Hume and the Problem of Induction

One interesting idea from Enlightenment philosophy that I've read about is the problem of induction as discussed by Hume. As we discussed in class, Hume was an interesting and somewhat radical philosopher who in many ways was less optimistic than other thinkers of his time. He often faced criticism for what was seen as his lack of religion.

The problem of induction is basically the idea that it is impossible to logically justify the process of induction. For a review from math class, induction is using past examples of an event to make statements about future events. In math this is done with a rigorous basis by proving a statement is true for a number n + 1 if it's true for n, and then by proving the statement true for some number, you have also proven it's validity for all greater numbers. In logic, though, induction is making decisions based on past examples. For example, if every day you see that a traffic light follows the same pattern, after many days you will likely conclude that it always follows this pattern at this time. But to use induction, you have made an assumption that it will continue to happen the same way. Hume saw this important as basically all of what we think about the world is based on induction in some way. We learn how to do basic things by doing them repeatedly and knowing the result of different actions. We can say that if you drop something it will fall to the floor only because we know from experience that everything has previously fallen. Even when we can model an event like this with physics to describe its behavior, there is no true proof that the universe will continue to act like this.

Hume argues that there is no way to justify induction using only deductive reasoning. We feel comfortable assuming things using induction because of previous action. Hume argues that we fell comfortable using induction because we repeatedly use induction about things that act consistently. But using induction as a basis for why induction works introduces a circular argument that renders this argument flawed. I think this is an interesting philosophical discussion and serves as an example of Hume's system of philosophy.