Hume/Problem of Induction

>>8892055
*meant hey /lit/

It sounds like you've conflated empiricism with the scientific method.

Empiricism does not allow for induction, the scientific method does - at least as practiced in labs across the world. The alternative would be Popper's brand of falsification, which avoids induction by definitively proving ideas wrong via experiment.

>>8892090
How does 'proving' something wrong by experimentation avoid this problem? You cannot really eliminate it, for the same reasons you cannot accept something supported by experimentation. Experimentation will always merely provide an example of things going a certain way.

>>8892112
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

>>8892090
This
Btw Hume is the worst empirisist of them all. He goes full rationalism when it comes to thoughts and ideas/math. Its compleatly sound without experience in his book.

File: funambule_philippe_petit_t.jpg (72KB, 1000x669px) Image search: [Google]

72KB, 1000x669px

>>8892055
>Is the fact that he said that we have to accept the limitations of induction and work with that the reason he is considered an empiricist instead of a skeptic?
Yes
He says that it's better (for living organisms) to be occasionally wrong than absolutely certain

>>8892055
>why is he considered to be an empiricist instead of a skeptic
He's considered both and the most radical of them all in that regard. Locke turning in his grave and shit.

Hume was a toad of sorts you see.

>>8892122
Again, if the scientific method does not lead to 'knowing' due to the problem of induction, I don't see how 'proving and idea wrong via experimentation' would do anything to avoid the issue.

>>8892146
Statements can be deductively proved false, that's the idea that falsification is predicated on.

>>8892090
So you mean that the problem of induction conflicts with the scientific method but not with empiricism? If that's the case, then I suppose Hume demonstrates his empiricism through his ideas and impressions hypothesis and the induction problem does not get in the way of the empiricist model of obtaining knowledge, except for the scientific method, towards which he accepts a compromise, thanks to >>8892141's contribution. Is this correct?

So how does the problem of induction conflict with rationalism? Does it, at all? In which part of Hume's argument does the critique of rationalism lie in?

File: 1480868850499.jpg (359KB, 1600x1050px) Image search: [Google]

359KB, 1600x1050px

>>8892055
>Hume considers himself to be an empiricist as far as I know, but doesn't his criticism of induction undermine empiricism as a whole?
There is no empiricism as a whole and Hume doesn't belong to some empiricist gang. He's David fucking Hume and he's got a fucking problem.

I don't know whether you come from a scientific background or you're some commie bastard but you should try when reading philosophy to think less in terms of dogma and more in terms of individual argument/author.

There is no "rationalism vs empiricism" or "free will vs determinism" or anything of the sort and there is nothing to undermine inside empiricism either because empiricism dosn't exist beyond trivial common denominators for the lexicographer.

There are only around 2 possibilities: the universe is real, the universe is fake:

I thought at first, Hume might have been proposing the "well what if we are brains in a vat",

but then I suppose he is more saying, even if the universe we perceive, is real, we do not know for sure, that it will fully collapse tomorrow, so we cannot technically say "we know, that if I throw this rock into this still pond, ripples will appear, because what if while I am letting go of the rock, the sun explodes, or this section of the universe, entirely changes phase state?

Besides that though, can we not say, things like: if the universe is real, we can know to 99% certainty, or lets say 100% (if the universe does not entirely disappear or change tomorrow) That A will cause B to occur? Because the previous 1000000 times, the act of A caused the act of B?

>>8892156
They can and they can deductively be proven true as well, however, the 'via experimentation' part for proving something false needs a bit of clearing up.

>>8892127
wow it's almost like rationalism and empiricism are insufficient theories to explain knowledge and epistemology needs to synthesize them

>>8892171
As I understand it:

Induction has no place in empiricism according to Hume. It is distinct from knowledge obtained from sensory experience. He uses the idea of causality as a way to illustrate this - from a purely empirical view of reality, we cannot say one thing caused another thing. We can say that X has a tendency to occur at the same time as Y, but to say that X caused Y is a step too far.

The scientific method as practiced by academia and industry today is not purely empiricial. It can be thought of as an extension of empiricism. Nobody in science will raise an eyebrow if you reason inductively about the results of an experiment in order to guide further research, or consider a result in the context of a larger field of research. Most scientists will agree that cause-and-effect is a fundamental part of the universe. Without it, they would not be able to practice science as we know it today.

Karl Popper is tangental to the discussion, but he wants to avoid the induction associated with 'positive' science. To do this, he proposes a system of falsification, where hypotheses and statements are accepted as true until proven incorrect. As a statement can be deductively proven false, he believes that inductive reasoning is avoided. The whole 'this is reality until proven otherwise' kind of smells like a kind of arbitrary induction to me though.

>>8892191

The fundamental substance of reality, could be some 'plasmic soupy goo' which eternally necessarily (due to size, scale, subtlety) evades any grasp, of measurement, or mould, (like trying to catch lightning in a bottle), like whenever you wrap your 'metaphorical hands' around it, it squirms away, you cant get a true comprehensive understanding of what it is, how it looks, and other qualities of it, (le noumena)

>>8892191
You can colloquially call that a causation but you would not have demonstrated the necessity of the A causing B. It's not a matter of the universe being more or less stable, not whether we can be pretty sure that it won't disappear tomorrow or the next day, but a matter of proof that would have to extend beyond the laws of physics themselves because they themselves are only generalizations from empirical data or derived from other physical laws.

>>8892201
Thx captain obvious. U make lit worse, pleb

>>8892202
>but to say that X caused Y is a step too far.

Why is that so though?

Is it only because one does not know absolutely every characteristic of what X? That is to say, because you might think X equals characteristic a, b, c, so you think, a, b, c causes Y

but in reality, lets say X actually equals, a, b, c, d, e, f, g

But would it not still be true, that, you would still be point at object X, with the characteristics you did and did not know, and recognize, that X causes Y?

Like, we "know" more than the discoverers of agriculture did about nature cycles, rain, sun, seed, soil, but we both "knew" that a + b + c + d = e

even if we know more characteristics of a b c d and e?

All this comes down to, the semantical absolutivity of the term 'know'

implying an absolute true full understanding comprehension acknowledgement of an 'objects' totality of qualities, substance, quanta, essence?

And perhaps to fully know any single 'one object', one might have to contextually understand the whole?

But I dont get how this contracts from, 'knowing' generally: about object X, without fully capital K knowing, everything about it

>>8892202
Ok, things are starting to fall in place. But how did the rationalists examine causality? Did Hume's use of an empirical worldview allow him to examine causality in a way the rationalists could not? If he was the first to formulate this problem of induction and causality then he must have done something differently. Basically I'm trying to put Hume's causality argument in my mind in the context of the philosophical world then.

Also, just because scientists in academia don't raise an eyebrow if a colleague reasons inductively doesn't mean that there are no flaws in induction, as Hume has demonstrated, right? Scientists accept of course like you said that cause and effect is fundamental, but how is that philosophically sound, taking into account Hume's induction argument?

>>8892400
Nevermind, ignore the second part of my post, I reread your Popper part and it makes sense.

>>8892241

The concept of local causality is a priori true intuition for real universe

In a video game universe, you can throw an apple at a tree and coins and unicorns can pop out with no local necessary physical relation of cause and effect, there is no physical reason why when throwing an apple at this tree, unicorns and coins pop out of it, but somewhere else, in the programming, there is coded 'reason' that such causality should would occur,

In a real, natural reality, the physics would be necessarily causal, physically (even if we could not know or understand or sense them) "sensical", in that, there is a logical follow:

Bio.. logic: it makes sense, that when our cells do x, y occurs, there is logical physical following : this all stems to the "gears" proverbiality, the most 'sensical' depiction of pure physical causality: look you can see how the objects are touching, and how when that object moves this way, because it is touching that object, and because we know that 'hardness' can exist, and those gear teeth are hard, the gears motion, and the motion of the teeth, interlocked with the other, moves the other:

an object in motion stays in motion

energy cannot be created or destroyed

>>8892146

It's been a long time since I did phil of science but this is what I remember. It may not be terribly accurate.

What you have to remember is that falsationism was mostly concerned with the demarcation problem: distinguishing science from pseudoscience. Roughly, Popper said that science formulates theories that allow us to predict stuff. Experimentation is made to see if these theories predict accurately. If the results of the experiment match the prediction, we can consider this theory more justified. The more predictions confirmed and the more unlikely they are, the more our knowledge is justified.

Now the problem with this is that it is based on inductive reasoning, and it is not a necessary truth. We can never prove that these theories are 100% true because we can never observe all of the events of the world that relate to it and see if they match the predictions we would derive from our theory. So the idea that scientific knowledge is the one that can be proven is a pipedream, we can not use it to demarcate science and pseudoscience. Instead Popper proposed that theories that allow us to draw predictions that are empirically falsable are what should be considered as science.

>If a deductive justification for induction cannot be provided, then it appears that induction is based on an inductive assumption about the connection, which would be begging the question. Induction, itself, cannot validly explain the connection.

Existence is such a mindfuck bros

>>8892459
Thanks. The first parts of your post I understand and agree with. My only concern is demonstrating something is 'empirically false' is on the same level as results matching a prediction, a good tool to use but never on the level of 'knowing' that escapes the problem of induction.

>>8892156

>Statements can be deductively proved false, that's the idea that falsification is predicated on.
>that's the idea that falsification is predicated on.

NOPE. Theories are falsified by EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that inveighs against the predictions derived from a given theory.

If your theory can be 'deductively proven to be false' --which is linguistic nonsense, but anyway--that means it is self-defeating, not that it has been 'falsified'.

>>8892202
>To do this, he proposes a system of falsification, where hypotheses and statements are accepted as true until proven incorrect.

This is wrong. Popper said that whatever hypothesis or theory you conjured up had to be able to be falsified to be called *science*, not that it was "true or false", and conversely, unfalsifiable theories peddled as though they are scientific, would be pseudoscience. He was trying to differentiate between what was science, and what was not, not what could be arguably said to be true or false, because that's not science. That's epistemology.

>>8893315
>unfalsifiable theories peddled as though they are scientific

So like, electron magnetism is the work of 1000 angels on a pin head,

But science does, use its self, its vast understanding and detail, to make many hypothesis and theory, which can have a great degree of accuracy, based on the overwhelming total mass of knowledge, with which is drawn from, to make theories about the next missing piece of the puzzle. For example, science would make theories (which can potentially be accurate) about the core of the Earth, even though no one has visited the core of the Earth or seen it.

But because there is some logical, physical meaning, between the totality of physical data, from atoms, to laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. There can be leaps of extrapolation, about how 'truths' removed from vision, might probabilitily appear.

File: Whitehead2.jpg (39KB, 624x624px) Image search: [Google]

39KB, 624x624px

>>8892055
Whitehead solves the problem of causality you fools!

We already are feeling causal relations by the nature of experience!

http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1274

tl;dr "Whitehead denies that events in themselves are ever merely "loose and separate," or that the world can be reduced to "local matters of particular fact." In the actual world, he says, "there is nothing which ‘simply happens’" (S 38). There are no isolated data, because in every act of experience "the datum includes its own interconnections" already (PR 113). "

embrace process-relationism!

>>8893244
>>8893293
You can deductively prove a theory false if you add empirical evidence. And no, it is not on the same level as "proving" a theory true inductively.

1) Theory → Prediction
We make an experiment and:
2)¬Prediction
The logical, deductive conclusion must be that the theory is false. It's called the law of contrapositive.

We would have to add some conditions on (1) in conjunction with T, such as "the conditions are normal". The predictions are usually a conditional themselves too. To give this some content, (T=theory, CN=Normal conditions and P=Prediction):

q) T^CN: (According to the newton laws of physics and in normal conditions), P. (if I hit ball A with ball B, ball A will move).
r) I hit ball A with ball B
s) Ball A does not move
Conclusion: The newton laws of physics are false.

The logical structure is the following:
T^CN →(r →s)
r
¬s
therefore
¬(r →s)
therefore
¬T^CN

Another option given this result (since the newton laws of physics have been confirmed by various experiments) is:
(1) ¬CN
Say the conditions were not normal (i.e. there were forces unaccounted for)
(2) ¬(T^CN →(r →s))
Deny that The Newton laws of physics actually imply our prediction in normal conditions. Say that the whole argument was based on faulty logic to begin with, and that's why the results don't match.

Both would keep the structure deductively false, but would shield the theory. It is not considered good scientific procedure by Popper if used repeatedly, and it must be used with good reasons (show what forces are at play in this case).


Now, to answer the second part of the argument (how this is more powerful than inductive logic), take a look at the classic example "all crows are black"

Crow 1 is black
Crow 2 is black
Therefore all crows are black

This is inductive reasoning.


All crows are black
Crow 1 is black
Crow 2 is black
Crow 3 is white
Therefore not all crows are black

This is deductive reasoning.

The difference here is that in the first example one can not deductively verify the conclusion unless we have observed all of the crows, while in the second, finding a counterexample is enough to deductively prove the first premise wrong.

>>8894162
Damn sorry for formatting, I'm on mobile.

>>8892055
Hume takes the conclusion that to assume causality is a natural, human instinct. We don't know why it works (in fact it's unjustifiable), but everything we do assumes it does, it's engraved in our nature for functional behaviour.

>>8892428
>The concept of local causality is a priori true intuition for real universe
Well to Hume local causality is only a psychological necessity (because our universe is too stable to claim the opposite with a straight face) but we haven't demonstrated the necessity of our intuition at all in the sense of a proof beyond generalized empirical data, that the rock falls on the ground necessarily instead of evaporating for example.
In other words physics can't into mathematical proof because the universe is fucking huge and complicated and ever changing so they generalize through observation, data, statistics and come up with formulae that approximate reality but with infinitely less parameters than reality. Which is cool and reliable and all that but it has nothing to do with proving reality.
It would be a different story if the universe was more managable and had countable variables like in your video game analogy. In the video game universe you and I have agreement at least as long as we think of it as a closed system with countable variables and deterministic code.
However on the topic of biology, the functioning of our cells does indeed hinge on our crazy universe being stable enough not least to allow us this introspection but also, on the other hand, If we were subjected to say rapid changes in air pressure there would be no logicality in our gears as you call them either. We get the idea of gears because everything around us seems so permanent, no, because it has BEEN this permanent for millions of years so we are among other things able to make these inquiries.
But tell me then doesn't our whole being rely on the universe being stable enough to allow for all this evolution and, lately, introspection? Isn't all that we are just really consistent happenstance but happenstance nonetheless? Where is the permanence and necessity of a logical system here? How would we go about creating one and proving it?

>energy cannot be created or destroyed
Energy conservation doesn't apply to our universe tho if I'm not mistaken.

File: 1471494829115.png (1MB, 1500x7180px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1500x7180px

>>8893244

>>8893855
>with which is drawn from, to make theories about the next missing piece of the puzzle.

Absolutely. And there's nothing wrong with that.

But there is something wrong with claiming String theory is scientific simply because the math is pretty.

String theory isn't science.

Is there even any manner by which to "prove" A caused B?

And, if not, why should we even discuss it? It would be nonsensical.

>>8893244
>>8893293
>>8893315

If an ant, and/or bacteria was as conscious and intelligent as humans, how different (besides the aesthetics of the language representative symbology (letters, numbers, symbols)) would their understanding, their accurate use and representability of the laws of physics would theirs be?

(can also be asked of alien life, but also, different potential stages of the universe (and simulations maybe)(and, if there is a correct(er) objective view, totality of Truth, that is and will never be fully accessible by any intelligent being that arises in this universe or any)

We presume the concepts of math are eternal and universal?

We presume the universe potentially has and potentially may change its laws at least greater than 0 amount, and then there is the whatever possibility of simulation.

This all comes back perhaps to defining what it means to 'know'.

what does it mean to store details in memory?

how possible is it to, have a reality, which is 100% knowable, what is the meaning of accurately comprehending, viewing, percepting reality.

I do not see every piece of sand on Earth, but I can generalize,

How much difference would be made, if I could see every sand at once, in relation to only being able to adjustingly to my mindful scale, imagine deserts and beaches

>>8894728
>>>8893855
>>with which is drawn from, to make theories about the next missing piece of the puzzle.
>Absolutely. And there's nothing wrong with that.

There is wonder if there is a puzzle, if there are pieces, what qualifies as 100% knowing the puzzle and pieces, for how long, is it theoretically possible in any reality to 100% know 100% of it? 0.001% in it? How to determine from inside any reality, what percent you are accurately gauging it?

>>8894162
>1) Theory → Prediction
>We make an experiment and:
>2)¬Prediction
>The logical, deductive conclusion must be that the theory is false. It's called the law of contrapositive.

What if the experiment was an error? Or the theory involved in the equipment used,


>q) T^CN: (According to the newton laws of >physics and in normal conditions), P. (if I hit >ball A with ball B, ball A will move).
>r) I hit ball A with ball B
>s) Ball A does not move
>Conclusion: The newton laws of physics are false.

It could be that ball B was the heaviest metal and ball A was fluff?

>>8894221
>It would be a different story if the universe was more managable and had countable variables like in your video game analogy

I think this universe is quite magical, which is what I first read instead of manageable, but I guess the magical is the meaning of the video game idea: for example I do not understand how chemistry really physically works, electrons, photons, I do not know what a photon looks like, and in some sense, they are all I have ever seen: quarks being neutrons and protons, nuclear force that holds them together, and then all the magnetism between atoms, their configurations and energy levels: I have not been able to conceptualize how this all fits together and works, I cannot understand the physical logical following of electrons in atoms, and chemical properties. Though, Science seems to have a very impressive ever increasing grasp on control and labeling of these things. I think if it was video game universe, where things did not make sense, there was, but also it was possible for there to be no physical following:

Though this is true for us in a lot of ways; like when we see a log on fire, we are not immediately just from looking, I dont think, able to fully comprehend what we are seeing,

to humes point, at a campfire, I do not see why I should see this red stuff coming out of that brown thing. I dont know what that fire is,

In a video game universe, it could be more or less manageable: someone could make a video game universe of pong. Or 10 quadrillion people could spend 10 quadrillion years developing a video game full of the most "accurate" possible non 'to perception, and background comprehension' logically physically following phenomenon:

File: IK.jpg (17KB, 220x317px) Image search: [Google]

17KB, 220x317px

Don't mind me, just curbstomping your fat Scottish pedant.

>>8895129
>What if the experiment was an error?
An error how?
>Or the theory involved in the equipment used
>It could be that ball B was the heaviest metal and ball A was fluff?
Then the experiment is not well designed, it is talking about a completely different thing than the prediction. I did not think I had to be this explicit, but of course you can't just say "ball" we are talking about a concrete ball, which has been measured and weighted and whatnot. Ball A in the prediction can not be a different ball in the experiment.

>>8895159


like imagine if reality was only a game of pong, and you were in control of a paddle,; regardless of that, how well can we possibly envison and comprehend the concept of a sphere, of mass, can we not use this base concept, to apply to many other things; we presume in the pong universe, there might be something of a sphere, like ball, that would travel between the paddles; how well can anything actually comprehend and behold the understanding of the realest truest concept of what our understanding terminology, math, pictorial, is attempting to represent as sphere?

If one could say that they could know really what a sphere is and looked like, and was, they had a real true understanding and grasp of this real concept, that if they were in this pong universe, they might be able to understand that the thing passing between them was sphere like. It is possible there really are 3d sphere like things, approaching perfect sphereness, but we have the idea of perfect sphereness, even if it cannot technically be achieved,

how many different ways could a real universe exist, with 'conscious intelligent perceiving beings' (and what are the determining factors that differentiate the hierarchal gradient towards knowledge/truth and less, in terms of 'conscious intelligent' (towards the animals, their levels of knowledge, how 'illusion filled is their brain'? how do 'movements and visions in the brain' most accurately correlate to 'that which is actually purely just physical ever real time real substance reality' ,

>>8895203
Lets say X is the totality of information of reality, (reality has existed, and will, and "from its start" "towards its end" reality will continuously be an amount of information, lets say lowercase x, so X is the totality of information over the totality of time, made up by a continuity of x's.

ok, what does 'fully knowing' at least (anything) what are the grounds for absolute certainty (I think therefore I am comes to mind: I guess I am referring to the grounds of knowing about outside oneself: what would the theoretical grounds be of knowing really about real information outside our heads, truly knowing about even the smallest part of something, and what would grounds be for knowing everything about some particular thing: how would we know when we have milked whatever real object exists, for all the information it contains? is that the meaning of fully knowing something, no more mysterious qualities/characteristics, nothing hidden.)

It is based on projecting light in the head? Making images, the machinery of our senses, we do science and learn there is more than meets the eye, we right down all these books of information that reality contains that we do not explicitly see, and we build this, and it correlates to reality, but how do we know, we are describing the true realty, and not just our optical illusion scale of it:

Like, when you look in water at a certain angle, and see a leg, look different from outside and inside the water, a weird, bend, that is "not real"

How do we know, because the movements, and differences in power and scale, of the hierarchy of masses of materials, the movements of the planets, etc. how do we know that like in the bathtub, all our theories are based on what it looks like to us, from the surface, and we map out how the crooked leg looks, and the theories still work, but the proportions could be technically wrong from more universal perspectives, and I suppose we would expect that to cause troubles, when then the theory is test from different angles and to higher orders.

>>8892184
That's not entirely true. A lot of positivists, for example, take sides and actively try to undermine other positions even in some particular aspect that they are right.

What you said is true for the more intelectually honest, like Kant, Descartes, Hume, Spinoza and the likes, but it is certainly not so for many others, even if their philosophy turns out to be good.

>>8895598
Like is it possible I can understand like 60-80% of how any object objectively might look? a tree, an apple, a rock? from my bevy of knowledge about the different characteristics and scales of material, atoms, molecules, fundamental particles, I have seen movies and images, that I can use to develop my imagination to not settle on just one simple mental projection of "I think I know what an apple might really objectively look like" and maybe be like 20% correct, but if I thought of like 100s of potentials of what an apple might objectively potentially look like: then I may hold in my mind, perceptions that align with the totality of information associate and of that object, saying, I hold in my mind, knowledge of that object, I know that object: how that object actually exists, is objectivity every possible perspective, even optical illusions (because even optical illusions are the real information that they are?)

lets say I knew it, 80%, or 90%, are these extra 10 or so %, really going to make or break my perception of it, how beyond my imagination could these extra percents be: how beyond my relation to any other of the information I know from all the other things I know and how they contextually and categorically relate, to think, that is circular, that is triangular, that is closer to circular than triangular, that orange and that basketball are not the same object, but they share a characteristic of circularness, and my understanding of this similarity is some transcendent knowledge? How beyond my scope could failed to be percieved knowledge be, if I can know an object .01% what percentage of the rest, would be impossible for me to know, and for what reasons? How much information could exist, and could not be known, for reasons other than physical inaccesibility, but if physical inaccesibily was not an issue, they could be intellectually imaginationally groked due to ones massive collection of other toolful knowledge with which to relate another 'that which can exist' to the encyclopedic collection of knowledge so far about all other 'that which can exist'

>>8895619
Like imagine if the history of the world was one in which all humans were always blind (and how that would compare to all blind and deaf, etc.): we might conclude that a large amount of the possible totality of information, that could possibly be understood by any being, related to just the totality of information that exists, is the that which exists, we might conclude that a large amount of the possible understanding of the world was impossible, that things were a confusing chaotic, difficult to grasp mess, reaching in the dark for any sense, any regularity, any comparison, any relation to ones need for survival yes, but there can only ever be, that which is material striving for survival, and that which is not, inert and ert matter, inanimated, and inanimated not


What we do in the world vastly corresponds to our categorizing and formalizing, of mapping and graphing, finding the spectrums and hierarchies, interrelations, possibilities of substance and our interactions with it, to such a large degree to make one think its very likely, a reality is possible to exist and bares a nearly incomprehensibly sophisticated deal of strongly truish information accessible to its inhabitants,

That there is a strongish correspondence, between Absolutely What Is, and in a small and/or large way, what can be represented ultimately in the human mind by use of all its resources inside and out:

Quick question: If Hume concedes that pure reason can be used to obtain certain truths (formal, mathematical knowledge through deductive reasong; what he calls "relations of ideas") even if these relations of ideas have no explanatory power in describing the world, doesn't that still undermine his claim to be an empiricist? If he claims that all knowledge is gained from experience, but then admits that we can obtain certain a priori knowledge through reason, how does that make sense? What am I missing?

byunp

>There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I love Shakespeare.

>>8894740
>Is there even any manner by which to "prove" A caused B?
According to Hume, there isn't.
>And, if not, why should we even discuss it? It would be nonsensical.
Hume would agree with you, iirc he gave up philosophy.