PHL 131 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Inductive Reasoning, Circular Reasoning, Mathematical Induction
26 Sep 2020
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Can use induction to infer properties of things in categories that we are familiar with. Prediction we tend to make predictions and generalize based on inductive reasoning. Pumpkin example infer what"s inside from seeing one. Philosopher hume fundamental problem with the idea of inductive reasoning. Induction has to do with predicting the future. We predict the future based on past predictions. But there is no way of knowing that the future will resemble the past. But it usually does circular argument. There is no way of knowing unforeseen things can happen in the future. Humes negative thesis logically it doesn"t work. Humes positive thesis - maybe it doesn"t work all the time but we have a habit of doing it so we tend to prefer a situation where the future resembles the past usually right. You see many green emeralds: all emeralds are green, all the ones ive seen are green so the next one will be green true.
