Abstract

D. C. Stove believes that there are three kinds of philosophers. First, there are Popperians, who believe that no justification for inductive inference is possible and are happy to pursue a non-inductive philosophy of science. Second, there are those who believe that no satisfactory justification for inductive inference has yet been stated and regard this as a scandal of philosophy. Finally there is D. C. Stove, who believes that there are a vast number of perfectly rational inductive inferences and that the rationality of these inferences needs no philosophical justification. Stove aims to adjust the relative proportions of these three groups.