Shifting the Paradigm

Alternative Perspectives on Induction

Paolo C. Biondi, Louis F. Groarke

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9783110369113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

Induction, which involves a leap from the particular to the universal, has always been a puzzling phenomenon for those attempting to investigate the origins of knowledge. Although traditionally accepted as the engine of first principles, the authority of inductive reasoning has been undermined in the modern age by empiricist criticisms that derive notably from Hume, who insisted that induction is an invalid line of reasoning that ends in unreliable future predictions. The present volume challenges this Humean orthodoxy. It begins with a thorough consideration of Hume's original position and continues with a series of state-of-the-art essays that critique the received view while offering positive alternatives. The experts assembled here draw on a perennial historical tradition that stretches as far back as Socrates and extends through such luminaries as Aristotle, Aquinas, Whewell, Goethe, Lonergan, and Rescher. They inquire into the creative moment of intellectual insight that makes induction possible, consider relevant episodes from the history of science, advance scholarly exegeses of historical interpretations of inductive reasoning, and reflect critically on the scientific and logical ramifications of epistemological and metaphysical realism.

Table of contents

• Philosophische Analyse / Philosophical Analysis
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Hume’s Disappointingly Accurate Conclusions: General and Specific
• Hume and Aristotle on Induction: A Comparative Study
• Intelligibility
• Induction, Science, and Knowledge
• Induction in the Socratic Tradition
• Socrates and Induction: An Aristotelian Evaluation
• The Problem of Example
• The Object of Aristotelian Induction: Formal Cause or Composite Individual?
• From Particular to Universal: Drawing upon the Intellectual Milieu to Understand Aristotle and Euclid
• Not Induction’s Problem: Aquinas on Induction, Simple Apprehension, and Their Metaphysical Suppositions
• Grounding Necessary Truth in the Nature of Things: A Redux
• Narrative and Direct Experience: A Dialogue on Metaphysical Realism
• Goethe and Intuitive Induction
• Lonergan’s Solution to the “Problem ofInduction”
• Induction as a Pragmatic Resource
• Jumping the Gaps: Induction as First Exercise of Intelligence
• Epilogue
• Contributors’ Biographies
• Index