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Philosophy vocabulary · Logic and Argument

Induction

Meaning in philosophy, with examples

/ɪnˈdʌkʃən/nounCore term

In philosophy, induction means: Reasoning from observed cases to a general conclusion or a prediction, where the premises make the conclusion likely but not certain.

In Turkish: tümevarım, endüksiyon

How it is used

Inductive arguments are called strong or weak rather than valid or invalid. The problem of induction, made famous by Hume, asks what justifies our assumption that the future will be like the past.

Example sentences

  1. Every swan I've seen is white, so all swans are white: a classic case of induction going wrong.

  2. Hume's problem of induction is still one of the hardest questions in epistemology.

Common collocations

  • the problem of induction
  • inductive reasoning
  • inductive argument
  • enumerative induction
  • deductionReasoning in which the conclusion is meant to follow necessarily from the premises, so that true premises guarantee a true conclusion.
  • inferenceThe step of reasoning from one or more statements to another, or the conclusion that is reached by taking that step.
  • justificationThe reasons or evidence that make it rational to hold a belief, or the property a belief has when it is properly supported.
  • hasty generalizationA fallacy of drawing a general conclusion from too few cases or from cases that are not representative.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Logic and Argument

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