Rudolf Carnap's Approach to the Problem of Induction

Philosophy of Science Colloquium
The Institute Vienna Circle holds a Philosophy of Science Colloquium with talks by our present fellows.

Date: 14/03/2024

Time: 16h45

Venue: New Institute Building (NIG), Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien, HS 3F

Abstract:

In Rudolf Carnap's work on inductive logic (starting with his 1950), he challenged the traditional view that inductive methods contradict empiricism due to their reliance on a synthetic a priori uniformity assumption. Carnap proposed a logical alternative to frequentist probability, advocating for a probabilistic uniformity assumption. He aimed to categorize all probabilistic statements as analytical and part of an inductive logic. Despite these efforts, we want to argue that Carnap's account has gaps. It remains to be proven that from his system a probabilistic statement about nature's uniformity can be derived. Additionally, his approach seems to require meta-probabilistic reasoning, which, at least at first sight, seems to face the problem of triggering an infinite regress and leaving his account to induction incomplete.