The ‘Problem’ of Induction

THE 'PROBLEM' OF INDUCTION THE subject of this paper is the various meanings which the term "induction" may have, and the consequent ambiguity of the so-called" problem of induction." We shall attempt to distinguish many of these meanings from each other, and on the basis of these distinctions to make some suggestions concerning the nature of the " problem of induction " in each case. In general, induction is the movement of the intellect from the singular to the universal, or from the less universal to the more universal. It is precisely this passage to the universal or the more universal which poses the problem of induction. How is one to justify such a passage? How can we see beyond these particular contingents or these specific types to a more universal necessary intelligibility? First, we may note that this movement of the intellect takes place on two distinct levels of knowledge: that of the nature, cause, and other aspects of the thing-in-itself; 1 and that of the appearance of this thing-in-itself in the order of operation. Since the first level of knowledge concerns the underlying nature, we shall call the induction which takes place at this level transphenomenal induction. Since the second level con1 This is not the Kantian thing-in-itself, which is perhaps most appropriately characterized by its unknowability. Rather, we are thinking of the Thomistic being which reveals itself to us through its phenomena, but which nevertheless is other than these phenomena themselves, with an otherness which is subsumed under the scholastic distinction between the order of being and the order of operation It should also be noted that we are not distinguishing, in this paper, between the order of essence and the order of existence. Flowing from this distinction are certain fundamental differences within what we shall call transphenomenol induction -differences between the induction proper to the philosophy of nature and that proper to metaphysics. We prescind from this point as well as from the distinction between the analogical arid the universal. All intellectual knowledge is here termed " universal." 25 26 JOSEPH J. SIKORA cerns the observable phenomena, we shall call the induction which takes place at this level phenomenal induction.2 I. ThANSPHENOMENAL INDUCTION In our attempt to intellectually grasp the being of things, the first necessity is the transphenomenal abstractive intuition of the intellect. If there be no such intuition, the thing-in-itself must become the Kantian thing-in-itself, unknowable to us. But such abstractive intuition is the seeing of a universal necessary intelligibility in the individual contingent sensibles. This is an inductive process, as Aristotle says in the Posterior Analytics .8 It is a movement of the intellect, confronted with the singular, to the universal. But this process of what we may call abstractive induction is not properly the concern of logic, but rather of philosophical psychology and metaphysics. Logic requires universal ideas as already given. Its purpose is to. examine the relations between such ideas, in formal logic, and their content, in material logic. The work of abstractive. induction takes place according to its own laws in the spiritual preconscious 4 life of the intellect. The " problem of induction " here is the traditional metaphysical " problem of universals " and the psychological problem of the agent intellect. The ideas yielded by abstractive induction may, however, fall into two classes. Some there are which bear evident necessary relations to each other. When we consider these, we necessarily judge concerning these relations. The resulting propositions may be regarded as a secondary derivative of abstractive induction. No special movement of the intellect beyond the mere comparison of such ideas is necessary for the formation of these propositions. Such, for example, are propositions like " The whole is greater than its part." Also reducible 2 For an elaboration of the distinction between these two levels of knowledge, see Maritain's La Philosophie de la Nature (Paris, 1937) or his Les Degres du Savoir (Paris, 1932) . 8 Anal. Post., B 19, 100b 8-5. • For this term see Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (New York, 1955) ' p. 78. THE ' PROBLEM ' OF INDUCTION 27 to this ·type are propositions like " Being is good," which...