Understanding Problems Of Induction By David Hume

Understanding problems of Induction.

An English philosopher, C.D. Broad once said, “Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy”. Using Inductive reasoning one can make judgments based on a series of observations. Another way to explain it is; induction is process using which a concept’s validity could be justified using various other observations or concepts. Many attempts have been made by many great philosophers to deal with the problem of induction. The problem is to justify the methods used to deal this problem or as David Hume describes, “Instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (THN, 89). David Hume is a philosopher who tried solving the problem of induction. In this article, the problem of induction will be discussed using Hume’s point of view, and then a pragmatic approach is used to rationally explain the use of induction.

There are two types of reasoning an observation could be explained; deductive and inductive. The former one is top-down approach and the latter one is bottoms-up approach. Deductive reasoning links arguments claims that will induce a conclusion and if the reasoning made are true then the conclusion reached will ultimately be also true. A good way to explain this is; a known fact is that multiples of 5 end with either 5 or 0, and 55 ends with a 5 hence 55 is divisible by 5. Here “multiples of 5 end with either 5 or 0” is one premise and “55 ends with a 5” is another one. The conclusion that is driven from these premises is that “55 is divisible by 5” because the number inherits the number 5 as the last digit. As stated earlier, inductive reasoning is a bottom up approach, the premises provide evidence for the truth of the conclus...

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... while there is no certain proof of it. The decision of going forward with the badge of concrete involved error probability and the decision was left inevitably upon the judgement of the acting supervisor. Attempts have been made to show that even if we cannot justify rely on induction by pure reason we have practical or pragmatic reasons in doing so. (University, 2014)

A question asked from problem of induction is that why it needs to be solved and why is it worrisome for philosophers. Just as Goodman’s new riddle of induction and his concept of grue, we will never face a problem like this. Yet, all the philosophers are seeking theories to solve the anomalies related to reasoning and justification. Our day to day concepts which have been used are being used due to our pragmatic approach towards them, philosophers still are trying to explain it using exact facts.