The Problem of Induction This article discusses the problem of induction, including its conceptual and historical perspectives from Hume to Reichenbach. Given the prominence of induction in everyday life as well as in science, we should be able to tell whether inductive inference amounts to sound reasoning or not, or at least we should be able to identify the circumstances under which it ought to

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) Michel Foucault was a major figure in two successive waves of 20th century French thought–the structuralist wave of the 1960s and then the poststructuralist wave. By the premature end of his life, Foucault had some claim to be the most prominent living intellectual in France. Foucault’s work is transdisciplinary in nature, ranging across the concerns of the disciplines of history, sociology, psychology,

Simone Weil (1909—1943) The French philosopher Simone Weil is a confronting and disconcerting figure in modern philosophy. This is not simply because she was so many things at once—ascetic and mystic, teacher and factory worker, labour activist and political militant, social thinker and piercing moral psychologist, critical Marxist and heterodox Christian theologian—but because of the striking “untimeliness” of her thought. For unlike philosophers in the

Scientific Realism and Antirealism Debates about scientific realism concern the extent to which we are entitled to hope or believe that science will tell us what the world is really like. Realists tend to be optimistic; antirealists do not. To a first approximation, scientific realism is the view that well-confirmed scientific theories are approximately true; the entities they postulate do exist; and we have good

American Philosophy The term “American Philosophy,” perhaps surprisingly, has been somewhat vague. While it has tended to primarily include philosophical work done by Americans within the geographical confines of the United States, this has not been exclusively the case. For example, Alfred North Whitehead came to the United States relatively late in life. On the other hand, George Santayana spent much of his life outside