Problem of Induction

The problem of induction asks how observing particular cases could license a general conclusion — e.g. how seeing many white swans could justify “all swans are white.” David Hume argued, two centuries before Popper, that no valid logical argument carries us from observed instances to a universal law or to a prediction about unobserved cases. Any such inference smuggles in the very assumption it needs (that the future resembles the past), so it cannot be established by either deduction or by experience without circularity.

Critical Rationalism takes this failure as decisive rather than as a puzzle awaiting a fix. Popper held that induction is a myth: there is no inductive method, valid or otherwise, and the centuries-long failure to make one work is itself strong evidence against it. He located the deeper rot in justificationism — the demand that ideas be positively supported or proven — which generates the problem in the first place. His replacement is conjecture and refutation, elaborated as evolutionary epistemology: knowledge grows by guesses tested against criticism and observation, with no support flowing from data up to theory.

Critical Fallibilism follows Critical Rationalism here on two points. First, the logical question of whether a method works has priority over how useful it would be — defenders of induction wrongly argue from desirability. Second, abandoning induction does not collapse into skepticism, because any observation-using method (like Popper’s) suffices to avoid it. CF also stresses that observations themselves are fallible interpretations, never raw inductive inputs.