Download Hume's Problem: Induction and the Justification of Belief by Colin Howson PDF
By Colin Howson
Colin Howson deals an answer to at least one of the relevant, unsolved difficulties of Western philosophy, the matter of induction. within the mid-eighteenth century David Hume argued that winning prediction tells us not anything in regards to the fact of the predicting idea. regardless of what percentage experimental exams a speculation passes, not anything will be legitimately inferred approximately its fact or possible truth.But actual thought repeatedly predicts the values of observable magnitudes to many areas of decimals and inside very small levels of mistakes. the opportunity of this type of predictive luck with out a real idea turns out so distant that the chance can be brushed aside. this means that Hume's argument has to be mistaken; yet there's nonetheless no consensus on the place precisely the flaw within the argument lies. Howson argues that there's no flaw, and examines the results of this aggravating end forthe relation among technology and its empirical base
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Extra info for Hume's Problem: Induction and the Justification of Belief
Example text
QED. But there is still an obvious objection. I may have proved by using that argument that the conclusion is justified, but since the question at issue is the soundness of the argument itself surely I have not really proved anything. e. probable, in van Cleve's sense). If I do not have that information I have proved nothing. Van Cleve's answer is to insist that I do have that information, because it is precisely the conclusion of the argument above that A is a probable argument, and hence a sound one.
Suppose some hypothesis H is deliberately constructed from the current evidence to ‘predict’ it. In this case H clearly did not independently predict the evidence. According to the argument above, though, it did: it too might have been proposed before the fact; it just wasn't. So if that is the argument for claiming that a hypothesis independently predicted data, the argument must be wrong. Furthermore, the structure of the REALISM AND THE NO-MIRACLES ARGUMENT 43 No-Miracles argument itself explains exactly why such a hypothesis is no counterexample to CLAIM: because, far from agreement with the evidence being highly unlikely if it is false, agreement is certain, guaranteed by the fact that H was constructed to deliver it.
Then the fit between these facts and the hypothesis [sic] provides no evidence that the hypothesis is true [since] these facts had no chance of refuting the hypothesis’ (1984: 161; italics added). In other words, step (i) of the No-Miracles argument is blocked. Giere is only one of many, in a line going back to Peirce and Whewell if not before, who have advanced this argument which, despite the concurrence of venerable opinion, is fallacious and rather obviously so. For E either conflicts with H or it doesn't: there is no chance to the matter.