Hempel’s paradox of the ravens, and his take on it, are meant to be understood as being restricted to situations where we have no additional background information. According to him, in the absence of any suchinformation, observations of FGs confirm the hypothesis [All Fs are G].This SUPPORT principle, as I shall call it, together with an EQIVALENCE principle --that whatever confirms a hypothesis equally confirms any logically equivalent hypothesis -- give rise to the paradox.In this talk I argue against the SUPPORT principle by way of considering two other paradoxes of confirmation, Goodman’s ‘grue’ paradox and the ‘tacking’ (or ‘irrelevant conjunct’) paradox. What these paradoxes reveal, I argue, is that a presumption of causal realism is required to ground any confirmation; but once we grant causal realism, we have no reason to accept the SUPPORT principles behind these paradoxes.

Dr.Murali Ramachandran is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. His Areas of specialization/interest are: Philosophical Logic, Metaphysics,Epistemology and Philosophy of Language. He is the recipient of UK Mind Fellowship (2010). and South Africa NRF rating - B3 (2015).