Abstract
Using a minimum of propositional logic and of the elementary calculus of probability (see the Appendix), David Miller and I (Popper and Miller, 1983) published a very short paper in which we proved that probabilistic support in the sense of the calculus of probability can never be inductive support. As some knowledgeable people remained unconvinced, I am here restating our case, adding some further proofs.
This paper originally appeared in G. Dorn and P. Weingartner (eds) Foundations of Logic and Linguistics (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1985).
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References
Popper, K. R., 11934, Logik der Forschung (Vienna: Springer).
—, 1959, 111983, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson).
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— and Miller, D., 1983, ‘A Proof of the Impossibility of Inductive Probability’, Nature, No. 302, pp. 687–8.
— and —, 1984, ‘A Proof of the Impossibility of Inductive Probability (A Reply to some Critics)’, Nature, No. 310, pp. 433–4.
— and —, 1987, ‘Why Probabilistic Support is Not Inductive’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, A.321: 569–91.
Tarski, A., 1956, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
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© 1991 Karl R. Popper
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Popper, K.R. (1991). The Non-Existence of Probabilistic Inductive Support. In: Mahalingam, I., Carr, B. (eds) Logical Foundations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21232-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21232-3_5
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