Where do you get
the idea that Hume uses deduction extensively? Deduction can only clarify
relationships between ideas or concepts. Sense impressions are the source of
all substantive knowledge. Of course Hume claims that induction from present
to past is not justifiable by reason but that does not mean that we should
not use it. In fact, it is quite wrong to claim that it is Hegel who
resurrects the use of induction and makes it available for academic
discourse. Milll, for example, is an inductivist as are others in the
empiricist tradition. Here is a sample of what Hume had to say on causation
illustrating the fact that deduction or reason cannot establish causal
connection but at the same time claiming that we mustuse it since it is
necessary for survival etc.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
>From Oxford Encylopaedia of Philosophy
Causation. How do we acquire beliefs about things we are not currently
experiencing? We see a flame, for example, and conclude that it is hot. Hume
notes that we start from a present impression - the sight of the flame - and
suppose a causal relation - between flames and heat. But how do we come to
believe in that causal relation?
Hume's great claim is that it is not because of reason. Reason alone cannot
tell us that flames are hot: it is conceivable that a fire might be cold,
and therefore possible. Reason and experience together cannot produce the
belief either. Our experience has been confined to certain tracts of space
and time. Within those reaches, we have found flames to be hot. But there is
a gap between 'Observed flames have been hot' and 'All flames are hot'. To
reach the second, we would need to add the principle that nature is uniform,
that the future resembles the past. But how could we ever establish the
uniformity principle?
Hume claims that there are only two kinds of reasoning, 'demonstrative' and
'probable' (fork, Hume's), and neither can do the job. Demonstrative
reasoning (such as deduction) cannot establish the uniformity of nature -
for non-uniformity is conceivable, and therefore possible. 'Probable'
reasoning - or causal reasoning from the observed to the unobserved - cannot
establish the uniformity either. Probable reasoning itself presupposes the
uniformity of nature, so to employ it in support of that principle would be
circular. As Russell later explained, even if experience has told us that
past futures resembled past pasts, we cannot conclude that future futures
will resemble future pasts - unless we already assume that the future
resembles the past.
If reason does not give us our beliefs about the unobserved, what does?
Simply 'custom or habit'. Repeated experience of the conjunction of flames
and heat creates an association of ideas - so if we see a flame, by sheer
habit an idea of heat will come to mind. A belief differs from a mere
conception by being 'lively or vivid'; so when vivacity from the impression
of the flame is transferred to the associated idea of heat, the idea becomes
a belief in the presence of heat. Our beliefs are the product not of reason
but 'the Imagination'.
Does this make Hume a sceptic about induction? He says that we have 'no
reason' to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. On the other hand, he
believes that our inductive reasoning processes are genuinely
'correspondent' to the natural processes in the world; he describes
induction as 'essential to the subsistence of human creatures'; and he even
says that causal conclusions have their own kind of certainty, 'as
satisfactory to the mind ... as the demonstrative kind'. Perhaps the way to
reconcile these claims is to remember that 'reason' is for Hume 'nothing but
the comparing of ideas and the discovery of their relations'; so discovering
that 'reason', in this sense, is not the source of our inductive beliefs is
very different from claiming that induction is, in a more general sense,
unreasonable.
Hume's account of causal power builds on his account of causal inference. In
accord with the empiricist principle that ideas are derived from
impressions, Hume explains that to clarify our idea of necessity we must
find and examine the impression that has given rise to it. The idea of
necessity cannot be derived from our experience of individual cases of
causation. 'We are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power
or necessary connexion'; we simply see one event follow another. The idea
arises instead from our experience of a multiplicity of similar cases. The
constant conjunction (say, of flames and heat) produces, as we have seen, an
association of ideas; it also produces, Hume now adds, a feeling of
connection in the mind. As sources (in different ways) of our idea of
necessity, constant conjunction in the objects and the feeling of connection
in the mind are therefore two candidates for what we are talking about when
we talk about necessity.
Hume accordingly gives two definitions of causation. The idea of causation
involves priority and necessary connection. (The Treatise treats contiguity
as a third constituent.) On the view of necessity as constant conjunction,
therefore, a cause will be 'an object, followed by another, and where all
the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the
second'. This is the famous definition of causation as regular succession.
On the view of necessity as connection in the mind, a cause will be 'an
object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought
to that other'.
> Ricardo's contribution is fallacious that the overall amount of value
> present in a society, subject to distribution, is all created by labor.
> Ricardo uses deduction extensively. In this way he follows Hume. IMHO,
> Hegel undermined Hume by resurrecting the contributions of those Greek
> philosophers who came before Artistotle, notably Socrates. Of course
> that contribution was the dialectic. The scandal of philosophy was said
> in the 1920s to be induction, but this is no scandal. Thanks to the
> Hegelian dialectic we have induction available again for academic
> discourse. Without induction, I'd argue inductively, there could be no
> deduction. (It's late.) It's important to note that these were Marx's
> feelings about Hegel, except that Marx said Hegel had simultaneously
> uncovered, but then partially concealed the dialectic. Marx endeavored
> to fully reveal it.
>
