A Solution to the Raven Paradox: A Redefinition of the Notion of Instance

In this paper, I critically analyse two strands of Bayesian solution to the paradox: the standard Bayesian solution and the attempts to refute Nicod’s criterion (NC). I argue that the standard Bayesian solution evades the exact challenge of the paradox. I hold that though the NC or instance confirmation is imprecisely formulated, it cannot be ruled out as an invalid form of confirmation. I formulate three conditions of instance confirmation which sufficiently captures our intuitive notion of instance confirmation. Finally on the basis of the conditions of instance confirmation, I show that paradoxical contrapositive instances like white shoe are not contrapositive instances of the raven hypothesis.