David Hume: Bad Boy of Empiricism (2)

Hello philosophers of SLC (armchair & otherwise)! Given how our last discussions have circled more and more around questions of knowledge and justification, and particularly "inductivism", we've decided to accept the inevitable and hit up David Hume.

This Scottish Enlightenment philosopher's conclusions about human nature--and particularly how people arrive at knowledge--include a rejection of any kind of innate knowledge (the "blank slate") and a famous argument that we cannot logically predict future events from past ones on any basis beyond "custom" and "habit". The latter gives us the so-called "problem of induction", a.k.a., "how is science even possible?"

These findings were so provocative that they largely inspired Kant's epic quest for a firmer grounding of knowledge and metaphysics, and they remain quite radical to this day. Shorn of any kind of Platonic, transcendental basis for reasoning, knowing, and valuing, we are forced to deal only with physiology and experience. "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions", Hume famously declared.

Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" captures most of his core ideas in a zesty, 118-page package. A PDF can be found at http://fitelson.org/confirmation/hume_enquiry.pdf (try to use this same edition so we have consistent page numbers). Let's continue by reading Section VI, "Of Probability", thru the first part of Section X, "Of Miracles" (or pages 41-83). Good luck...