Hempel's paradox
Hempel's paradox proper noun: a paradox arising from the question of what constitutes evidence for a statement. Observing objects that are neither black nor ravens may formally increase the likelihood that all ravens are black, even though, intuitively, these observations are unrelated.
Proper noun
Hempel's paradox
- A paradox arising from the question of what constitutes evidence for a statement. Observing objects that are neither black nor ravens may formally increase the likelihood that all ravens are black, even though, intuitively, these observations are unrelated.
- Thus Hempel's paradox, later indeed popularized by Hempel, is a nice example of Stigler's law: nothing is named after its inventor.2020, Ferenc Csatári, Measurement and Meaning, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 83
- Synonyms:
- raven paradox
Synonyms of Hempel's paradox
Origin of Hempel's paradox
Proposed by the logician Carl Gustav Hempel in the 1940s to illustrate a contradiction between inductive logic and intuition.
Questions about Hempel's paradox
- What does Hempel's paradox mean?
- Hempel's paradox means a paradox arising from the question of what constitutes evidence for a statement. Observing objects that are neither black nor ravens may formally increase the likelihood that all ravens are black, even though, intuitively, these observations are unrelated.
- What part of speech is Hempel's paradox?
- Hempel's paradox is a proper noun.
Words near Hempel's paradox in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Hempel's paradox (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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