Inductive reasoning

====David Hume====
The empiricist [[David Hume]]'s 1740 stance found enumerative induction to have no rational, let alone logical, basis; instead, induction was the product of instinct rather than reason, a custom of the mind and an everyday requirement to live. While observations, such as the motion of the sun, could be coupled with the principle of the [[Uniformitarianism|uniformity of nature]] to produce conclusions that seemed to be certain, the [[problem of induction]] arose from the fact that the uniformity of nature was not a logically valid principle, therefore it could not be defended as deductively rational, but also could not be defended as inductively rational by appealing to the fact that the uniformity of nature has accurately described the past and therefore, will likely accurately describe the future because that is an inductive argument and therefore circular since induction is what needs to be justified.

Since Hume first wrote about the dilemma between the invalidity of deductive arguments and the circularity of inductive arguments in support of the uniformity of nature, this supposed dichotomy between merely two modes of inference, deduction and induction, has been contested with the discovery of a third mode of inference known as abduction, or [[abductive reasoning]], which was first formulated and advanced by [[Charles Sanders Peirce]], in 1886, where he referred to it as "reasoning by hypothesis."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Plutynski |first=Anya |date=2011 |title=Four Problems of Abduction: A Brief History |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/PLUFPO |journal=HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=227–248 |doi=10.1086/660746 |s2cid=15332806 |access-date=16 April 2022 |archive-date=11 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230411064730/https://philpapers.org/rec/PLUFPO |url-status=live }}</ref>  Inference to the best explanation is often, yet arguably, treated as synonymous to abduction as it was first identified by Gilbert Harman in 1965 where he referred to it as "abductive reasoning," yet his definition of abduction slightly differs from Pierce's definition.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Mcauliffe |first=William H. B. |date=2015 |title=How did Abduction Get Confused with Inference to the Best Explanation? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.51.3.300 |journal=Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society |volume=51 |issue=3 |pages=300–319 |doi=10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.51.3.300 |jstor=10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.51.3.300 |s2cid=43255826 |issn=0009-1774 |access-date=16 April 2022 |archive-date=16 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220416041215/https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.51.3.300 |url-status=live }}</ref>  Regardless, if abduction is in fact a third mode of inference rationally independent from the other two, then either the uniformity of nature can be rationally justified through abduction, or Hume's dilemma is more of a trilemma.  Hume was also skeptical of the application of enumerative induction and reason to reach certainty about unobservables and especially the inference of causality from the fact that modifying an aspect of a relationship prevents or produces a particular outcome.