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Hume and the Fiery Furnace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Edward H. Madden
Edward H. Madden*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
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Abstract

There are a standard number of replies to the riddle of induction, none of which has gained ascendency. It seems that a new approach is needed that concedes less to the Humean dialectic. Humeans, both traditional and contemporary, unwittingly play on the ambiguity of the phrase “change in the course of nature,” and that is why 'C · ~E' appears to be self-consistent, though in fact it is not. I provide an analysis of 'cause' and ‘natural necessity’ which gives inductive inference that internal warrant we assume it to have in ordinary and scientific thinking and rebut in advance contemporary Humean objections based on the erroneous assumption that ‘x is necessary’ and ‘x is a priori‘ are materially equivalent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 1971 , pp. 64 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 by The Philosophy of Science Association

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References

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