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Can the Best-Alternative Justification Solve Hume's Problem? On the Limits of a Promising Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Eckhart Arnold
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Extract

In a recent Philosophy of Science article, Gerhard Schurz proposes meta-inductivistic prediction strategies as a new approach to Hume's problem. This discussion examines the limitations of Schurz's approach. It can be proved that the meta-inductivistic approach does not work anymore if meta-inductivists have to face an infinite number of alternative predictors. With this limitation it remains doubtful whether the meta-inductivist can provide a full solution to the problem of induction.

Type
Discussions
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 77 , Issue 4 , October 2010 , pp. 584 - 593
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I owe many thanks to Gerhard Schurz, Ioannis Votsis, and Ludwig Fahrbach for discussion and valuable criticism. I would like to thank Benedikt Kahmen for his careful reading of the draft of this discussion note. I would also like to thank two anonymous referees for some extremely helpful comments and criticism. This research has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Cluster of Excellence in Simulation Technology (grant EXC 310/1) at the University of Stuttgart.

References

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