Induction In David Hume's Argument

One very impressive attack on Hume’s argument, trying to solve it with its definition, is as follows. The first premise of the argument is challenged, which is “if we want induction to be rationally justified, induction must be reliable.” Since the definition of deduction is based on the validity of an argument, which is assumed to be reliable, why couldn’t reliability be a part of the definition of induction? Induction is defined to be reliable in this attack. However, reliability cannot be a part of the definition because it is a way to evaluate those methods, such as deduction and induction. The criteria for the evaluation is a totally different idea than the method itself. An analogy useful to understand this is that the recipe for a course …show more content…
If induction cannot take reliability as a definition because a method cannot be defined as reliable by definition, deduction must not be seen as reliable by definition as well, because deduction should also be treated as a methodology and same as induction. What is the difference between deduction and induction that makes deduction automatically true and we need to prove the reliability of induction to use it? Ideally, we also need to prove the legitimacy of the deduction before using it as a reliable way. We normally don’t do that. Someone may say that deduction is true by logic. Then the same question comes again. How do we know that the logic is reliable except for we intuitively think it is? This may seem to be question begging, but that is how things naturally go if you doubt the legitimacy of the basic methodology we use. You start to doubt everything. In this way, if the reliability of deduction is in doubt, there is no way that we can use the deduction to prove the unreliability of induction. Then the foundation of the problem of induction is broken, because the problem of induction is an argument made in the form of deduction. The existence of the problem of induction needs the method of deduction to be