Philosophy
Look at Newton's cradle on the right and ask yourself this question: what justification do you have for thinking that it will continue to behave in the future the way it has behaved in the past?
This is not something you know a priori, through pure reason alone, since it implies no contradiction to imagine this behavior might change. It's also not something you know a posteriori, through experience, because your experience is of the past, and the question confronting you right now concerns the future. If you think that you can appeal to past experience to support the idea that nature is regular, you'd be begging the question, since past experience is a good indicator of the future only if you assume the orderliness of nature, which is the very point in question. Yes, your head is probably spinning right now from that massively circular argument...
And yet, this assumption that nature behaves according to regular and predictable principles is the very basis of virtually all our knowledge about the world, ordinary and scientific, so it's kind of a really big deal. In this week's lecture, Professor Millican gives us a brief introduction to the empiricism of David Hume, as well as one of the questions for which he is most famous: the problem of induction...
Click here to see the course slides
- Topics That Shock Classes
My favorite Doonesbury is this one. My philosophy of science class last week made me think of it. Not because they are passionless note-scribblers, quite the opposite. It's a wonderfully lively bunch. But then we hit Hume's problem of induction...
- David Hume
(1711-1776) The Scottish philosopher David Hume is one of the most brilliant and skeptical of philosophers. Our ideas of epistemology would have been very different had Hume not been born. He developed empiricist philosophy to its logical zenith and challenged...
- Lecture 8 - Personal Identity
Science is great when it comes to discoveries and studies about the physical world. It requires lots of work and dedication, analytic skills to test various hypotheses, and a wealth of creativity to figure out how to conduct experiments to tell...
- Lecture 6 - Primary And Secondary Qualities
No introductory philosophy course is complete without at least touching on the famous distinction between primary and secondary qualities originally proposed by Descartes, but explored in more detail by Locke, Berkeley and Hume. If you don't...
- Peter Millican's Introduction To General Philosophy
You know what's missing from your life? More philosophy. Sure, the practical benefits may not always be obvious (though they are most decidedly there), but philosophy deals with the deepest, the most elusive, the most important and the most interesting...
Philosophy
Lecture 3 - David Hume and the Problem of Induction
Look at Newton's cradle on the right and ask yourself this question: what justification do you have for thinking that it will continue to behave in the future the way it has behaved in the past?This is not something you know a priori, through pure reason alone, since it implies no contradiction to imagine this behavior might change. It's also not something you know a posteriori, through experience, because your experience is of the past, and the question confronting you right now concerns the future. If you think that you can appeal to past experience to support the idea that nature is regular, you'd be begging the question, since past experience is a good indicator of the future only if you assume the orderliness of nature, which is the very point in question. Yes, your head is probably spinning right now from that massively circular argument...
And yet, this assumption that nature behaves according to regular and predictable principles is the very basis of virtually all our knowledge about the world, ordinary and scientific, so it's kind of a really big deal. In this week's lecture, Professor Millican gives us a brief introduction to the empiricism of David Hume, as well as one of the questions for which he is most famous: the problem of induction...
Click here to see the course slides
And check out how John Stuart Mill's attempt to solve this problem through his methods of induction.
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- Topics That Shock Classes
My favorite Doonesbury is this one. My philosophy of science class last week made me think of it. Not because they are passionless note-scribblers, quite the opposite. It's a wonderfully lively bunch. But then we hit Hume's problem of induction...
- David Hume
(1711-1776) The Scottish philosopher David Hume is one of the most brilliant and skeptical of philosophers. Our ideas of epistemology would have been very different had Hume not been born. He developed empiricist philosophy to its logical zenith and challenged...
- Lecture 8 - Personal Identity
Science is great when it comes to discoveries and studies about the physical world. It requires lots of work and dedication, analytic skills to test various hypotheses, and a wealth of creativity to figure out how to conduct experiments to tell...
- Lecture 6 - Primary And Secondary Qualities
No introductory philosophy course is complete without at least touching on the famous distinction between primary and secondary qualities originally proposed by Descartes, but explored in more detail by Locke, Berkeley and Hume. If you don't...
- Peter Millican's Introduction To General Philosophy
You know what's missing from your life? More philosophy. Sure, the practical benefits may not always be obvious (though they are most decidedly there), but philosophy deals with the deepest, the most elusive, the most important and the most interesting...