How Little Uniformity Need an Inductive Inference Presuppose?

Abstract

Hume said that “all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past” and that “all reasonings from experience are founded on the supposition, that the course of nature will continue uniformly the same” ([1748], Section IV, Part II, p. 35; [1740], p. 651). Despite the difficulty of formulating a principle of uniformity of nature that is not uninterestingly false, many have echoed Hume’s claim that inductive inference presupposes some such principle. Musgrave (1989), for example, on behalf of deductivists everywhere, noting that “it conduces to clarity” to construe inductive inferences as deductive enthymemes (pp. 319f.), identifies “Any explanation of a (surprising) fact is true” and “The best explanation of any body of facts is true” as the premises suppressed in the styles of inductive inference promoted respectively as abductive inference and inference to the best explanation.