Induction In David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

The problem of induction is the question if inductive reasoning leads to knowledge understood on the philosophical sense on the lack of justification that, generalizing about properties of similar observations, and assuming a sequence of events will occur in the future the same way as they have done in the past. Hume believes that, “we have no reason to believe the conclusion of any inductive argument.” Inductive means to look for strong evidence to find the truth of a conclusion. In Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he is trying to doubt the hope that the reader can have many reasonable beliefs. Hume does this using a priori and a posteriori statements. An a priori statement is the process of reasoning without a reference to certain …show more content…
An a posteriori justification would have to come from experience and lead to a conclusion. Reasons for believing the uniformity of nature would either have to be an inductive or deductive argument. Deductive reasoning comes up with a conclusion based on multiple ideas are assumed true. A deductive argument will not be a good reason because no experiences will have reasons to imply anything about the future. Inductive will not work because it would make the argument circular. Using induction we come up with conclusions based on our past experiences, but we can not use it because all inductive arguments for conclusions for the future are assumed uniformity of nature. The argument needs uniformity of nature as a foundation. There fore there is no reason to believe in the uniformity of nature, therefore no reason to believe that the problem of induction has a solution. “Even after we have experience of the operations of cause and effect, our conclusions from that experience are not founded on reasoning of any process of the understanding" (Hume, pg. …show more content…
People for thousands of years have had experiences in the past, and then have experienced the same things in the future. For example, when you touch a hot stove it will burn you, therefore the next time you touch a hot stove it will burn you. I believe that people need to have these experiences to be able to learn knowledge. If a person does not believe every time they touch the hot stove it will burn them, they will not learn many new experiences and be left with painful, burned hands. I believe a posteriori statements can give justification to the future in the same way it has done in the past, but I also believe that a priori statements are necessary to become more knowledgeable. If a person just based their assumptions on the future from their experiences from the past, they would not be as eager to learn more. Theories are not created by experience but by discoveries of something new. I believe that a posteriori statements slow down the process of creating the future. I am not sure what statement would be the better option, because I believe that you need a little bit of both to assume and create the