not inductive reasoning can be logically justified.
A good introduction can be found here.
If you think this is inaccurate Nox (bot?), please use the discussion page before editing so boldly.
--Gdickeson 14:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inductive Reasoning v Problem of Induction 

message: I removed some material posted by User:Kalexander which seems to be based on his own original research (see the link that had been inserted at the end of the removed section). From what I can tell, this doesn't seem to be an established approach to the problem of induction. flowersofnight (talk) 15:36, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't even appear to deal with the problem of induction at all (as stated by Hume, et al. -- viz., whether inductive inference is a doxastically and propositionally justifiable form of discursion); it rather seems to address, very basically, the possibility of induction and the mechanism by which the mind makes inductive inferences. I'm not aware of any philosophers doubting the possibility or logistics of induction (Hume said on the contrary that he is certain we do make inductive inferences). So I don't see how this section is relevant to the article at all, notability notwithstanding. » MonkeeSage « 17:47, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No one "notable" among the notable may doubt the existence of inductive process. But the justification of a concept doxastically and propositionally (and now, presumably, notably) was not Hume's issue. His issue was simply how can we justify an idea rationally from its formation as a generalization. All the new terminology tacked on to his original inquiry does not necessarily belong, nor are the newer views a reasonable standard from which to evaluate discussions of his original problem. 1Z 12:14, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

text: It seems to be int he Randian tradition , and Randians do tend to assume that you can solve problems by giving an account of psychological mechanisms. 1Z 21:20, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is an argument method to categorize one persons new idea as another's, in order to discredit the new idea. As the comment below shows, this attempt is unfair and not reasonable. 
1Z 12:18, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

text: Hmmm, I'm not sure about that...as I read Rand, her Objectivism is a form of Realism, which bases justification (at least propositional justification) on reasons, not causes. For example, we may be able to fully describe the psychology, process and context of belief that hens lay eggs because they are possessed by evil spirits, and this can perhaps supply doxastic/personal justification for the belief, but I don't think Randians would argue that it can supply propositional justification for the content of the belief. And as I read Hume and Russell on the problem of induction, that is the crux of the matter: whether our personal beliefs about induction can be propositionally justified -- whether our beliefs can be objectively proven to match the way things really are. So even if we can prove the possibility of induction and describe its logistics, or even provide doxastic justification, this doesn't do anything to solve the main problem of induction as described by Hume and Russell. » MonkeeSage « 10:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

text: So, is it the case that, on the basis of notability guidelines and standards of relevance, this section should go? » MonkeeSage « 04:26, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed original research (Kevin Kirchman notable?) 

message: :Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and numerous others up until at least the late 19th century have considered inductive reasoning the basis of scientific method—indeed inductive reasoning is used today, though in a more balanced interaction with deductive reasoning and abductive reasoning.
Of course inductive reasoning is still used today. Even if this gets phrased better, it is unsourced and would belong in inductive reasoning, not here. –Pomte 12:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statements of the problem 

message: Seems very complex- a triffle clearer please? Larklight (talk) 21:47, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Goodman

message: I added the section on Sextus and Weintraub. ImperfectlyInformed (talk) 07:34, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added Ancient Origins section 

message: 'Different than' is Standard in English. Admittedly, maybe it's not quite as accepted among grammarians as 'different from' -- however, it sounds better. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 17:15, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That link observes, "Different than has been much criticized by commentators" and concludes, "best advice for Formal and Oratorical levels: stick with different from."  "Different than" is rarely used in writing.  The List of English words with disputed usage says "different from" is undisputed while "different than" is disputed.  Why switch from an undisputed usage to a disputed one?  More to the point, "different to" 'sounds better' to some of us -- that doesn't seem like a good basis for deciding. ThisIsMyWikipediaName (talk) 18:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: different from/different than

message: Does anyone remember Descartes making that argument somewhere in the meditations sometime after the cogito? I seem to remember him proving god's existence in order to justify the consistency of the world (thus we can rely on our empirical senses w/ god's existence validated). Asking this because maybe he should be included even if he didn't use the precise terminology? --Mr Bucket (talk) 07:56, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Lewis

message: Why is there no reference to a Wittgensteinian-type solution to the problem? OLP solutions seem to be by far the superior ones in this case, and I think should be mentioned in the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.65.124.182 (talk) 12:00, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Ordinary Language Solution

message: , you added a link to Problem of evil in the "See also" section, but I don't understand the connection to the induction problem. Maybe you could explain your reasons? Thanks in advance. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 18:33, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for addressing the matter . Although the article isn't part of the religion portal, the ongoing Atheism-theism debate includes the problem of evil and the problem of induction as arguments for and against religion. I came across the Problem of Induction article while surfing the religion and atheism portals. The reason I surfed the portals was to find valid arguments for the debate. I just felt adding the internal link would make it less of a burden for the Wikireaders sharing the same interests as me. Although Probability theory and the Problem of evil both have nothing to do with the article, the problem of evil differs in that it would actually be useful for readers. I agree; many of the internal links in the "See Also" section should go. However, Apophasis and The Problem of Evil should be kept. They can actually be useful to some Wikipedians; no less so than the Law of large numbers, which was also kept. With a small degree of usefulness, the link is worthy of taking up some space. After all, WP is not paper so 22 extra bytes is no biggie. If the community doesn't mind would it be possible for the two internal links specified be re-added? Thanks. GuyHimGuy (talk) 02:01, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for explaining. If you want to, add a link to this article (and the Problem of Evil page) to a page on the Atheism-theism debate. But this article has nothing to do with the problem of evil (or Apophasis, unless you care to explain), so a See Also link is not appropriate. In contrast, all of the current See also links (including Probability theory and Law of large numbers) are actually related to Induction. By your logic, every Wikipedia article would have hundreds of See also links, which would make it impossible for anyone to find the relevant ones. Please see the guideline at WP:SEEALSO. -hugeTim (talk) 02:13, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

text: Resolved. Thanks for the responses guys. I'll just leave the article as is for now. I now agree that the problem of evil has little to do with scientific philosophy. I guess readers can simply find this page the same why I did; a Google search concerning the reliability of science. GuyHimGuy (talk) 15:59, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relation to "Problem of evil"? 

message: Consider this example of the way induction must work in a particular science, specifically chemistry.
Mendeleev's periodic table was produced by noting the periodicity inherent in the physical and chemical properties of elements.  For a long time, the table had weak acceptance, akin to the former pseudoscience of alchemy.  Then along comes the particle physicists and Wolfgang Pauli's exclusion principle, which finally allowed a scientific explanation of both the electron configuration of atomic elements, and also the reason for the various groupings into periods, groups, etc.
This is already an example of how induction works in an actual science (where it had previously failed in alchemy).  Isaac Newton himself was something of an alchemist.  Where he succeeded brilliantly in physics, he failed miserably as a chemist.
The process of scientific iinduction continued with discovery of new chemical and later transuranium elements, always with the solid understanding of the periodic table serving as the foundation.
To throw induction completely out of the scientific method as Hume and Popper proposed is sheer folly.   Moreover, a pseudoscience cannot possibly build on itself the way that science does.  Induction applied to extending pseudoscience by even a tiny amount results in collapse of the premise(s) on which the pseudoscience is based.   So, if Hume and Popper were so interested in the demarcation problem, why would they begin the process by throwing out the best working principle of the scientific method?   It's bad enough that so much of science needs to rely on trial and error without throwing out all of the instrumentation that had previously been successful in revealing how the universe works.   I suggest that we throw out the ideas of philosophers like Hume and Popper instead. Danshawen (talk) 23:54, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Induction Solves Demarcation Problem 

message: Y'all need to get Bhaskar and Critical Realism on this page!  
Bhaskar says of Hume "[o]ne finds in the Treatise an eminently sensible realist methodology’, but that this description of scientific work is ‘in almost total dislocation from, and certainly lacking any foundation in, his radical epistemology’. (p. 41)
Bhaskar describes the scientific approach to establishing a law of nature:
He then goes on to note that, "At the Humean level laws just are empirical regularities."  (p. 155)
In comparison, science as practiced works on i, ii, and iii:
In other words, Hume was just saying, you see a bunch of cases X and they have trait Y.  Induction would say that the next case of X will also have trait Y, but this is illogical.  You could see something else.  But Bhaskar is saying that we know more about the world, on a number of different levels, and we're being more exacting about mechanisms.
Hume would say, Just because of all of your experience with ice cubes melting in the heat, you can't logically say that an ice cube in the sahara desert on a hot day will melt because, well, you know, maybe it won't!  Nyah Nyah Nyah!  
Bhaskar would say, well, we know rather a lot about ice cubes on hot days, not just from repeated experience (although that is pretty strong) but from our knowledge of different mechanisms.  And so (to simplify, Bhaskar does tend to rather go on and on) the ice cube will melt -- or if it doesn't, there will be a good reason (it's in a freezer!). 
All references are to Bhaskar, Roy. "A Realist Theory of Science." (2008).Bhaskar, Roy. "A Realist Theory of Science." (2008).
Pigkeeper (talk) 22:54, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roy Bhaskar and Critical Realism 

message: Shouldn't he get a mention? Straw Cat (talk) 03:48, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kant 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: WP DEPENDS ON INDUCTION & DEDUCTION. THEIR MEANING SHOULD BE FIRM.
This encyclopedia accepts the premise of enumerative induction that the more editors who agree on the content of an article, the more accurate and useful that content. Induction is practiced on every TALK page. Editors generalize from a few observations, and deduce concrete conclusions from their generalizations.
WP contains 4 repetitive and fragmentary articles on induction: Inductive reasoning, The problem of induction; New riddle of induction, Inductivism. I would like to rectify this chaotic situation by rewriting and merging these 4 articles, retaining only the reasoning title. I ask you—a participant in relevant TALK pages—to judge my rewrite/merge project: SHOULD I PROCEED? Below is the current proposed outline:
Definitions. Induction generalizes conceptually; deduction concludes empirically.
David Hume, philosopher condemner.
Pierre Duhem, physicist user.
John Dewey, philosopher explainer.
Bertrand Russell, philosopher condemner.
Karl Popper, philosopher condemner.
Steven Sloman, psychologist explainer.
Lyle E. Bourne, Jr., psychologist user.
Daniel Kahneman, psychologist user.
Richard H. Thaler economist user.
Please respond at Talk:Inductive reasoning. TBR-qed (talk) 15:58, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Induction & deduction 

message: I propose to replace 
by 
I would also propose to remove the following sentence:
This sentence presents a false controversy. It does it, because it conflates two different things: the requirement for a rational justification of observed processes and these processes per se.  The correct sentence (not that I propose that we use it) would be:  
Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:12, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The lead could be simplified 

message: First of all, it's clear that the content is not verified. It's a favorable evaluation of the book and an interpretation of its scope made in the voice of Wikipedia, which breaks WP:NPV. Even if it was sourced in and attributed to some secondary source, a review of a book, even a brief one, is not in the scope of the current article. 
That does not mean the content of the book is not acceptable in Wikipedia.  I don't want to enter into the question whether the content is acceptable, because this would require a search for secondary sources that verify the same content (in respect of WP:NOR) and I am not going to do that now. However, I could not stop myself from looking at the main thesis of the book, which has 30 citations in Google scholar and thus is a good candidate. The book starts by doing a good job at describing the distinction between deduction and observed induction in science. It brings out a key point: deduction requires that there has been some previous induction, which, of course, is well known and understood. The main thesis of the book starts with this excerpt:
This is not the problem of induction that most people try to address. Harriman argues that people try to address the wrong question, but his argument can be criticized. It is based on a similarity between deduction and induction: they are both a way to do inference. He says "One cannot ask for a justification of induction, any more than for a justification of deduction." But induction and deduction are more different than they are alike, so one cannot conclude that we can proceed with induction as we do with deduction.  An important distinction is that induction is ampliative, i.e., it generates information that is not implied in the premises. So, as Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and thus induction requires extraordinary evidence. The most important distinction, though, is that deduction has almost never been put in question, whereas induction has always been put in question.  So, the natural question is given that we accept deduction as a valid mean of inference, because it is very ordinary, how can we justify induction, which appears extraordinary. 
In contradistinction, the book denies from the start any form of justification for induction. I have not read the book, but it's possible that it provides a valuable description of recent induction processes in science and try to extract from this an observed scientific methodology. If it is that, it can hardly claim any novelty. It is exactly what Lakatos argued that should be done. Yes, Lakatos rejected, as did Popper, inductivism but only as a rational justification, not as an observed phenomena that follows rules. Only a small glance at Lakatos work shows that he wanted to find the inductive rules that are followed in the history science. He was explicit about that in his book "The methodology of scientific research programmes" (pp. 162-165). Most of this book concerns the history of science and the observation of these inductive phenomena. The only difference is that Harriman denies any chance of justification, whereas Lakatos did not. Popper, we can say, also denied a rational justification for these observed rules, that is, he never tried to turn them into rules that can justify steps of inference or to find such rules that would justify them. 
In this manner, Popper might seem close to Harriman, but there is a big difference. Popper did not deny a rational explanation for these observed induction processes and, in fact, he offered a very natural explanation.  Zahar presents this as the fundamental difference between Popper and Lakatos. This rational explanation makes a big difference, because otherwise one is tempted to interpret these observed rules as if they were some kind of ampliative rules of valid reasoning, which we should follow. Why not? If they are observed and they are successful, why not use them as rules of inference?  Popper's explanation explicitly rejects this interpretation.  Popper offered methodological rules, which were prescriptive, but they were not inductive. By the way, Lakatos proposed descriptive inductive rules, but these rules were either deprived of any form of inductivity or rewritten so that they could not be prescriptive before they found their way in his proposed methodology. Here is an excerpt that illustrates the first case (emphasis mine) :
Here is an excerpt that illustrates the second case:
So, at the end, Popper's and Lakatos' methodology were both non inductive and consistent one with the other.  
Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:32, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The new section on David Harriman's book 

message: The following sentence suggests that no background knowledge is involved in observed induction processes: 
Some thinking is needed to find a better way to describe the problem, but the description must clearly distinguish between a rule to describe observed processes, which usually involve some hidden background knowledge, and an ampliative rule to infer new knowledge. By definition, the ampliative rule does not use any background knowledge that, if made explicit, would allow to deductively infer the "new knowledge". 
Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:37, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I think my proposed revision addresses this issue.  Please see below.TBR-qed (talk) 20:57, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Implicit assumption that no background knowledge is involved 

message: I just want to summarize what are my concerns. The article should not in the voice of Wikipedia implicitly conflate two notions of induction: 
* any move from observations to a conclusion, in which the conclusion cannot be deductively obtained from the observations and
* the use of inductive inference rules to execute such a move. 
I think the first notion is the standard concept of induction in philosophy or may be it depends of the author. For example, I think Goodman refers to rules of inferences when he explains how induction can be justified. The same terminology "induction" for totally different concepts might create some confusion.  In addition, the article must distinguish between 
* a process of induction with a clear causal relation from observations to a belief in a conclusion and 
* a presumed process of induction where this causal relation is not so obvious.  
For example, Popper argues that the causal relation between observations of sunrises and the belief in the law "the sun rises every day" is nonexistent. I am only saying that the article should not have Wikipedia implicitly adopt one of these two views, when there is no consensus about it in the literature. 
However, I must say that most of the article is fine with regard to these concerns.  There are the images on the left side, which incorrectly assume an inference from observations of sunrises to the corresponding law.  There might be nothing else. I would have to read it again. 
Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:57, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Avoiding making implicit assumptions.  

message: I am not sure this big edit is an improvement. The problem of induction is one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging, subject in the philosophy of science and  I think, we need the contribution of other editors here. It's going to be a challenge, if we want to make major modifications to this article. I intend to revert  the last edits of TBR-qed. Dominic Mayers (talk) 15:26, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Mcc1789 (talk) on 18:12, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am glad to have this opinion, but still think that a more substantial discussion is needed. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:20, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Please revert the edits by . If you don't revert, I will. The edits by TBR-qed suffer from the same issues that we discussed above regarding the draft at User:TBR-qed/sandbox, etc. For example, it over-relies on Sloman & Lagnado. The first paragraph is insufficiently clear for Wikipedia. Other parts of the lead section are unencyclopedic in tone. Dominic noted other problems below. I appreciate TBR-qed's enthusiasm for this topic, but what TBR-qed is trying to do in these edits may be better suited to an original journal article, not to Wikipedia. I suggest further discussion here with TBR-qed about what he is trying to do, if he wishes. Biogeographist (talk) 19:18, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, I am looking forward toward useful discussions with TBR-qed. I don't feel his points are wrong and disconnected from the literature, not at all, but they need to be attributed and balanced with other POV. Dominic Mayers (talk) 19:48, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

text:  And yes, in view of the controversial nature of the subject, these points might be too recent and better suited in an original journal article. Yet, I think some balance is needed. Editors should work together to include as much recent and established knowledge as possible, but in respect of WP:RSUW. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:09, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

text: Yes, I mostly agree. I'm not totally sold on the current wording but it's significantly better than the previous one. GliderMaven (talk) 22:00, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

text: Given that we have Inductive reasoning it would not appear to require further sourcing. What concerns me about the sentence is 'mysteriously and paradoxically creates illusions of knowledge" which seems to me to be editorializing.Teishin (talk) 18:11, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  You are right. The issue is not that the method of inductive reasoning is not defined and attributed to an author. The issue is the indirect assertion that it is actually used in practice and "mysteriously and paradoxically creates ...".  The current version is more neutral, more adequate for a lead. Though, I am also not totally sold on the current wording either. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:26, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The recent big edit of TBR-qed 

message: The first sentence in the lead is 
It assumes from the start that there is an actual method of reasoning called induction and do not attribute this view to any philosopher.  It is as if the encyclopedia states this as a fact.  All recent edits of TBR-qed are based on this bias toward one point of view.  Given that this is at the center of most debates on induction, this is not acceptable in Wikipedia.  Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:59, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I mostly agree. I'm not totally sold on the current wording but it's significantly better than the previous one. GliderMaven (talk) 22:00, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

text: Given that we have Inductive reasoning it would not appear to require further sourcing. What concerns me about the sentence is 'mysteriously and paradoxically creates illusions of knowledge" which seems to me to be editorializing.Teishin (talk) 18:11, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  You are right. The issue is not that the method of inductive reasoning is not defined and attributed to an author. The issue is the indirect assertion that it is actually used in practice and "mysteriously and paradoxically creates ...".  The current version is more neutral, more adequate for a lead. Though, I am also not totally sold on the current wording either. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:26, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: What method of reasoning?

message: The revert of TBR-qed major edits should not be interpreted to mean that the article cannot be improved, of course. In my view, the article mostly contain excellent well sourced content. Something bothers me a little though. It seems to fail to distinguish between different descriptions of induction, which may or may not be equivalent and thus should not be considered a priori as one and the same concept of induction in Wikipedia.  The challenge here is that not only different descriptions of induction seems to exist in the literature, but also  different ways to distinguish between different descriptions seem to exist. It becomes easily a mess if one wants to consider all of this. On the bright side, I believe there is a classical notion of induction and it is not the notion of induction in Sloman & Lagnado, for example. I am not sure how we should manage this situation. 
However, at the least, we should make sure that the article does not mess up different notions as if they were the same. I believe the article suffers from this kind of problems at few occasions. My main criteria is that the traditional notion of induction, even the probabilistic version, has clearly been rejected in philosophy, starting from ancient Greek and Indian philosophy and more recently with Hume. There has been many attempts to find a valid classical notion of induction, but no success. My favorite example is the entire work of Lakatos. He criticized Popper because he did not propose an inductive process and took for himself the task of finding inductive rules, but at the end he only obtained descriptive rules. He could not find rules that could be used by scientists and he acknowledged that. He argued that it was good enough, but many others philosophers noticed that it was not the original goal. For example,  Feyerabend wrote in "Against Method" that Lakatos' methodology of scientific research programmes is epistemological anarchism in disguise and Musgrave made a similar comment.   Anyway, if the article speaks of induction  as inference rules that are used in practice and differ from deduction by the fact that they are uncertain or probabilistic, then a big red signal should be raised, because most likely if we look carefully at the source, we will see that it's not the classical notion of induction.  Dominic Mayers (talk) 03:23, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reconsidering progressively the article 

message: Your replies have finally penetrated my ignorance of how I can use a sandbox to present a proposal rather than making a drastic revision.  I shall do that.  I shall review and comment on the SEP article.  But first, let me make 2 assertions to show where I am coming from--which is doubtless as controversial as my content:
An encyclopedia is a living tool, not a crypt or mausoleum.  Would it not be more useful to users of Wikipedia to learn how Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow perpetuates the problem of induction than to learn what Sextus Empiricus wrote about it?TBR-qed (talk) 17:31, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia serves a wide variety of users who have a wide variety of information needs. Our concern as editors is not so much about whether X is more useful than Y, but whether X is useful enough to include. Teishin (talk) 18:17, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

text: Teishin's point is essential. I would actually be interested in reading about . But keep in mind that such an account would need to be based on at least one secondary source to be included in Wikipedia. We can't make original arguments about primary sources (WP:NOR), so if you're making original arguments about Kahneman and the other authors that you listed above at , Wikipedia is not the place to do it. WP:PSTS says: "Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources. All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source, and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." Biogeographist (talk) 18:39, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

text: TBR-qed: Thanks for your commentary on the SEP article. A quick response to one point you made: You said, comparing Reichenbach and Dewey:  I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "rank bias", so I may just be restating your point, but I think Henderson's inclusion of Reichenbach and not Dewey reflects the fact that Reichenbach's book has been much more commonly discussed in scholarly accounts of the problem of induction than Dewey's book has been. This can be seen quickly, for example, on Google Scholar by searching for "problem of induction" in publications that cite Reichenbach's and Dewey's books; Reichenbach comes out far ahead of Dewey. Nevertheless, I will be interested to see what you say about Dewey and which secondary sources about him and the problem of induction you are summarizing. Biogeographist (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thanks for correcting my ignorance. 

message: I just looked at this latest revision of your proposed changes to Problem of induction. I understand that it may not be finished yet, but overall there is a major problem with your method: You are just commenting on primary sources. This is the same method that you used to rewrite two previous articles, Instrumental and value rationality and Instrumental and value-rational action, and your rewritten versions of those articles have been appropriately tagged by  with the  cleanup tag. Your method is not an appropriate method for Wikipedia, as it produces an original argumentative essay that violates the WP:NOR policy. If you want to produce content that is appropriate for inclusion in this article, you will need to adopt a different method: Instead of commenting on quotations from primary sources, find secondary sources about how those primary sources relate to the problem of induction, and then summarize the secondary sources. One can cite primary sources, but the content should be based mostly on secondary sources and should not make original arguments. This has already been explained above, and has probably been explained to you on other talk pages as well. Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 15:02, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I second what Biogeographist said. TBR-qed's method of writing articles is unacceptable for Wikipedia. --Omnipaedista (talk) 15:34, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: These comments finally make me recognise how you distinguish an essay from an encyclopedia article, and I grant some of my earlier posts violated this position.  I think the present proposal is minimally guilty of the charge, and I ask you to suspend judgment until you see the final product.  Over 1/2 is directly reporting on Sloman and Lagnado.TBR-qed (talk) 15:43, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to say that the very structures of both the present article and the proposed revision are somewhat inappropriate. This type of structure might be problematic even if secondary sources have been used. Wikipedia articles about major concepts in analytic philosophy are rarely mere anthologies of summaries of philosophical works. Wikipedians tend to avoid this style of essay-like article structure. Philosophy articles tend to be organized around major themes, not organized around a collection of opinions of famous commentators/philosophers (see SEP's take on the problem of induction or the Wikipedia article about the new riddle of induction). --Omnipaedista (talk) 19:01, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  One of my previous responses above, commenting on an earlier draft in User:TBR-qed/sandbox, was similar to your most recent comment, and I too pointed to the SEP article. A problem with your comparison to Goodman's new riddle of induction is that the problem of induction is much older, and so an adequate treatment of the subject has to cover more historical material than the article on Goodman's new riddle does; this fact can be seen even in the SEP article. And if you look at the history of the SEP article (some previous versions are mentioned above), it has gone through radical changes over the years, and has had very different approaches to presenting the topic. There are so many different views that it is a challenging subject to summarize, and I don't think one can entirely avoid organizing the subject by different views to some extent, as even the SEP article does in its second half; as the current SEP article says: "A number of philosophers have attempted solutions to the problem, but a significant number have embraced [Hume's] conclusion that it is insoluble. There is also a wide spectrum of opinion on the significance of the problem. ... In this article, we will first examine Hume’s own argument, provide a reconstruction of it, and then survey different responses to the problem which it poses." Having said all that, you are right that  is very underdeveloped. To complicate things even further, TBR-qed's approach is largely outside the area of what you called analytic philosophy. TBR-qed relies especially on a chapter by Sloman & Lagnado in The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning that presents psychological research and happens to be titled "The problem of induction" but has little relation to how the problem of induction is treated in analytic philosophy, and as I said above, I have found no evidence that Sloman & Lagnado deserve the prominence in this article that TBR-qed wants to give them. Biogeographist (talk) 19:52, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

text: I disagree with your judgment that WP should do more than recognise ancient philosophy.  The ancients are easily accessible; modern practices with ancient roots are not--a lack suited for WP to fill.TBR-qed (talk) 17:20, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed revision in [[User:TBR-qed/sandbox]] 

message: I am trying to relate secondary sources to primary sources to be more encyclopaedic.  I hope you will help me correct my lapses rather than just counting them.TBR-qed (talk) 17:15, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  reforming writing style 

message: TBR-qed reports that the table below was not properly formatted and will be replaced.--Quisqualis (talk) 20:15, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  coverage table 

message: I consider the following sentence: 
The problem I see with this sentence is that it refers to inductive reasoning which can refer to inductive justifications or to what is now seen as inductive methods in social science and in artificial intelligence or even simply to any relationship between a law and observations that corroborate it.  These concepts are totally different and operate at completely different levels. The problem of induction is about missing justifications. For example, this is clearly explained in SEP. The first paragraph in SEP describes the well known relationship between laws and observations: if a kind of bread has nourished thus far, we are not surprised to see the (false) law that it will keep be nourishing. However, when it comes to the problem of induction, the expressions used in SEP are "on what grounds" and "arguments that do not serve". So, clearly, the problem is the missing justifications. Therefore, I suggest that we do not refer to the nowadays vague term "inductive reasoning" and focus on missing justifications. I propose 
Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:26, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand your reason for not wanting to use the word "induction". But I would keep the link to Inductive reasoning in there. It could be helpful for people who end up at this page but don't already know what the word "induction" means in "problem of induction". One possible solution: You could link it like this: "mere collection of observations". Biogeographist (talk) 20:18, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Looks great! I changed the proposal above accordingly. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:21, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: The introductory sentence in the lead

message: First, I consider the following sentence in the article: 
This sentence plays a useful purpose, because indeed there is notable belief, justified or not, that knowledge grows through some kind of reasoning, thus inductive reasoning, because deductive reasoning is not ampliative. The first problem is that I don't feel it's written in a neutral manner. It's not attributed in a clear way. It's not attributed to Broad (except the quote of course), because on the contrary Broad is presented as an innocent witness of the fact. It is not clearly attributed to the traditional inductivist view, because the term "account" again suggests that it is an observed fact. The second problem is that it refers to all empirical claims, but there is no problem with claims of simple observations.  It's a nice sentence, but it needs some work. To address the first problem I suggest the following  The middle sentence is not attributed, but that's ok, because it is well known. To address the second problem, "empirical claims" must be replaced by something else. I propose "claimed empirical laws". So, it becomes 
Second, let see how this fits with the next sentence  It could be simply:
 I addressed a problem of terminology here by replacing "induction" with "inductive justifications".  Of course, Popper never claimed that the inductive relationships usually seen between laws and  observations do not exist. If asked why do you accept that the sun raises on the east every day, he would have replied that he sees it every day, just like anyone else. Note that this is no justification at all for the inference of the law. If one is asked how can you infer B from A and one replies because I have A, one has provided no justification at all for the inference.   In other words, he believed in the value of corroborations, just like every one else. The only thing he rejected is the existence of a rational justification for the laws.
Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:25, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: This change looks good to me. Biogeographist (talk) 20:18, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: The sentences introducing the inductivist view and Popper's view

message: Continuing to try to correct present article is recognition that something must change.  Can we agree on what needs change?  Is anyone making classification errors?  
Dom seems to want to ignore the whole social science effort to deal with the "problem of induction."  I find that rank philosophical bias in favour of traditional classifications.  If many social scientists say they are dealing with the problem, how can WP editors judge them wrong?
Allow me to explain how I came to describe and judge the present article biased and obsolete.
I read S&L “Problem of induction” after reading WP “Problem of induction.”  I quickly recognized the bias of the WP article because it ignored the range of information in S&L.  I classified it as violating WP NPOV rule.  This classification is at once a descriptive fact and a valuation.  See columns 1&2 of coverage table.
I thought the bias could not be eliminated by adding S&L info to present article--WP standard operating procedure--because S&L content and definitions framed problem differently.  I was delighted to learn that SANDBOX provided means for me to attempt revision.  See column 3 of coverage table.
Editors Dominic Meyers & Biogeographist, unaware of my evidence of bias, logically classified my sandbox revision as violating NPOV & NOR rules and reading like an essay—unencyclopedic.  SK2242, equally unaware of the evidence in my table, accepts these classifications.
My proposed revision does not violate NPOV because it describes modern alternatives to present WP article.  It partially corrects existing bias.
My proposed revision does not violate NOR because it reports existing scholarship in S&L.
Reporting existing scholarship requires comparing modern classifications with traditional, regardless of whether or not it appears “encyclopedic.”TBR-qed (talk) 15:42, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that there is a good consensus on what is the subject "problem of induction". It is the same old problem of induction that was raised by Hume, the one that involves justifications for laws given observations, the kind of justifications that were considered in ancient India and ancient Greece. This subject is not obsolete at all.  One rule in Wikipedia is that the subject of the article must be well defined so that we can evaluate  accordingly the pertinence of information to include.  If you do not accept the subject, because you think it is obsolete, then you are against the consensus. This being said, it does not mean that nothing should be said about how some recent views on induction is related to this subject. It will be very helpful that you accept the subject as it is and explain how the information that you want to include is pertinent given that subject. Note also that any controversial information to include would require more than a single source. You will have to convince us through a few sources in philosophy of science that this information reflects the opinion of at the least a minority of experts on the subject "the problem of induction" as defined here so that the link with this subject is pertinent.  I am not writing this with the belief that you cannot succeed. I think that there might be something there that would improve the article, but we need the sources and of course, a specific information to include. One idea would be that you write one or two sentences that could be added to the lead as it is now to show the link with the subject as it is defined now.   Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:42, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

text: TBR-qed described how he first read this article, then read Sloman & Lagnado, and then decided that information from Sloman & Lagnado needed to be in this article. His conclusion may be partially correct: it may be true that some of the information that he encountered in Sloman & Lagnado belongs in this article. But what is missing is larger  of Sloman & Lagnado's chapter: Where does Sloman & Lagnado, and the information they present, fit in the larger body of knowledge that this article is supposed to summarize? As Dominic said, . TBR-qed's arguments have been repetitive so far because he is just comparing three sources: the present article, Sloman & Lagnado, and his draft. There needs to be comparison among a larger body of secondary and tertiary sources, not just Sloman & Lagnado. Biogeographist (talk) 16:04, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correct or replace? 

message: I know that no original research is allowed in the article, but sharing our understanding in the talk page can help the discussion. Besides, what I am going to say is  not really original research in the following sense that many others have noticed the same thing. I see that before Popper, induction was strongly associated with justification, especially in the Vienna Circle. It was important at the time to separate science from non science and the hoped difference was that science is justified knowledge and that every thing else was not even meaningful. I think that after Popper it has becomes generally accepted that justified knowledge was the wrong objective, though there is still a remain of justificationism for knowledge that is uncertain.  But, even among those that stopped to fight for justificationism in any of its forms, induction was not abandoned.  This new trend is that induction does not have to be justified, because it is an observed fact. This is a complete shift in comparison with the pre-Popper notion of induction. This notion of induction is not at all opposed to Popper's philosophy. In fact, it perfectly goes along with it, because it starts with the premise that justification is not needed. They would even say that, for that reason, the problem of induction does not really exist, which is exactly Popper's point. I find it weird that those who support this notion of induction pooh-pooh Popper's philosophy. The explanation, I believe, is that the true meaning of justificationism is lost. In artificial intelligence, they create machines that can infer laws from observations. The principles used by these machines are considered as some kind of justifications for the laws and they are called inductive principles. Similar notions have spread in social science. However, these inductive principles are not universal. They have nothing to do with the kind of justifications that were hoped for in pre-Popper time. There was a very good reason for the pre-Popper time justificationism. It was puzzling in ancient Greece, for Hume and in Popper's time that no true justifications can be found and it is still puzzling today. It's not obsolete at all.  Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:58, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: This is just a response to Dominic's personal view, not so relevant to the article: One reason why some people are not so impressed by Popper's account of "justificationism" may be because they are already epistemological fallibilists with no help from Popper. Epistemology cannot be simply divided into infallibilist/foundationalist "justificationism" before Popper and fallibilist/nonfoundationalist "non-justifications" after Popper. There was fallibilist epistemology before Popper (e.g., C. S. Peirce), and there has been non-Popperian fallibilist epistemology during and after Popper's career (e.g., Neurath's boat). One need not be a Popperian to appreciate the absence of absolute foundations of knowledge. Biogeographist (talk) 16:04, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Part of the lack of agreement might be due to definitions. For me, fallibilism and anti-justificationism are different in at the least two ways. First anti-justificationism rejects even the justification of uncertain inference. So, in that sense, it is stronger. Second, anti-justificationism is by definition only concerned with (rational) justification at the level of objective knowledge and therefore does not concern itself with ways to gain knowledge that operate between subjective knowledge (expectation, predisposition, etc.) and objective knowledge.  Popper's view is that non objective ways of gaining knowledge are fallible, involve chance, a lot of it, but they are nevertheless not a part of anti-justificationism. Anti-justificationism per se does not exclude the possibility of some infallible aspects in subjective ways to gain knowledge.   So, in that other sense, it is weaker. I disagree that it's irrelevant to the article. It's not directly relevant, but it's indirectly relevant, because if we do not agree on this kind of notions in the talk page, then it is very difficult to understand each others when we discuss the article. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:33, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think I understand what you're saying; I don't see any misunderstanding here on my part. You're basically summarizing Popper's philosophy. My point is that not all epistemology before Popper was "justificationism". This is not a refutation of anything you said, since you didn't explicitly claim that  epistemology before Popper was "justificationism". I am just pointing out something you omitted, since you only mentioned Popper and "pre-Popper-time justificationism". Biogeographist (talk) 19:03, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

text:  Another way of phrasing my point: Someone who is not a justificationist has little use for anti-justificationism. Biogeographist (talk) 19:09, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I suspect that this is the situation with many modern "inductivists". They are inductivists that are not justificationnists. They have little concern for this obsolete view, they would say. But, this is a big source of confusion, because in the problem of induction,  as defined here, the inductivist view is a justificationist view.  If it was not, then indeed, there is no problem of induction. I am sorry if I referred to Popper only, but Popper was not in the same context as Peirce. He came at a time where the justificationism view was at its extreme value. So, he directly addressed the issue. Peirce might have done better than Popper had he been in a similar context. Popper had a lot of appreciation for Peirce. Nowadays, (classical) justificationism is replaced with what I would call synthetic or non universal justificationism, the one that emerges in artificial intelligence in particular. There is no problem (of induction) with this kind of justificationism. I personnally see it as a natural continuation of the death of classical justificationism and as such it does not make the original problem obsolete. In particular, it does not remove, though it might contribute to hide, the puzzling aspect of a lack of classical justification.  My point is that we need primary and secondary sources to include this kind of considerations in the article. Until we have secondary sources that make the connection with the original problem of induction, the article cannot cover that.  Dominic Mayers (talk) 19:58, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with all that. Biogeographist (talk) 20:31, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  My personal view, in case it might help thinking about the article.  

message: Draft:Problem of induction is a proposed rewrite of Problem of induction.  It was declined by User:Theroadislong for two reasons, both because it reads like an essay, and because it is a rewrite of an article, which is not how Articles for Creation works.  
There has been extended discussion of the content of this article.  Three years ago, this might have been a good case for formal mediation by a member of the Mediation Committee, or even longer ago for informal mediation by the Mediation Cabal.  Two years ago, in a remarkably stupid action, the community disbanded the Mediation Committee.  This content dispute is too large to be handled by the dispute resolution noticeboard.  Without studying the details of the content dispute, it appears to me that a mediator is needed, and that the mediator should largely assist in the formulation of multiple Requests for Comments.
This draft was resubmitted, and I removed the resubmission tag while moving the commentary to the talk page.  I restored the resubmission in order to decline it again with comments.  I recommend a combination of mediation and Requests for Comments. 
Robert McClenon (talk) 00:59, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Improving this article is going to be a long process which will require a lot of proposals by editors, each one for some step of progress, not to completely change the article.  Unless we have proposals, I don't see what would be the specific issue that a rfc will be able to decide. What will be useful is more people with some expertise on the subject that want to put the time needed to make specific proposals or discuss proposals made by others. This cannot be a one shot process. There is a consensus that a coverage of the cognitive science + AI perspective should be added, but we need specific proposals that are based on a few secondary sources and a good will to discuss them with an open mind.  The draft was declined formally, but the main issue is that it rejected totally the current view of the article as being obsolete. The draft might contain elements that are useful for the article, but TBR-qed should make a specific proposal for some step of progress without  totally rejecting the article.  I have not edited this article until recently and I think it was good even before my edits. I suspect that it reflects a lot of consensus to which I add my support and I believe that other participants here do the same. It does not mean that it cannot be improved, but throwing it away as being obsolete makes no sense.  Dominic Mayers (talk) 01:54, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, in a second thought, a rfc might be useful to get some general opinions or guidelines from the community.  Dominic Mayers (talk) 03:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Draft:Problem of induction]]

message: The leading sentence is too complicated, and without reason, because the "knowledge understood in the classic philosophical sense" is the same thing as "justified knowledge". Therefore it does not need to mention both the justification and the "classic philosophical sense". My suggestion was "The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge understood in the classic philosophical sense...", but there are other possibilities, how to solve it. In any case, the current lead should be changed because it lacks the required conciseness.Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 07:31, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: For many readers "knowledge understood in the classic philosophical sense" does not mean much more than "knowledge in the usual sense". I don't think it conveys the idea that a justification (other than a self justification) is searched, thus is missing and that it might not even be possible. For other readers, if the notion of justification is seen in this expression, it is in the form of a belief that normal accepted knowledge in practice is justified knowledge. With such a belief, any description of a method that leads to that justified knowledge is the solution to the problem of induction, that is, the method is confused with the justification. Dominic Mayers (talk) 09:30, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Lead

message: what is your opinion on the following proposal, an attempt to make the first sentence in the lead simpler. The current sentence is: 
I don't think it is so bad, but I propose to change it to 
 
I removed the reference to "knowledge understood in the classic philosophical sense", which is linked to justified true belief, a concept that gained approval during the Enlightenment, "justified" standing in contrast to "revealed". The concept of justified true belief in relation with the Gettier problem, etc. is still discussed in epistemology in general, but not in the article.  For our purpose, the concept of inductive reasoning does a better job in distinguishing revealed knowledge from scientific knowledge. So I replaced it with "as understood in inductive reasoning". To simplify further, I also used "apparent lack of justification" from the start instead of highlighting it later.  Also, I made the sentence more neutral by adding that the lack of justifications might not be apparent only, but be actually a real absence of justifications. 
Dominic Mayers (talk) 19:40, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rethinking the first sentence of the lead. 

message: Right now the lead, as Harry Belafonte sang, is clear as mud, but it covers the ground. It confuses and discourage anyone who doesn't already know what it is talking about. It's important to think of the principle of least astonishment WP:ASTONISH, as well as the MOS:LEAD. I will be building it around this formulation of the problem: "Therefore, for Hume, the problem remains of how to explain why we form any conclusions that go beyond the past instances of which we have had experience" from the Stanford Encyclopedia, as well as "On what grounds we can expect the future to resemble the past". I know there are a million reasons why this doesn't cover the ground, What about thinkers before Hume? What about....  The answer is, we can't cover everything in the lead. We owe the average reader a comprehensible, not a comprehensive, explanation. The rest of the article can cover all the rest of the ground. DolyaIskrina (talk) 22:41, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's a first whack at it:   DolyaIskrina (talk) 23:24, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: I'm fixin to rewrite the lead 

message: I have recently made a few edits to inductive reasoning and reflected them here, mainly by including a reference to Keynes. It seems to me that these are relevant to the 'grue' problem but do not have a source for this.
My thinking is that one makes induction based on 'experience' so one would be led by induction to expect a continuation of experiencing emeralds as grue, rather than being committed to calling them grue. Doesn't this shift this 'problem of induction' to one of denotation?--Djmarsay (talk) 17:28, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Keynes, edits to 'inductive reasoning' and 'grue'