Hume famously criticized induction as an inadequate method to develop theories about causation. Indeed, he did not think that induction was justified. Is induction in fact problematic? There have been a variety of proposed solutions - e.g. from Karl Popper - to the problem Hume posed; are any of them adequate?
The Problem of Induction
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Posted 1 year ago #
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There is a fundamental flaw in this question, and that is that as Wittgestein said, "there are no genuine philosophical problems." The questions philosophers ask are to general, and the more general a question, the more likely it is wrong to ask it. There are my types of induction, inductive fallacies, applications of the inductive reasoning, (see for example, backwards induction in game theory) which merit being considered on a particular basis, assesing the strenght of the conclusion given the premisises. While there is no logical must in Induction, it is a pretty solid way to get around most of life, and Bayesian logic provides the best tools to take on the strenght of induction in contemporary science, especially given the uncertainty in quantum mechanical and economic behavioral models. As for philosophical theories of knowledge, justificationism is foundationalist nonsense, based on the idea that language and belief describethe world as it really is. We shoudln't forget that language is mainly a useful tool for human use, that it did not evolve to describe the laws of the universe. Logic, language and mathematics are all heuristic devices to aid fallible humans in scientific discovery, not Platonic forms. Verificationism is useful in science, but philosophically, it offers little in the form of scientific progress, as Karl Popper noticed, most advances in science come through mathematical and hypothetical "gedankenexperiment," or what sociologists of science call changes in world view, in which a major paradigm is replaced by another earth shattering theory(Something we might see soon with the recent challenge to general relativity at CERN). But Poppers critical rationalism and falsificationism are also wrong, although less so because he is a non-foundationalist.
Posted 4 months ago #
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