The New Riddle Of Induction Summary

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.

Induction is a form of reasoning where the premises support the conclusion, but do not confirm that the conclusion is true. To justify induction, we are required to justify that we can infer that experiences we have never experienced will resemble those that we have experienced. Making inductive inferences is necessary for everyday life as well as in science. It is rational to rely on inductive arguments in everyday life for claims such as “the sun will rise tomorrow.” But inductive arguments require that nature is uniform. For example, tomorrow the laws of physics will continue to work the same as how they have in the past, so the world will continue spinning and the sun will rise. This perceived uniformity (the principle of uniformity of nature) allows claims like the one previously outlined to be easily understood. Although inductive arguments are useful, whether or not they can be justified is a topic of debate. In James Van Cleve’s “Reliability, Justification and the Problem of Induction,” he uses an inductive argument to attempt to justify induction. In his justification he claims that his method of argument is not circular. I argue that his reasoning is problematic because an inductive argument is not able to justify induction, mainly because inductive arguments presuppose the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature.

Regardless of whether or not a person may know the facts behind a situation, predisposition trumps knowledge learned later on; just as instinct trumps what has been taught. It is human nature to believe in what one thinks is correct, even if there are facts that prove otherwise and one will go to the necessary lengths to prove themselves so. In Kolbert’s article, Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds, various studies are put into use to explain this theory.

“A Personalised Induction will always be more effective”. Discuss. Base your answer on theoretical concepts and techniques presented in class.

Rachel's claim that physical facts are independent of beliefs about those facts is not justified. We never have access to the physical world apart from, or independent of, some scientific or conceptual framework. There is no "view from nowhere" which we can use to determine whether our judgements about the world are true or not. Moral facts are similar. In both cases the truth or falsity of a claim can only be evaluated against the background of some conceptual framework or another. It is in this respect I believe that Rachel's argument can be criticised.

This is the assumption underlying all our ideas of causality. If the future does not resemble the past, then all our reason based on cause and effect will crumble. When Hume proposed questions such as “Is there any more intelligible proposition then to affirm that all trees will flourish in December and January, and will decay in May and June?” (49), Hume demonstrates that it is not a relation of ideas that future will resemble the past; it is possible that the course of nature will change. Therefore, what happens in the future is neither a relation of ideas, nor a matter of fact. “It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of past to future, since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance.”(51)

“My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation” (Sign of Four 6). Sherlock Holmes can not only solve the mysteries that are presented to him, but he can solve them with ease because of his reasoning skills. In particular, he mostly uses abductive reasoning, but sometimes he uses deductive and inductive reasoning. This also overlaps into mathematics, with proofs and inferences.

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

The controversy within the field and study of Philosophy is continuously progressing. Many ideas are prepared, and challenged by other philosophers causing the original idea to be analyzed more thoroughly. One of the cases that challenge many philosophers is The Problem of Induction. David Hume introduced the world to The Problem of Induction. The Problem of Induction claims that, past experiences can lead to future experiences. In this essay, I will explain how the problem of induction does not lead to reasonable solutions instead it causes philosophers more problems.

The process of induction in our organizations is poor and unsatisfactory which needs to change and for that we will amend the induction policy. It’s a huge project and it will require continuous input from different individuals for the best results.

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).

Holmes starts The Path of the Law with the Prediction Theory. He states that law is

In the 17th century Francis Bacon introduced induction as the new method for producing scientific theories. However inductive reasoning is riddled with problems that make it unsatisfactory for demarcating science. Hume’s problem of induction

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.

We cannot logically know or prove causation and "matters of fact," as we can know and prove the "relations of ideas" such as mathematics and logic. But we have a natural belief in causation and in many matters of fact.