Method
Inductive reasoning
Overview
Inductive reasoning refers to a variety of methods of reasoning in which the conclusion of an argument is supported not with deductive certainty, but at best with some degree of probability. Unlike deductive reasoning (such as mathematical induction), where the conclusion is certain, given the premises are correct, inductive reasoning produces conclusions that are at best probable, given the premises provided.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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A few technical terms are useful. Suppose we want to establish inductively that there is some probability in favour of the generalisation: “Everything that has the property _F_ also has the property _f_”. We will call this generalisation _g_. Suppose we have observed a number of instances in which _F_ and _f_ go together, and no instances to the contrary.
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
States what Inductive reasoning is; the author is tied to Inductive reasoning in the knowledge graph.
There are nevertheless, in mathematics, some examples of so-called Induction, in which the conclusion does bear the appearance of a generalization grounded on some of the particular cases included in it. A mathematician, when he has calculated a sufficient number of the terms of an algebraical or arithmetical series to have ascertained what is called the _law_ of the series, does not hesitate to fill up any number…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Inductive reasoning is; the author is tied to Inductive reasoning in the knowledge graph.
When, in short, the conclusion is more general than the largest of the premises, the argument is commonly called Induction; when less general, or equally general, it is Ratiocination.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
States what Inductive reasoning is; the author is tied to Inductive reasoning in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Inductive reasoning
- Avicenna
- Francis Bacon
- Nelson Goodman
- Ernest Nagel
- Henri Bergson
- Carl Gustav Hempel
- John Stuart Mill
- Pierre Gassendi
- Wesley C. Salmon
- William Whewell
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Noam Chomsky
- Richard Swinburne
- Roger Bacon
- Philodemus
- Leonard Peikoff
- Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
- Averroes
- Rudolf Carnap
- Paul Feyerabend
- Charles Sanders Peirce
- David Hume
- Edmund Husserl
- Bernardino Telesio
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- Absolute idealism
- French Revolution
- Foundationalism
- Francis Bacon
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Galen
- Argument
- Auguste Comte
- Pyrrhonism
- Philosophy
- Western philosophy
- India
- Immanuel Kant
- John Stuart Mill
- John Locke
- Karl Popper
- Gilbert Harman
- Underdetermination
- Posterior Analytics
- Problem of induction
- Contingency (philosophy)
- Sextus Empiricus
- Sociology
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.