Reading Questions for Lipton’s “Induction” & Popper’s “The Problem of Induction”

Due Date: 10/30

What sense of ‘underdetermination’ is Lipton using in this article—is it deductive underdetermination (HUD), or ampliative underdetermination (something like QUD, or relativism)? What distinguishes the problems of description and justification? How is underdetermination relevant to each?

1. In terms of justification, underdetermination shows that the inferences we make are not truth-preserving. The crucial problem, however (often referred to as the problem of induction), is circularity. Explain, in your own words, the circularity problem.

What is the difference in the responses of Descartes and Hume to the circularity?

2. Lipton discusses four attempts at describing inductive inference: ‘more of the same’, the instantial model, the hypothetico-deductive model (HD), and Mill’s first two Methods (really due to Duns Scotus and William of Ockham , respectively, 500 years before Mill). Lipton claims of each of the first three that it is both too permissive (allowing inferences the shouldn’t) and too strict (failing to allow inferences they should). Two criticisms of Mill’s Methods are offered. Choose one of the four methods, describe it, and explain the criticisms Lipton raises.

What advantages does the hypothetico-deductive model have over the instantial model?

Note that Popper’s indictment of induction is closely parallel to Hume’s, though Popper likes to describe the problem as an infinite regress rather than a simple circle. Moreover Popper attacks probabilistic induction.

3. What is Popper’s response to the problem of (justifying) induction?

4. In Section 2, Popper makes the distinction we have previously seen describe as that between the context of discovery and context of justification. To what use does he put this distinction, and how does it fit with his response to the problem of induction? Why does he claim that psychology is irrelevant to epistemology? What does he think is going on when a scientist comes up with laws based on observations?

What are Popper’s four different ways of deductively testing theories?

On page 419, Lipton writes: “Why is description so hard? One reason is a quite general gap between what we can do and what we can describe...Although we may partially articulate some of our inferences if, for example we are called upon to defend them, we are not conscious of the fundamental principles of inductive inference we constantly use.” Given our inability to describe what we are doing, is it possible that we are not even making inferences in moving from observation to theory? I.e., could Lipton and others just be mistaken that something like inference is going on? (Could we make an inference we are not conscious of?) Note that Popper and Hume (to some extent) reject the idea that an inference is involved in those practices typically labeled induction.