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GROUNDS OF INFERENCE
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It shows how the validity of a generalisation from the particulars of experience depends ultimately on the discovery of certain common essences or universal characters of particular things. From the observation of a limited number of instances of the relation between two things we cannot know anything for certain about all possible instances of them unless we find that the things possess a certain essential nature which is the basis of their relation in some cases. The particular objects of experience lend thernselves to a generalisation when they are recognised as instances of a class and possessed of some essential common nature. A number of things are arranged in one class in view of such common essence or universal which is present in all the members of that class, but absent in those of a different class Hence if in some cases we see that something is related to the essential nature or the universal underlying a class, we know that it is related to all the members of that class. The observation of particular instances is important because it helps us to find the universals underlying different classes of things and their relations with one another. Hence the problem of induction is the problem of the discovery of class-essences or universals exemplified in particular things As we have already remarked, sorne Western logicians are slowly recognising the truth of the Nyāya view that an inductive generalisation must be based on the knowledge of classessences or universals embodied in particular things. But they do not go so far as to say with the Naiyāyıkas that an empirical generalisation from particular instances is a matter of non-sensuous intuition based on the perception of universals. They would generally treat it as an inference from known resemblance or as a perfect analogy. Mr. Eaton, however, goes further and maintains that the first step in induction is a direct perception of the universal in the particular. He says : “ Induction proceeds from the
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