Title:
Induction and Indifference
Abstract:
The principle of indifference says that if you don’t know which possibility obtains, you should assign equal credences to all possibilities. There are different ways to make this precise, but even sophisticated versions of the principle of indifference fail to vindicate inductive reasoning. I illustrate this point by discussing Carnap’s work on the foundations of inductive logic and the No Free Lunch theorem from machine learning and draw some philosophical lessons.
