Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2022
This note makes a contribution to the issue raised in a paper by Popper and Miller (1983) in which it was claimed that probabilistic support is purely deductive. Developing R. C. Jeffrey's remarks, a new general approach to the crucial concept of “going beyond” is here proposed. By means of it a quantitative measure of the inductive component of a probabilistic inference is reached. This proposal leads to vindicating the view that typical predictive probabilistic inferences by enumeration and analogy are purely inductive.
I would like to thank David Miller for his helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to Marcello Pera for help and private discussions on this topic. Special thanks are to be reserved for an anonymous referee: the final version of this note has been considerably influenced by his remarks. The responsibility for what is asserted in it rests however entirely with me. I am also indebted to Piers Bursill-Hall for his stylistic suggestions.