Induction Hume

humeEvaluation of Strawson answer to the problem of induction

“There's no certainty - only opportunity.”  (Alan Moore, V for Vendetta) And before I say something about my position on the problemof induction, I’ll like to take a walk thru the topic, and to do so we should start with the problem of induction according to David Hume. David Hume try to argue that induction can not be justify atall, and that the use of inductive reasoning is based on pure blind faith, therefor it has no rational justification. This was a very strong point expressed by Hume, but before we get into moredetails about the argument itself, there are few points that must be said about Hume first.

David Hume is consider to be a skeptical philosopher that truly believes that knowledge only come from thesenses, and that the human being itself is not capable of knowing something, without having to experience it. This believes is part of what is called empiricism and is just one of the different conceptsexpressed by John Locke. Hume truly believes that induction can’t be justified at all, and the use of induction is just a brute animal habit. Another point that Hume tries to explain is that there isno satisfactory answer of finding a good reason to use induction at all. Hume also explains the “Inductive Fallacies” which main ideas are that “what happened in the past is reliable to happen in thefuture” (for Hume this makes no sense, but he admits that still works) and the “Law of Uniformity of Nature”.

According to Hume, these scientific ideas make no sense at all, because we cannotprove them without begging the question. And he try to set this point explaining that, if we can accept a universe with the “Law of Uniformity of Nature”, we should also accept a “Non-Uniform Universe”.The problem with this is that none of both ideas of the universe could be prove true, and if we can prove the true the “Law of Uniformity of Nature” then, the existence of a “Non-Uniform Universe”...