Popper and Hume on Induction Flashcards
Lecture video: Will the future be like the past? How would we know?
David Hume: What years was he alive?
1711-1776
epistemology
the study of knowledge
In what book does Hume address epistemology?
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
What are the two basic kinds of knowledge does Hume argue believe in?
- Matters of fact.
- Relations of ideas.
Matters of fact
Things that we come to know about via our interactions with the world (sensory information). You can’t “figure them out”, you have to gather the data. For example, how many chairs are there in the room? You would have to count them. Pondering on the question will not help.
Relations of ideas
Things that follow from the definitions of the terms used. They are discovered from thought and not from observations.
Example: If asked how many chairs there are in total and told that there are 20 chairs and 10 chairs, you don’t need to investigate the world. You just need to recognize that 20 + 10 = 30 and that this information follows from what we mean by “20”, “10”, “+”, and “=”.
Matters of fact examples
- colors
- shapes
- temperature
- location
- other aspects of physical objects
- physical sciences (chemistry, physics, biology, etc.)
Relations of ideas examples
- math
- formal logic
- things that follow from the definitions of the terms used (e.g., “If a man is a bachelor, he isn’t married.”)
Fill in the blank and explain.
Matters of fact are true __________.
It’s an adverb.
Contingently.
It is true that there is a rose bush in my backyard, but it might not have been true (I could have killed it last week, for example). It is true that the sun rose this morning, but it might not have (the sun could have been destroyed overnight - though in that case, we’d all be dead, so the question wouldn’t really arise, but still.)
The denial of a (true) matter of fact is false, but not impossible.
Fill in the blanks and explain.
Relations of ideas are true ___ ______________.
By necessity. It is impossible for them to be false.
It isn’t just true that in Euclidean geometry the interior angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, it is literally impossible for it not to be true. It would then cease to be Euclidean geometry. That they do add up to 180 degrees follows from the meanings of the terms we use.
Why can’t knowledge of cause and effect relationships be relations of ideas?
According to Hume.
“Putting a pot of water over a fire causes the water to get hot and boil.”
Because we can’t figure them out just by thinking. They don’t follow from the definitions of the terms and the opposite of them may be false but not impossible.
Why can’t knowledge of cause and effect relationships be matters of fact?
According to Hume.
“Putting a pot of water over a fire causes the water to get hot and boil.”
They make claims that go beyond what we can perceive. We can see water boiling once or some finite number of times, but the causal claim says that it will always happen when we put a pot of water over fire under the right conditions.
Fill in the blanks.
Hume argues that we discover cause and effect relationships (laws of nature) by __________.
Observing what happens.
Events of Type A are followed by events of Type B. We learn that whenever a Type A event is not followed by a Type B event, the Type A event was different than usual in some way. So, we conclude that Type A events cause Type B events.
What is the problem with the Type A/Type B model?
We cannot actually know that it will happen every time in the future from what has happened every time in the past. That they have always been connected like that in the past would only be evidence if we had reason to believe that the future would be like the past in the relevant respects - that because previous Type A events were followed by Type B events, all future ones would be as well. But that is precisely our question: how do we know that the future will be like the past? This is a “begging the question” fallacy.
Define the term.
Begging the question
The “begging the question” fallacy occurs when we assume the truth of the very thing we are trying to prove. It is a tautological error.
Define the idea.
Constant conjunction
It is the connection we make when we believe that one event causes another. Hume argues that all we mean when we say that “events of Type A cause events of Type B” is that they are so connected in our minds such that we expect the one to follow from the other. it is a habit of thought.
On what points does Popper agree with Hume?
- There is no reason to think that the future will be like the past.
- There is no way to logically justify our belief in the laws of nature (causal relationships).
On what point does Popper disagree with Hume?
What causes us to believe in laws of nature.
