David Hume Problem Of Induction

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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. Induction is a form of reasoning where humans use past experiences to make future predictions. …show more content…

Hume states that all reasoning related to Matters of Fact is from deriving a relation between cause and effect (Hume, 296). However, the relation between cause and effect is not discovered by reason, either, but also by observation and experience (Hume, 297). Since they are connected by observation only, we can never certainly know whether causal relationships exist, and he claims that effects are distinct from their causes (Sepielli). He offers the example of two billiard balls, where one is moving in a straight line towards the other. He thinks that there are hundreds of events that can result from the billiard balls striking each other, and we cannot be sure which one will occur (Hume, 298). Even if we have examined the billiard balls and the table (Sepielli), and we have observed the same observation every time the balls moved towards each other, Hume believes that we can only use these observations to learn about the balls would be affected here, in the present, but we cannot use them to learn about what will happen in the future. In this case, Hume’s Problem of Induction can be summarized as follows. If we truly believe that the future will be like the past, and we want to justify that belief, but we cannot justify it demonstratively or by yielding similar observations repeatedly, then how are we supposed to justify that

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