“Abduction First, Kinds Second: Mary Shepherd’s Reply to Hume’s Inductive Skepticism” – Jeffrey K. McDonough (Harvard University)
Thursday, October 22, 2026
12:00 – 2:00 PM
Dodd Hall 321
Please join the UCLA Modern Philosophy Roundtable for “Abduction First, Kinds Second: Mary Shepherd’s Reply to Hume’s Inductive Skepticism,” a talk by Jeffrey K. McDonough (Harvard University).
Abduction First, Kinds Second: Mary Shepherd’s Reply to Hume’s Inductive Skepticism
This essay defends an “Abduction-First” interpretation of Mary Shepherd’s response to Hume’s inductive skepticism. On recent “Kinds First” interpretations, Shepherd’s defense of ampliative reasoning presupposes justified beliefs about ordinary and scientific kinds. I argue instead that it rests on two principles. Her Identification Principle directs us to identify samples by investigating their causes and effects; understood abductively, this investigation yields fallible evidence of kind membership. Her Causal Likeness Principle then bridges the gap between a sample’s observed and unobserved properties. Although Shepherd derives her Causal Likeness Principle from a necessary, a priori, deterministic metaphysical principle, her epistemology only requires a more defensible contingent, a posteriori, probabilistic version. Finally, I argue that Shepherd assigns roles to both stipulation and discovery in our thinking about kinds and that her abductive epistemology explains how we may acquire evidence for the existence of kinds themselves. On the reading offered, justified beliefs about kinds are products, not presuppositions, of Shepherd’s defense of ampliative reasoning. Abduction underpins our knowledge of kinds, not the other way around.
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