[foldr]

No, that's not even close to cashing out the generalization in empirical terms. To do this you'd need to specify exactly which observations would confirm or disconfirm it. Without the parenthesized parts, your gloss of the generalization remains vague and value-laden. With the parenthesized parts it is virtually tautological, since it's in the nature of empirical knowledge to generate accurate empirical predictions. It's surely not news to anyone that if forms of knowledge which lead to detailed empirical predictions are superior to other forms of knowledge, then empirical knowledge is superior to other forms of knowledge.

What you really seem to want to do, then, is argue from the nature of empirical knowledge itself to the conclusion that it is better than other methods of empirical knowledge. But that requires rational argument to back up the italicized statement above, not (just) an inductive generalization. And then we come back to the problem that it is impossible to find suitable premises for such an argument which can themselves be known empirically.

(For reference, the generalization we're talking about here is that "a bunch of empirical knowledge turns out to be valuable/effective/legitimate and all the supposed non-empirical knowledge I've seen turns out not to be valuable/effective/legitimate".)

[lmm]

> But that requires rational argument to back up the italicized statement above, not (just) an inductive generalization.

Why? Everyone evaluates ordinary, everyday knowledge in terms of its empirical predictions, so everyone seems to accept the italicised statement in practice, even if they'd argue for some sophisticated alternative in the abstract.