Alan Musgrave’s research while affiliated with University of Otago and other places

John Fox argued that deductivism must be supplemented with ‘epistemic syllogisms’, non-deductive arguments whose vindication is trivial if deductivism is correct. I resist this attempt to surpass deductivism.

Colin Cheyne's ‘paradox of reasonable believing’ poses a problem for both internalist and externalist theories of rationality. Cheyne suggests that externalists will more easily solve it. I argue the opposite.

For centuries tradition had it that knowledge is justified true belief. Then Edmund Gettier produced cases that refute that traditional view – or so most philosophers think. I disagree. The widespread intuition lying behind the so-called ‘Gettier Cases’ is that there is epistemic bad luck (we can unluckily fail to know), but no epistemic good luck (we cannot luckily know). I reject this puritanical intuition. I also question the externalist or reliabilist views of knowledge and/or justification that the Gettier Cases have spawned.

Popper, being a deductivist, stated that reasoning is largely deductive. However, most philosophers disagree and state that reasoning is non-deductive. Deductivists generally consider ampliative reasoning invalid. This chapter provides inductive or ampliative logic leading from evidential premises to evidence-transcending conclusions. It discusses abduction and inference to the best explanation (IBE). In discussing abduction and IBE, ‘facts' that require explanation are a prerequisite. There are two main sources of these facts–namely, sense-experience and testimony. Justificationism refers that a reason for believing something must be a reason for what is believed. On rejecting justificationism, it can be allowed that perceptual experiences are reasons as well as causes of perceptual believing. The distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification is largely because of the logical positivists and Popper. Inductive or ampliative logic are not needed anywhere—not in the context of criticism, not in the context of invention, and not in the context of appraisal either.