Bases epistémicas de la inducción

Resumen

Epistemic basis for induction

I sustain (against Hume’s criticism) that inductive inferences have rational justification. My account is based on an extension of Peacocke’s theory of concepts and the a priori. The Humean argument has been replied from radically externalist viewpoints: justified inductive inferences do not require the subject to know that nature is uniform, though the uniformity of nature is a necessary condition for having the justification. But according to that view, the subject does not have reasons for believing what she believes. Mine is a moderate externalist proposal that seeks to partly accommodate that objection to the radical externalist reply. The key idea is that the possession of basic predicative concepts entails to be compelled to project them to new cases in accordance with inductive inferential patterns. These possession conditions bound the scope of a priori justification and determine that our inductive inferences are justified.

Key words: Induction, Hume, Peacocke, possesion of concepts, externalism, rational justification, reliabilism, internalism, a priori, empirical evidence.