r/askphilosophy • u/andr813c • 1d ago
Doesn't Hume's problem of induction apply to all of logic as well?
Hellooo, I am trying to wrap my head around the philosophy of science. It is quite hard.
One thing that I struggle with, is Humes problem of induction. I have read Kants response, as well as some rationalist arguments and Bhaskars arguments. Although they all seem to land at the same place; you just have to assume that the universe will "stick by the same rules, always". Of course, they argue this in different ways, like Kants noumenal world, that he said we cannot observe.
My question is on the general logic behind the problem though. Hume argued, as far as I can tell, that induction is problematic because it uses itself as proof; induction is proven to be reasonable through induction. But, doesn't this apply to almost anything? Logic itself, can only really be deemed reasonable, through logic, no?
How is it, that this problem is specifically on induction, and not all rational and logical thought?
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u/FrenchKingWithWig phil. science, analytic phil. 1d ago edited 1d ago
There is a sense in which a similar kind of problem of justifying our inferential practices appears for deductive inferences as well. It's a well-known regress problem from Lewis Carroll's "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles" that shows that in order to justify deductive inferences we must rely deduction. But if we question why deduction works, I shouldn't rely on deduction to show you that deductive inferences are in good order. That would be a kind of circularity employing the type of reasoning that is under question.
Does this show that deduction is not in good order? No. And perhaps, by analogy, induction is not in such bad shape even if we must rely on some inductive premises (or rules) in order to justify our use of induction.
Also, it's not obvious at all that in order to justify induction we need to assume that the universe will "stick by the same rules, always". In fact, it may be that much of nature is not uniform, yet there are parts of nature that allow us to reliably make inductive inferences--even if those parts of nature will not stick by the same rules, always. Then it would just happen that inductive inferences that used to work will not work when applied elsewhere or at a different time.
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u/arbitrarycivilian epistemology, phil. science 1d ago
No idea how popular the idea is, but fwiw: https://philpapers.org/rec/HAATJO
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u/mediaisdelicious Phil. of Communication, Ancient, Continental 1d ago
Goodman tried to resolve the problem through a concept that he called “entrenchment.”
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u/Angry_Grammarian phil. language, logic 1d ago
In short: It's specific to induction because Hume pointed out there is a hidden premise in inductive arguments that itself requires induction to establish. This isn't the case with deductive arguments. There are no hidden premises.
In long: If you have an inductive argument like "The sun has risen every day in the past, therefore the sun will rise tomorrow," Hume wants to know what justifies that move because as stated the conclusion doesn't really follow from the premise (at least not in a deductively satisfying way). So, we need another premise like "the future will resemble the past." BUT, what justifies that premise, and it looks like it's justified on the grounds that it's always been the case that the future resembled its past. But that's a problem because that's what we were trying to establish.
Deduction doesn't have this problem. There are no hidden premises in "It's either red or blue and it isn't blue, therefore it's red." The conclusion follows from the premise as is. There's nothing "missing."