For David Hume, there are significant issues with the statement, “The ice cream melted because it was left out in the sun.” As an empiricist, he would claim that it is impossible to believe in causation and remain consistent.
Some of Hume’s most important of contributions comes from his work on the philosophy of causation. Hume’s main axiom in his work is known as the Copy Principle, which states that every thing we come to think and know is through our own experience. The contents of the mind are perceptions, which can be further divided into impressions and ideas. The main difference of the two being that impressions are felt through the senses while ideas are formulated through the intellect. These impressions can also be divided into …show more content…
This problem of induction is essentially the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge. Empiricist scholars base their conclusions on observations and experiences with the natural world, yet this conflicts at times with certain knowledge. The problem of induction questions empirical claims made through this scientific method attacking to assumptions that empiricists rely on. First, is the generalization about the properties of a certain substance or object based on an accumulated number of observations of said substance. For example, if an empiricist were to be observing the color of tree leaves and asserted that all tree leaves are green, this may be true in his experience or even the experience of all the men who came before him, yet it may also be true that in an undiscovered region there exists trees with brown leaves. Simply because something has always been that way in the past, does not make it impossible to be different in the future. Secondly, this holds true for sequences of events in that there is a uniformity of nature and that the laws of physics will hold as they have always been observed to hold. This uniformitarianism is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe at this moment have always operated the same in the past and can be applied …show more content…
Previously, what we know as matters of fact, are indeed based on causal relations that we have observed in the past through the method of induction. Induction must be a justifiable basis of knowledge for the rest to follow. For induction to be a certain basis of knowledge, the assertion that “I have found a certain object to always be attended with a certain effect, and the propositional conclusion that “Similar objects will be attended with similar effects” must be connected through reason as well. However this is not the case cording to Hume as only induction is responsible for the above assertions. If there is no deduction involved in the formulation of the conclusion about such causal relations, then it is an inductive assumption and itself cannot explain the relation. Thus, Hume concludes with a skeptical unceratainty about conlusions derived through induction which contains all causal relations and supposed “matters of
Some of Hume’s most important of contributions comes from his work on the philosophy of causation. Hume’s main axiom in his work is known as the Copy Principle, which states that every thing we come to think and know is through our own experience. The contents of the mind are perceptions, which can be further divided into impressions and ideas. The main difference of the two being that impressions are felt through the senses while ideas are formulated through the intellect. These impressions can also be divided into …show more content…
This problem of induction is essentially the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge. Empiricist scholars base their conclusions on observations and experiences with the natural world, yet this conflicts at times with certain knowledge. The problem of induction questions empirical claims made through this scientific method attacking to assumptions that empiricists rely on. First, is the generalization about the properties of a certain substance or object based on an accumulated number of observations of said substance. For example, if an empiricist were to be observing the color of tree leaves and asserted that all tree leaves are green, this may be true in his experience or even the experience of all the men who came before him, yet it may also be true that in an undiscovered region there exists trees with brown leaves. Simply because something has always been that way in the past, does not make it impossible to be different in the future. Secondly, this holds true for sequences of events in that there is a uniformity of nature and that the laws of physics will hold as they have always been observed to hold. This uniformitarianism is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe at this moment have always operated the same in the past and can be applied …show more content…
Previously, what we know as matters of fact, are indeed based on causal relations that we have observed in the past through the method of induction. Induction must be a justifiable basis of knowledge for the rest to follow. For induction to be a certain basis of knowledge, the assertion that “I have found a certain object to always be attended with a certain effect, and the propositional conclusion that “Similar objects will be attended with similar effects” must be connected through reason as well. However this is not the case cording to Hume as only induction is responsible for the above assertions. If there is no deduction involved in the formulation of the conclusion about such causal relations, then it is an inductive assumption and itself cannot explain the relation. Thus, Hume concludes with a skeptical unceratainty about conlusions derived through induction which contains all causal relations and supposed “matters of