Rules of Inference, Induction, and Ampliative Frameworks

Abstract

Sellars distinguishes the reasoning appropriate to developing hypotheses and theories, i.e., induction, from that appropriate to testing and justifying its results, deduction. Induction is a legitimate mode of inference; it must be if scientific inquiry is to have any respectability. Sellars not only argues that induction is legitimate, but that empirical science in general is essentially inductive. ([47], p. 355; [40], p. 304) Empirical science proceeds within an inductive framework: a framework which accepts inductive inference as rational.