The freewheeling use of the word “induction” is a pet peeve of mine. Sometimes it is used to mean any legitimate, non-deductive inference. Sometimes it is used narrowly be mean the inference from Observed Fs are G to All Fs are G. Sometimes it is carelessly used to mean both and other things besides. While I was sorting through old documents, I found this list of importantly different things that get paraded around under the banner of induction.
When I wrote this list back in February 2021, I think that I imagined it forming the nucleus of a paper. I’m not sure what to add, though, besides the genuine wish that there were better vocabulary for this. *sigh*
“Induction”
⚗️ 1 🔭 Inferring general claims about an arbitrary population from a sample
🔬 2 🧫 Inferring general claims about a kind from an instance/exemplar
- The general claims may be phenomenological or fundamental
- Predicting the future
- Figuring out what happened in the past
- Figuring out what far away places are like, what is going on there
👩🔬 3 🧪 Inferring causal structure of a system
- Diagnosing the cause of a particular outcome
- Understanding why the past went as it did
🧬 4 ⚛️ Figuring out what unobserved entities exist
- Because of the poverty of evidence
- Because the entities are a different kind of thing