Your thoughts on Hume's case against induction?

[Everett Lamplighter]

For a critical perspective on Popper's essentially nihilistic epistemology, see David Stove's Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists. Also see his Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism, which, obviously, deals with Hume's skepticism about induction.

Thanks for posting those links, David -- I read two books recently that dealt with Popper: The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch and Wittgenstein's Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. They were my introduction to Popper and I'm still very much a Popper greenhorn so I'm very interested to read a critical treatment of his work.

[TheEgoist]

This topic is about Hume, but it kind of morphed into a discussion of induction in general. So rather than start a new topic on induction, I'll just ask here. What are your opinions on the pessimistic meta-induction?

[TheEgoist]

Also, more on-topic (a few years later), it is now thought by many Hume scholars that Hume himself actually not the skeptic we now think he was.

[aequalsa]

This topic is about Hume, but it kind of morphed into a discussion of induction in general. So rather than start a new topic on induction, I'll just ask here. What are your opinions on the pessimistic meta-induction?

As a disclaimer, I haven't considered it fully. I have a friend who sometimes takes a position similar to it in our discussions so I have a little familiarity with the idea.

My biggest problem with it, as it has been presented to me, is that there is an incorrect assumption that most scientific theories of the past are false. I see them more as descriptions of things which are not completely visible. We don't need a theory for round things rolling, for example since they are directly visible. (friction coefficients might be another story) So as theory allows the creation of accurate predictability and effective technology, certainty grows since these, essentially allow us to accurately and immediately perceive things which earlier were in the dark to us.

I could come up with many examples, but a clear one would be a theory of planetary motion and a theory of light which refracts in curved glass. A telescope shows clearly that there is some truth value to refraction since it does what is predicted and also helps to make the theory of planetary movement no more then a simple observation.

Also, to say that old theories are wrong and completely discarded is simply not true. Most are simply inaccurate estimations which are later refined as more thought, technology, and ideas come to bare on it. Believing that the planets move in circles rather than ellipses around the sun isn't completely wrong in the sense a pessimistic meta-inductionist would have you believe. It just isn't complete. In short, it strikes me as a grand scale dropping of context.

[Mikee]

My understanding of all this is that ‘Humean’ cause means that while empirical observation is sensible, the attachment of cause lies within the imagination. To be ‘Humean’ is to indulge in factors that guide our processes in assigning cause. How does this contrast with Rand's or even Aristotle's view of causation.

Edited January 18, 2014 by Mikee

[Mikee]

What ya think guyz