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Explain Hume’s problem of induction summarized
Explain Hume’s problem of induction summarized
Explain Hume’s problem of induction summarized
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Hume’s problem of induction was originated in the 18th century, it has caused us to look and think about induction in a new way. Hume states that we as humans form beliefs about the unobserved through experience regardless if they haven’t taken place. The knowledge of the unobserved can’t be derived from a priori but must be from past experiences. For example, you know that when you go to flip a light switch the light will come on. You cannot see into the future to observe that the light will come on, you use your past experience of flipping on the switch to infer that it will turn on.
Secondly, Hume states that beliefs formed this way cannot be justified due to induction because you are reasoning parts of nature/life that have not been observed
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Hume’s view on appealing to the uniformity of nature is that it is uniform and will continue to be, because the future nature has always been like the past because the laws in place will continue to keep it that way. Hume’s appeal to the uniformity of nature is using induction to state that things will remain constant regardless of being observed. Thus you must use induction to believe in the uniformity. I think uniformity of nature is something to look at when explaining the unobserved but I don’t believe it is of the utmost importance. Nature isn’t completely uniform as is, the sun has gotten weaker and there are mutated plants and animals. All things we have observed. There is still a chance for something to change just as there is a chance for it to stay the same. That is why I believe it is something to consider but not to depend on. One could use inference to argue for the uniformity of nature by looking at the seasons of earth. Each and every year we experience change in seasons and you can infer that we will have the same seasons the following
One of the most important aspects of Hume's argument is his understanding of probability. Hume states that belief is often a result of probability in that we believe an event that has occurred most often as being most likely. In relation to miracles this suggests that miraculous events should be labelled as a miracle only where it would be even more unbelievable for it not to be. This is Hume's argument in Part 1 Of Miracles, he states that if somebody tells you that a miracle has occurred you do not have to physically go out and look at the evidence to determine it, all you really need to do is consider the concept of the miracle and if it is a violation of the laws of nature, we have to reason in acco...
...es. Therefore, the mind then mistakenly infers that this series of impressions is an individual persisting individual thing. Causation can also be explained by reusing the act of looking at a red shirt. When I look at a red shirt I know it is red based off of my earlier perceptions or impressions. I then experience the sensation of the color red, which relates to my ideas that I have of that color. And then when I look away, the memory of red still resides in my mind. In addition to causation, Hume’s also suggests propagation. Propagation is similar to regeneration where sensations occur and then memories of those sensations follow. Thus, due to causation and propagation, later stages of the mind are linked to the earlier. But since time is continuous and constantly changing, everything can change, but what stays constant is the concept of causation continuity.
The “grue paradox” presented by Nelson Goodman raises challenges for induction and makes us wonder why we make judgments and favor one hypothesis more than another. The “green” hypothesis is more compelling than the “grue” one in that “grue” is subject to changes in many circumstances.
Hume argues that perception can be divided into two types: impressions and ideas. He states that impressions are our first-hand perception, using all of our senses and emotions to experience them (Hume 2012, 8). For example, an impression of a sensation would be experiencing pain and an impression of reflection would be experiencing anger. Hume states that an idea is thinking about an impression. You cannot use your senses to experience the sensation or emotion, you are just simply reflecting on your experience (Hume 2007, 13). For example, thinking about the pain you felt when you stubbed your toe or thinking about how angry you felt when your football team lost. Hume argues that our thought is limited. He argues that when we imagine things such as an orange sea, we are simply joining two consistent ideas together. Hume argues that ‘all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones’ (Hume 2007, 13). This is called the Copy Principle.
Hume’s problem of induction is that inductive reasoning is not, in fact, reasonable. That is, we are not justified in reasoning inductively. This is because he believes that, in order to justify induction, we must use some form of the Uniformity Principle. This Uniformity Principle (henceforth noted as UP) states “[t]hat instances, of which we have had no experience, must resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same” (Hume 89). He also believes that “we must provide one of two types of justification for UP: (a) Show that UP is the conclusion of a deductive argument, or (b) show that UP is based on experience” (Crumley 15). He shows that it is not possible to prove this principle deductively because of problems of circularity, and that to show that it is based on experience is to be similarly circular. That is, providing evidence for something and using this as a justification for a believe is precisely what induction is all about, and so one ends up justifying induction through induction. (Crumley 14-16)
As humans, a crucial way we attempt to understand how the world around us works is by using previous experiences or evidence from our senses to make predictions about the future. However, how do we know that these predictions are accurate? How are we supposed to know whether future observations and experiences will resemble those of the past? In this essay, I plan to explain what induction is and Hume’s “Problem of Induction”: how he thinks that our beliefs about the future that are based on the past are unjustified. After that, I will present two arguments that he offers against his Problem of Induction, and show how they fail in counterarguing his claim.
... and faith are not based solely on empirical evidence and absolute proof. It is the will to believe, the desire to see miracles that allows the faithful, to believe in the existence of miracles, not on any kind of sufficient evidence but on the belief that miracles can happen. Rather than Hume’s premise that a wise man proportions his belief in response to the eviddence, maybe a wise man would be better off, tempering his need for empirical evidence against his faith and his will to belief.
In the selection, ‘Skeptical doubts concerning the operations of the understanding’, David Hume poses a problem for knowledge about the world. This question is related to the problem of induction. David Hume was one of the first who decided to analyze this problem. He starts the selection by providing his form of dividing the human knowledge, and later discusses reasoning and its dependence on experience. Hume states that people believe that the future will resemble the past, but we have no evidence to support this belief. In this paper, I will clarify the forms of knowledge and reasoning and examine Hume’s problem of induction, which is a challenge to Justified True Belief account because we lack a justification for our beliefs.
David Hume is a very famous philosopher for the methods that he takes to attack certain objects that he has a strong opinion on. He is the type of philosopher that will attack some of the simple things that we accept as humans and have grown to believe over time. He questions the validity of these arguments in regards to the methods that one took to arrive at their desired conclusions. He most notably takes a deeper look into induction and generalization. Induction is basically moving from some type of fact to formulate a specific conclusion about something. Generalization, on the other hand, is making broad assumptions on things usually with insufficient evidence. These two distinct points are the basis of David Hume’s argument expressed in, “An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding.” The main question that he poses is whether inductive reasoning overall can lead one to gain knowledge.
Descartes believes that the mind and body are separate of one another causing the problem to form in the transmission of information between the mind and the body. Hume does not conquer this task of mind and body one or separate. He is more concerned with the idea of self and how one is maintained over a period of time. He believes there is no such thing as self. That each moment we are a new being due to the fact that we are forever changing and nothing remains constant within ourselves. Yes, our DNA may be the same but that is not
...tion of what he really thinks. Just as we believe the sun will come up, and set down every single day we are apart of this earth, our belief of that theory cannot be certain; faith in the same outcomes has to be present in ones soul. Almost every aspect of Hume's ideas is composed of complex thoughts that are formed from simple ideas and impressions seen every single day “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” (Hume)
But before we discuss this idea further, let’s firstly recapitulate Hume’s position on induction and the arguments against the event of a miracle. Hume’s idea of induction is an argument for human justification of beliefs. He suggests human beliefs are based on experience; that the sun may not rise tomorrow is logically possible but in reality logic can’t really prove it will. So, Hume comes up with his own argument; that we use our experience of the sun having risen every day in the past,... ...
Inductive reasoning can be quickly summarized as a method through which a conclusion is drawn from particular cases; this conclusion may be applied to another specific case or generalized. All of our conclusions about the world around us, which we rely on daily without question, are dependent on this process. The expectation that our house will not cave in, that water will come from the faucet when turned on, that we will wake the next morning, are all propositions extrapolated from inductive arguments. Hume in his work ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’, after challenging the possibility of knowledge of cause and effect, posits that “The conclusions we draw from … experience are not based on reasoning or on any process of the understanding”.
Empiricism (en- peiran; to try something for yourself): The doctrine that all knowledge must come through the senses; there are no innate ideas born within us that only require to be remembered (ie, Plato). All knowledge is reducible to sensation, that is, our concepts are only sense images. In short, there is no knowledge other than that obtained by sense observation.
When we look around our world today, we see a dynamic, almost chaotic planet that is constantly changing. Volcanoes erupt, the earth’s crust moves, mountains are weathered and other such activities occur around the world at almost any given moment. These dynamic events occur with such frequency and repetition that clearly defining a beginning or end is exceedingly difficult. Considering this difficulty and by relying on purely observational information, one can only assume that the processes that go on today have been going on since the earth was created. This precise idea is the very platform of the scientific view called uniformitarianism.