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Penultimate draft. Final version forthcoming in Philosophia. All citations should be to the published version.

Defusing the Counterinduction Parody

Matt Lutz

In this paper, I defend an inductivist solution to Hume's Problem of Induction against the

popular counterinduction parody argument. Once we examine the structure of the inductivist position

closely, we will see that there is no coherent way to parody it.

1. The Problem of Induction and Inductivism

Induction is a reasoning process that we use to draw probabilistic inferences about how things

will stand in unobserved instances. Hume famously wondered how induction could be justified. All

belief-formation seems to come from one of three processes: direct observation, demonstrative

reasoning (which yields a priori knowledge), and inductive reasoning (which yields a posteriori

knowledge of empirical generalities and, thereby, knowledge of unobserved particular instances). This

forms a trilemma: if these three processes are our only sources of belief, there seems to be no way for

us to know that induction is reliable. On the first horn of the trilemma, we attempt to justify induction

by observation. But we cannot know that induction is reliable through observation because induction is

a mode of reasoning that gives us knowledge of unobserved instances. On the second horn, we attempt

to justify induction by demonstration. But it is not a priori certain that unobserved instances will be

like observed instances; it is always conceivable that the future will not resemble the past. And on the

third horn, we attempt to use induction to justify induction. But we cannot do this, either; that is

circular reasoning. So, with no way to justify induction, we are forced to skepticism about induction.

The inductivist challenges the third horn of Hume's trilemma. According to the Inductivist, we

can use induction to justify induction. There may be a kind of circularity involved in doing this, but we

ought not view this kind of circular reasoning as viciously circular. The Inductivist views this sort of

justification as harmless “rule circularity” (Van Cleve 1984).

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I will not directly address the question of whether the kind of circular reasoning that

inductivism manifests is vicious. Instead, my concern will be with a second objection, the

counterinduction parody, as formulated by Salmon (1957) and popularized by Skyrms (1966). Hume

contented himself with the observation that circular reasoning seems to be vicious. But, after some

began to warm to the idea of an inductive justification of induction (Black 1949), Salmon argued that

something must be wrong with the inductive justification of induction because it can be successfully

parodied. If justification can be justified inductively, argued Salmon, then counterinduction can be

justified counterinductively. And since it is absurd to say that counterinduction can be justified

counterinductively, there must be something wrong with the inductivist position.

That parody goes like this:

According to inductivism, induction can be used to justify itself, in something like the following

way: We are looking for a reason to believe that the past will resemble the future. Here is the reason

that we can provide: in the past, the future has always resembled the past. And the fact that, in the past,

the future has always resembled the past gives us a reason (by induction) to think that, in the future, the

future will continue to resemble the past. This follows from the principle of induction: that the future

will resemble the past. Thus, the proposition that induction is rational can be rationally deduced from

propositions about the past, by aid of the inference rule of induction. The remarkable success of past

induction gives us a strong inductive reason to believe in its future success.

Counterinductive inference is the inference rule whereby one infers that the future will not

resemble the past. For the inductivist, the fact that the sun has risen every morning is a reason to

believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, and the strength of this reason is proportional to how often the

sun has risen in the morning. The fact that the sun has an unbroken track record of rising is what gives

us such good reason to think that the sun will rise tomorrow. For a counterinductivist, on the other

hand, the fact that the sun has risen every morning is a reason to not believe that the sun will rise
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tomorrow, and the strength of this reason is proportional to how often the sun has risen in the morning.

The fact that the sun has an unbroken track record of rising is what gives us such good reason to think

that the sun will not rise tomorrow – or so says the counterinductivist.

Clearly, counterinduction is crazy. No one is rational in believing that counterinduction is

rational, and no one would be rational to use counterinduction in their reasoning. But counterinduction

can be justified: counterinductively. In the past, the future has always resembled the past. And the fact

that, in the past, the future has always resembled the past gives us a reason (by counterinduction) to

think that, in the future, the future will not resemble the past. This follows from the principle of

counterinduction: that the future will fail to resemble the past. Thus, the proposition that

counterinduction is rational can be rationally deduced from propositions about the past, by aid of the

inference rule of counterinduction. The remarkable failure of past counterinduction gives us a strong

counterinductive reason to believe in its future success. The lesson of the parody is that a rule's ability

to support itself is not sufficient for being justified in adopting that rule. And that's a huge problem for

inductivism.

In stating this parody argument, I have been speaking rather loosely. In what follows, I will

show that this argument sounds compelling only because I have been speaking loosely. In the next

section, I will state precisely what I take the inductivist position to be. In Section 3, I will show that this

version of inductivism cannot be parodied.

2. Distinctions

We begin by drawing a distinction between three things that are often conflated under the

common term 'induction.' Understanding the differences between these three things will be essential to

understanding where the counterinduction parody argument goes wrong.

In a deductive argument, the premises entail the conclusion of that argument. To believe the
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conclusion of an argument on the basis of premises that entail it is a certain kind of reasoning process,

called deduction. In an inductive argument, the premises give a reason to believe the conclusion even

though those premises do not strictly entail the conclusion. The inferential step that a reasoner performs

when moving from premises to conclusion cannot be accurately described as deduction; we therefore

call it induction. Thus understood, induction is a kind of process that one goes through in one's

reasoning. While an agent may go through many different processes in her reasoning, what makes a

piece of reasoning count as inductive is that it is reasoning in accordance with a certain rule. To wit:

Rule of Induction: From a set of premises that establish a regularity in observed

instances, infer that the regularity holds in unobserved instances.

The important thing to consider about the rule of induction is that it is a proper rule. The logical

form of the Rule of Induction is an imperative. It does not describe the world as being any particular

way.

However, reasoning in accordance with the Rule of Induction will only tend to be reliable if the

world is a certain way. In this way, the Rule of Induction seems to presuppose that a certain kind of

claim about the world is true. This is a claim that Hume called

Principle of Induction: “[T]hat instances, of which we have had no experience...

resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature

continues always uniformly the same” (Hume 1738, T1.3.6.5).1

It is this principle that Hume famously sought justification for. Hume's concern was that he did

not see what reasoning process one could use to gain justification for believing the Principle of

Induction. The Principle of Induction is a claim about the world that cannot be known directly by

observation or by deduction. But this means that we can only justify the Principle of Induction by

reasoning in accordance with the Rule of Induction. And this, thought Hume, was unacceptably
1 Hume refers to this principle several times, sometimes including a 'must' to indicate that this principle is necessary,
sometimes not. The version of the Principle stated here omits the modal term.
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circular; reasoning in accordance with the Rule of Induction presupposes the truth of the Principle of

Induction.

Presupposition: A Rule presupposes a Principle just in case: reasoning in

accordance with that Rule will tend to be reliable only if that Principle is true.

(This is offered as a stipulative definition of the relevant sense of 'presupposes' in discussions of

induction; see Alston (1986, p. 1-4) for a discussion of this conception of presupposition.) The

inductivist position, then, is that reasoning in accordance with the Rule of Induction can justify belief in

the Principle of Induction, despite the fact that the Rule of Induction presupposes the Principle of

Induction.

Note, however, that while the Rule of Induction presupposes the Principle of Induction, it does

not directly justify the Principle of Induction. The Rule of Induction is a description (in imperative

form) of a method for forming beliefs. It serves only to pick out a set of reasoning-tokens (the tokens

that accord with the method). The Principle of Induction is a descriptive, general principle: it says

something about the way the world is. Neither the Principle of Induction nor the Rule of Induction is a

normative epistemic principle that states conditions under which one can be justified in believing a

claim. But the inductivist's conclusion is that we are justified in believing the Principle of Induction.

We're missing the most important element of the inductivist position: the normative epistemic element.

In order for the Rule of Induction to justify belief in the Principle of Induction, we need to rely on

Successful Prediction: For any Rule of inference, if that Rule instructs you to

believe that P, and you receive evidence that P, that evidence provides some

defeasible confirmation for any Principle that Rule presupposes.

Successful Prediction is an epistemic principle stating sufficient conditions for a certain kind of

evidential support. If you reason in accordance with a Rule, then later gain evidence that the Rule made

a successful prediction, this is evidence that the rule is reliable. And, given Presupposition, evidence
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that a rule is reliable will be evidence in favor of any Principle that rule presupposes. The kind of

evidential support in question provides “some confirmation” (not conclusive reason) for thinking that a

Principle is true. Thus, Successful Prediction is a kind of inductive principle. The confirmation is also

defeasible because it is always possible to receive additional evidence which would undercut or

overturn the evidence provided by successful predictions. This is a characteristic of all non-conclusive

evidence.

Although Successful Prediction is an inductive principle, it does not only apply to the rule of

induction. Successful Prediction also implies, for instance, that when I get reason to believe that I have

hands, this is some confirmation that the world is the way that my senses present it to be, because the

Rule “trust your senses” presupposes that the world is the way my senses present it to be. In this way,

Successful Prediction features in an inductive justification of perception (as in Alston 1986,

particularly p. 6-7). Indeed, Successful Prediction can feature in an inductive justification of any mode

of reasoning that makes successful predictions (Strawson 1952).

Fitting Successful Prediction into a larger theory of epistemic justification falls outside the

scope of this paper, and as such it is somewhat schematic; I take no stand here on how much

confirmation successful predictions provide, or the circumstances under which this confirming

evidence would be defeated. The point is that Successful Prediction is distinct from both the Rule of

Induction and the Principle of Induction. The Rule of Induction is a reasoning process; the Principle of

Induction is a general, descriptive claim about the world. Successful Prediction is a normative

epistemic principle that states one way in which a claim can be inductively justified.

3. The Parody Fails

I have just presented an expanded version of the inductivist position. I don't intend to argue here

that there is nothing wrong with this inductivist position – that is outside the scope of this paper.
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Instead, my goal is to argue for the more modest thesis that the counterinductivist position is not a

successful parody of the inductivist position. Now that a distinction has been carefully drawn between

the Rule of Induction, the Principle of Induction, and Successful Prediction, along with the role that all

three of these principles play in the inductivist position, we can see why the counterinduction parody

fails.

The inductivist position is that belief in the Principle of Induction can be justified by using the

Rule of Induction, even though the Rule presupposes the Principle. The counterinductivist parody

would then have to say that belief in the Principle of counterinduction can be justified by using the

Rule of Counterinduction, even though the same presupposition relation holds.

Rule of Counterinduction: From a set of premises that establish a regularity in

observed instances, infer that the regularity does not hold in unobserved instances.

Principle of Counterinduction: That instances, of which we have had no

experience do not resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the

course of nature does not continue always uniformly the same.

The Counterinductivist claims that the Rule of Counterinduction justifies belief in the Principle

of Counterinduction, even though the Rule presupposes the Principle. But this can't be right. A rule's

presupposing a principle does not suffice to show that that Rule justifies the principle. Successful

Prediction (or something similar) is needed for that. But the counterinductivist cannot accept

Successful Prediction as part of the justification of the Principle of Counterinduction. This is because

Rule of Counterinduction does not make very many successful predictions.

So the counterinductivist parodies Successful Prediction as well. Instead of accepting

Successful Prediction, the counterinductivist advances

Unsuccessful Prediction: For any Rule of inference, if that Rule instructs you to

believe that P, and you receive evidence that ~P, that evidence provides some
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confirmation for any Principle that Rule presupposes.

And that's a problem.

The Principle of Induction and the Principle of Counterinduction are both empirical

generalities; they both describe general ways that the world can be. But Successful Prediction and

Unsuccessful Prediction are not particular facts about the world, knowable through observation, nor are

they empirical generalities. They are normative epistemic claims, that state sufficient conditions for a

certain kind of evidential support: support by confirmation.

The Principle of Induction describes a continuation of patterns; the Principle of

Counterinduction describes a failure of patterns to continue; and as Hume correctly points out, we have

no a priori reason to prefer one empirical generality to the other. But we cannot say the same thing

about Successful Prediction and Unsuccessful Prediction. Those are not contingent, empirical

principles concerning the progress of events in the world. They are normative epistemic claims that

state sufficient conditions for a certain kind of evidential support. This makes Successful Prediction a

truth of pure reason, knowable a priori through deductive reasoning. Theories are (somewhat, ceteris

paribus) confirmed when they make successful predictions. By similar token, Unsuccessful Prediction

is a philosophical falsehood par excellence: a necessarily false claim that is knowable to be so a priori.

Theories are (somewhat, ceteris paribus) disconfirmed when they make unsuccessful predictions.

These are both, plausibly, conceptual truths.2 The success of our predictions is what distinguishes

confirmation from disconfirmation.

The counterinductivist claims that, at a given time, both an inductivist and a counterinductivist

might be equally rational in believing in the Principle of Induction or the Principle of Counterinduction,

respectively. But how could a counterinductivist come to rationally believe that the Principle of

2 I believe that they are conceptual truths because I am, like Hume, a skeptic about the synthetic a priori. But my
argument doesn't rest on this assumption, so I won't defend it. Kantians may hold that this is an instance of synthetic a
priori knowledge.
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Counterinduction is true? Evidence accumulates over time, and, over time, The Principle of

Counterinduction will be massively disconfirmed by a typical course of experiences. The

Counterinductivist will say that this very disconfirmation provides a reason to believe the Principle of

Counterinduction. But that is incoherent; when a Principle is disconfirmed, that's a reason not to

believe it.

The root problem for the counterinductivist parody is that the counterinducitivst does not only

propose a (highly implausible) claim about the way the world will be in the future. The

counterinducitivst is also committed to the idea that some beliefs may be justified counter-inductively.

Thus, the counterinductivist must, at some point, advance a principle that states (ceteris paribus)

sufficient conditions for “counterinductive justification.” Neither the Principle of Counterinduction nor

the Rule of Counterinduction is such a principle, because neither is a normative epistemic principle.

Successful Prediction is a normative epistemic principle, but it is not a principle of counterinductive

justification; it is a principle of inductive justification, and it does not support the Principle of

Counterinduction. Unsuccessful Prediction is a normative epistemic principle of counterinductive

justification that supports the Principle of Counterinduction, but we can know a priori that it is false.

4. Objection: The Wrong Inductivism

One might object that I have mischaracterized inductivism, in the following way: One might

claim that the Rule of Induction is not a mere description of a method, but an epistemic norm that

essentially justifies any principle that it presupposes. Thus understood, the Rule of Induction would, by

itself, serve to justify the Principle of Induction, thereby obviating the need for an appeal to Successful

Prediction. An inductivist position of this kind can therefore be parodied without having to rely on

Unsuccessful Prediction. In this way, the parody might succeed.

Against this objection, I have two responses. First, my goal in this paper is only to state an
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inductivist position that cannot be successfully parodied by the counterinductivist. The fact that a

different inducitivist position might be successfully parodied is in no way a threat to my argument.

Indeed, if it is true that versions of inductivism that are not committed to Successful Prediction can be

successfully parodied, that's a very good reason to prefer versions of inductivism that are so committed.

But I don't wish to rest content with this first response, because the objection fails for another reason.

The reason that I separated the Rule of Induction from Successful Prediction in Section 2 was to

separate a simple imperative – the Rule of Induction – from an epistemic normative principle,

Successful Prediction. Claiming that the Rule of Induction is normative would, in effect, combine the

descriptive elements of the Rule of Induction with the normative commitments of Successful

Prediction. By similar token, then, a modified Rule of Counterinduction would not only describe

counterinductive reasoning, but also state that reasoning in this way is justified. But that's a substantive

epistemic normative commitment, and an indefensible one at that.

The lesson is that the counterinductivist's commitment to Unsuccessful Prediction is not so

easily avoided. That principle is essential to the “counterinduction is justified counterinductively by its

own failures” gambit, and that principle – not any descriptive claim about the way the world will be in

future cases – is the counterinductivist's problematic commitment.3

3 [ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]
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Bibliography

Alston, William P. (1986). Epistemic circularity. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (1):1-

30.

Black, Max (1949). The Justification of Induction. Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of

Philosophy 2:791-793.

Hume, David (1738). A Treatise of Human Nature.

Skyrms, Brian (1966). Choice and Chance: An Introduction to Inductive Logic. Dickenson Publishing.

Strawson, PF (1952). An Introduction to Logical Theory. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Van Cleve, James, (1984). Reliability, Justification, and the Problem of Induction. Midwest Studies in

Philosophy 9 (1):555-567.