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From: Raul.Valdes-Perez@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: construal of induction
Message-ID: <19880609224213.9.NICK@INTERLAKEN.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 9 Jun 88 22:42:00 GMT
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Date: Thu, 9 Jun 88 14:15 EDT
From: Raul.Valdes-Perez@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
To: ailist@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
Subject: construal of induction

Alen Shapiro states:

>There are basically 2 types of inductive systems
>
>a) those that build an internal model by example (and classify future
>   examples against that model) and
>b) those that generate some kind of rule which, when run, will classify
>   future examples
...
>I do not include those systems that are not able to generalise in either
>a or b since strictly they are not inductive!!

The concept of induction has various construals, it seems.  The one I am
comfortable with is that induction refers to any form of ampliative
reasoning, i.e. reasoning that draws conclusions which could be false
despite the premises being true.  This construal is advanced by Wesley
Salmon in the little book Foundations of Scientific Inference.  Accordingly,
any inference is, by definition, inductive xor deductive.

I realize that this distinction is not universal.  For example, some would 
distinguish categories of induction.  I would appreciate reading comments
on this topic in AILIST.

Raul Valdes-Perez
CMU CS Dept.