Queries on Hempel's solution to the paradoxes of confirmation

Abstract

To solve the highly counterintuitive paradox of confirmation represented by the statement, A pair of red shoes confirms that all ravens are black,  Hempel employed a strategy that retained the equivalence condition but abandoned Nicod s irrelevance condition. However, his use of the equivalence condition is fairly ad hoc, raising doubts about its applicability to this problem. Furthermore, applying the irrelevance condition from Nicod s criterion does not necessarily lead to paradoxes, nor does discarding it prevent the emergence of paradoxes. Hempel s approach fails to adequately resolve the paradox.

Keywords

paradoxes of confirmation, Nicod’s criterion, equivalence condition, Hempel