Comparing Hume And Popper's Views On Induction

It is within this dialogue that two versions of the design argument are presented and done so through analogy. From the two arguments then comes the concept of the “Problem of Evil”. I seek to try and understand Hume’s concepts and justify an opinion based on his ideas surrounding the existence of God.

Hume states that hoe do we know that the laws of nature tomorrow will be the same as the ones today, we only have the past to rely on which doesn’t say much about the future. We cannot prove the laws of nature and their existence.

     Now Hume proposed that all inferences come from custom, not reasoning. Through custom or habits, we have become accustomed to expect an effect to follow a cause. This is not a rational argument. This argument centers on the theory of constant conjunction, which does not fall under either fork of reason. “All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not reasoning.”(57)

Although like Descartes, Hume practiced the art of radical skepticism, he felt that if he could not utilize his senses to prove something it was meaningless. Hume continued development of Leibniz’s analytical-synthetic distinction, or in Hume’s words “…a distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact” (Palmer 197). Analytical propositions are true by definition and are a priori, and therefore necessarily true. Synthetic propositions are not true by

Hume lays the groundwork by saying that our commitment to our beliefs should be proportionate to the quality of evidence that supports that belief.3 Given any two conflicting beliefs, we should choose the belief that has the highest probability. For example, if there were

“Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation.” (Hume, Enquiry)

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

Next, Hume explores the existence of “necessary connextion” when the will commands a new idea. Again there are three arguments. In the first argument the soul’s production of an idea is examined: it “is a real creation; a production of something out of nothing” (45).

It is logical to say that things happen for a reason. A ball, kicked by a child in a playground, flies through the air and eventually comes down to the ground. The child has kicked the ball enough times to expect that once the ball reaches its highest point, it will fall. Through experience of kicking the ball and it coming back to the ground, the child will develop expectations of this action. This thought process seems sound, yet a question of certainty arises. Can we be certain that future events will be like past events? Can we be certain that the ball will fall once it has been kicked? This concept was one of David Hume’s most famous philosophical arguments: the Problem of Induction. This paper will outline Hume’s standpoint, as well give criticism for his argument.

Although Hume’s definition of necessity and its association to human actions seems to be progression well, his abrupt argument that constant conjunction between human motives and actions is problematic; therefore, making his whole argument thus far faulty. He states that any apparent

While induction is only one of the five parts of the inductivist account of science, it is one of the most important steps. Induction is the process by which scientists make a leap of thought from observation to theory, and if induction has flaws, then the new theory must unquestionably contain flaws. Regardless of these errors, a scientist, according to an inductivist philosopher, will still accept a particular scientific theory if it can be validly induced from factual observation and experiment.

Philosophers create new thesis all the time. Many times these thesis are challenged by other ideas. The Problem of induction was introduced by David Hume in the 18th century. He questioned how past observation could be the same observation in the future. We can assume that past events can occur again, and this was not the problem. The problem is Hume does not believe that past experiences can lead to the future. It is beneficial to completely understand Hume’s stand point therefore I will explain the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is multiple premises that are believed to be true or at least true most of the time. Deductive reasoning is a theory that claims truth. If the premise is true the conclusion is true. Hume first separated human reasoning in two different ways. The first way is relations of ideas. These are the sciences of geometry, algebra and

In his work “Conjectures and Refutations,” Popper discussed several aspects of induction including the topics of conjectures (opinions or conclusions formed on the basis of incomplete information) or tentative theories and refutations (ways to refute an argument, opinion, testimony, doctrine, or theory, through contradicting evidence) or the acts of disproving arguments through counterexamples (Oxford).

David Hume is a British empiricist which means that he thought that all knowledge is ultimately rooted in sense experience and that all of our ideas derive from preceding impressions of sense or reflection, this theory had a huge effect on Humes account of causation. In this essay I will look at Humes account of causation and examine if any version of the Regularity View of causation can be defended.

Fire is burning paper. 2. Fire must burn paper. 3. Fire will burn paper. These are all a priori judgments. In other words, there are no connections between any of them. Hume does not believe a priori judgments are viable. In fact, he does not even believe all a posteriori judgments are viable, as was noted above.