A Universal Inductive Inference Machine

A paradigm of scientific discovery is defined within a first-order logical framework. It is shown that within this paradigm there exists a formal scientist that is Turing computable and universal in the sense that it solves every problem that any scientist can solve. It is also shown that universal scientists exist for no regular logics that extend first order logic and satisfy the Lowenheim-Skolem condition. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-89-44. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/840 A UNIVERSAL INDUCTIVE INFERENCE MACHINE Daniel N. Osherson, Michael Stob and Scott Weinstein MS-CIS-89-44 LOGIC & COMPUTATION 10 Department of Computer and Information Science School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104