Despite such disagreements, it is insightful to view statistics as a response to the problem of induction (cf. Howson 2000 and the  entry on the  problem of induction).  This problem, first discussed by Hume in his Treatise of Human Nature (Book I, part 3, section 6) but prefigured already by ancient sceptics like Sextus Empiricus (see the entry on  ancient skepticism),  is that there is no proper justification for inferences that run from given experience to expectations about the future. Transposed to the context of statistics, it reads that there is no proper justification for procedures that take data as input and that return a verdict, an evaluation, or some other piece of advice that pertains to the future, or to general states of affairs. Arguably, much of the philosophy of statistics is about coping with this challenge, by providing a foundation of the procedures that statistics offers, or else by reinterpreting what statistics delivers so as to evade the challenge.