Knowledge

Considering the problem of induction, do we need faith to believe in the uniformity of nature even though it would seem that we have little choice but to?

Comments

This is what David Hume's great skeptical argument seems to show. The claim that nature is (and will be) uniform, or such that our inductive practices will tend to take us to the truth, is itself something that it seems we could only know by using induction, but to use induction to justify induction seems worthless.

For my money nobody has yet given a fully adequate reply to Hume's argument. And if his argument is sound, the our reliance on induction does seem to be a matter of faith: something we believe though we can have no good reason for it.

As you probably know, there is a huge literature of attempts to solve the problem of induction. My own view is that the prospects for inductive justifications of induction are better than they first appear. For example, I think that the fact that a particular method of predictive the future has worked well so far can give some reason to trust it in future, even though that argument would of course have no force for someone who refused to use induction at all. But the attempt to parlay that thought into anything like a general justification of induction is a long story.

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