The Problem of Induction - Part One

[poovanna]

Introduction

I had a discussion with V, about the Problem of Induction, over drinks last weekend. A staple of undergraduate Philosophy classes, this riddle, originally thought up by the Philosopher David Hume, has found its way into the domain of general public discourse.

Most of this material was taken from a Philosopher named, Jeffrey Kasser's

Comments

[hardblue]

Now, you see, this is the kind of thing that gets Christianists all excited, "So, uh, evolution really isn't true!"

So much for the high intellectual ground

[poovanna]

Earlier I used to laugh at them. Now, not so much :) That's because our reasons for trusting science (and the inductive method on which it's based) can't be justified as being rational either! In fact, we're scarcely better than them :)

Re: So much for the high intellectual ground

[hardblue]

It depends on what you mean by scarcely better. Some propositions are better grounded than others. For instance, there's a lot of work from different people across the years that make it a lot more sensible to say that dinosaurs and men did not exist side-by-side. It's one thing not to have perfect, absolute knowledge, and it is another thing to base your knowledge on a favored mythology.

Re: So much for the high intellectual ground

[poovanna]

Look, I sympathize with what you're saying & I obviously share your belief that dinosaurs were long dead before we came along :) But it's important to admit that there's no rational basis for our beliefs. None whatsoever! This will become clearer when I present more technical arguments in part two of this post.

Again, the fact that lots of fossilized evidence supports our belief means zilch, because it's all inductive evidence (think Russell's Chicken). It's impossible to give a rational justification for induction.