11.

Hume 2 - The Problem of Induction Changing from Hume's view about the a priori to his views about Matter of Fact we can say that Matters of Fact have their truths determined in a different way. Relations of Ideas are made true by the relationships that hold between Ideas. Matters of Fact on the other hand are made true by the way the world happens to be. Hume's big target here is the concept of cause and effect as its being used in the Newtonian sciences of the day. Hume wants to show that cause and effect is a matter of fact. He argues that cause and effect is a MoFact because it fails to meet the two criteria of something that is a priori. For Relations of Ideas the two criteria is that you can deny them without a contradiction and you can now that they are true without having to go chec the world. !o matters of fact are ones that don't meet these two criteria. !o cause and effect seems to be a MoFact because you can deny it without contradiction and we cannot" without e#perience" predict what the effect of any given cause will be. Cause and Effect If cause and effect is a MoFact" then what impression does it derive from$ %he idea of causation is the idea of a necessary connection between events. %his is the idea that you would get from someone li e Newton" or a physicist who thin s for instance that F&ma is necessarily true and describes the way the world around us wor s such that it would be impossible for there to be anything which could happen besides the ball of this mass moving at that speed if you apply this force to it. %his describes something which is true everywhere and which must be true. 'r to put it slightly differently" to say that the connection is necessary is to say that the same effect will always follow from the same cause. Hume wants to say that we don't get the idea of necessary connection from reason" and we don't get it from e#perience. (ou never see the necessary connection. (ou never see the thing which ma es it necessary that the thing is what happened as opposed to something else. )hat you see is the first thing happen and then the second thing happen. *ut nowhere in there do you see a connection between them which somehow indicates that the only possible thing that could have happened was the thing that you saw. If you stic your hand in the fire you e#perience pain. !o you now thin oh every time I stic my hand in the fire I'll e#perience pain. +nd Hume's ,uestion is" )hy do you thin that$ )hat ma es you so confident that the ne#t time you stic your hand in the fire you will e#perience pain$ %here's nothing in your e#perience which you can appeal to and say" this is the thing which guarantees that the ne#t time I'll feel the pain. Meaningless !ince the idea cannot be traced bac to an impression it is meaningless. )e have no rational reason to e#pect any given cause and effect relation to hold in the future. Hume thin s that all of our inductive nowledge is founded on our belief that the

future will resemble the past. Hume doesn't thin we are -ustified in believing this on rational grounds. 'r to put it another way" this belief is completely irrational" meaning we have no rational basis to believe it. 'f course we all believe it" but our reason for believing it is not based on rationality" so whatever reason we have for believing it must be based on some other reason. Summary of the Argument so Far . +ll human nowledge is either learned from e#perience /matters of fact0 or from reason /relation of ideas0. . Matters of Fact are composed of ideas copied from impression and are true or false depending on the ind of e#perience we have. !o notice" 'dogs can fly' vs. 'dogs don't li e cats' are both Matters of Fact in that sense" because whether they are true or not depends on the ind of e#perience we have. %here is nothing contradictory in a flying dog". %he reason I now its false is because of my e#perience of dogs. !o a Matter of Fact is not things that are true" Hume simply is meaning that the way you now they are true is by e#perience. . Relations of Ideas are true or false depending on the relations that hold between the ideas. 1%riangles are four.sided ob-ects' vs. '%riangles have three.sides'. %riangles have four.sides is something we can now to be false because of the relationship that triangle has to three sides. !o Relationships of Ideas are those things that you can tell if they are true or false merely by inspecting the relationships which hold between your own concepts. . (ou can tell the difference between MoFact and RoIdeas by seeing what happens when we negate the sentence in ,uestion. If it is a contradiction it is a RoIdea not a MoFact. . +ll of our ideas must come from one of these two sources. %heir truth must be determined in one of these two ways. . 'ne of the most important ideas we have is the idea of causation or the idea of a necessary connection between events. )hich is the same as saying the same cause will give rise to the same effect 232R( %IM2 no matter what. +ll of science is based on this idea. %his is why we do e#periments. +nd even more than that" all of our common sense nowledge about the world is based on this idea that you can learn the nature of the world by observing it and the things that have happened in the past are going to continue to happen in the future. . !o the problem is we need to now where the idea comes from$ )hat ma es it true that F&ma or every time I put my hand in the fire I will e#perience pain$ . It can't be from a Relation of Ideas. (ou can see that because to deny a causal relation is not a contradiction and it is always possible to imagine something else happening. )e have to go and chec " we cant tell what causes what without e#perience.

. !o it must be a Matter of Fact which is to say that its got to be verified or falsified by the ind of e#perience that we have. %hat means that the idea of necessary connection must be traceable bac to an impression otherwise it is a meaningless idea. *ut Hume argues when we loo at an e#ample of + causing * all we see are separate events. )e see + happen /the pool stic hits the ball0 and then we see * happen /the second ball moves0. *ut we don't see anything that connects those two events. %here is nothing you can point to and say" that is the thing that ma es the second event a necessary conse,uence of the first event. Notice that even the laws that Newton developed li e F&ma" are not deduced a priori" but are rather e#tracted from the empirical data. !o the laws of physics as stated by people li e Newton are actually arrived at by careful observation and induction about the way the world wor s. %hen on the basis of that they ma e the claim that its going to wor this way always and forever. Its really that claim that Hume is ta ing issue with. . !o Hume concludes" we have no rational reason /i.e. based on our e#perience or reason0 to believe that the laws of physics are necessary and universal. +ll inductive nowledge is based on the fallacy of assuming that the future will resemble the past. *ut -ust because something has happened for a long time is no guarantee that it will always happen. !o" the sun may have risen everyday so far" but who can say with certainty that it will rise tomorrow$ 4ust because we have a large sample si5e of the sun rising" you have no rational reason to e#pect that it will happen again tomorrow. %his is the same problem of blac swans that we tal ed about in the section on inductive logic. 4ust because you have seen a million white swans doesn't mean that is the way that nature must be. . !o where does the idea come from$ )hy do we all feel so strongly that there is a necessary connection between events$ Hume says it comes from 'a habit of e#pectation'. )e see + happen" we see * happen right after. %his is repeated. !oon when we see + happen we come to e#pect that * will happen right after. . It is that sub-ective feeling of e#pectation that we mista enly 'pro-ect' out onto the events that we observe. Hume calls this spreading the mind onto the world around us. )e have this feeling that when we drop something its going to fall. )e mista enly thin that this feeling is a real connection between the events + and *. . )e cannot now if there is anything more to the world that this constant con-unction of one event following another. %his is an epistemological claim6 )e cant ' now' if there is a necessary connection between events. He is not ma ing the metaphysical claim6 %here is no necessary connection between events. Pavlov and Classical Conditioning )hat's very similar here is the idea of what is nown is psychology as classical conditioning and 7avlovian conditioning in particular. Hume died before 7avlov did his e#periments" but Hume would have approved of this ind of wor . . Hume thin s that we have been trained by nature to e#pect certain events upon seeing certain other events. 4ust li e 7avlov's dog. Now imagine if the dog were to reason to itself as follows . 2very time the bell rings food has appeared. %his has happened every day of my e#istence. I can infer from this that the ne#t time the bell

rings" food will appear. )e can easily see that the dog has made a mista e. %here is no connection between food and bell" it's an accident. )e could even imagine that the dog develops a mathematical e,uation describing the relationship between the food and the bell. It's true that the e,uation would describe how things have happened for a very long time -ust li e our laws of physics have described how things have happened up until now. %here is no necessary connection between bell ringing and food appearing in nature. !o Hume's point is" How can we tell that this is not the way nature is in reality$ It's important to note that Hume is not denying that nature is regular. /so was the bell ringing8food bringing relationship0 He's not denying that up until now things have wor ed in the way physicists have described. *ut if there really is no necessary connection between those events" then there is nothing that would prohibit that relationship from changing. No matter how many times it happens" if there is no necessary connection" there is no necessary connection. %hings have so far happened regularly and predictably" but we have no reason to believe that it must continue. Hume on the Self Hume applies the empiricist criterion of meaning to the self. %he self is supposed to be this permanent thing which e#ists through time. If this idea is meaningful it must be traced bac to an impression. )hen Hume loo s inside himself he finds no impression of a self. +ll he finds are momentary impression that 'flow' by in an endless procession. %here is nowhere that you find this thing called the self. It's not the body which has changed" Its not this or that belief which has changed. Its not this or that e#perience. %hat stuff has all changed and Hume says there is nowhere in there that you can find the notion of a self.