display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
11 ideas
7446 | The idea of inductive evidence, around 1660, made Hume's problem possible [Hume, by Hacking] |
Full Idea: Hume's sceptical problem of induction could not have arisen much before 1660, for there was no concept of inductive evidence in terms of which to raise it. | |
From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Cont 19 | |
A reaction: Hacking is the expert, but Ideas 1683 and 1886 suggest there was some thinking on the problem in the ancient world. The worry about whether the future would be like the past must occasionally have bothered someone. |
2198 | We assume similar secret powers behind similar experiences, such as the nourishment of bread [Hume] |
Full Idea: We always presume, when we see like sensible qualities, that they have like secret powers, and expect that effects, similar to those which we have experienced, will follow from them. …Thus, we expect bread to nourish us, from previous experience. | |
From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) |
2199 | Reason cannot show why reliable past experience should extend to future times and remote places [Hume] |
Full Idea: The main question on which I would insist is why reliable past experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for ought we know, may be only in appearance similar. …No reasoning can show this. | |
From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.30) |
2202 | Fools, children and animals all learn from experience [Hume] |
Full Idea: It is certain that the most ignorant and stupid peasants - nay infants, nay even brute beasts - improve by experience. | |
From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.33) |
2204 | All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning [Hume] |
Full Idea: All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning. | |
From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) |
2201 | Induction can't prove that the future will be like the past, since induction assumes this [Hume] |
Full Idea: It is impossible that any arguments from experience can prove the resemblance of the past to the future, since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of this resemblance. | |
From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.32) |
2203 | If we infer causes from repetition, this explains why we infer from a thousand objects what we couldn't infer from one [Hume] |
Full Idea: If after the constant conjunction of two objects (e.g. heat and flame) we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other,this explains why we can draw an inference from a thousand objects which we couldn't draw from one. | |
From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) | |
A reaction: This is Hume's best statement of the problem of the difficulty of demonstration the logic of induction. |
6350 | Premises can support an argument without entailing it [Pollock/Cruz on Hume] |
Full Idea: Contrary to what Hume supposed, it must be possible for the premises of an argument to support a conclusion without logically entailing it. | |
From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) §1.2 | |
A reaction: This seems to me an extremely important point, made with nice clarity. It is why people who are good at logic are not necessarily good at philosophy. The latter is about thinking rationally, not following the laws of deduction. |
3598 | Hume just shows induction isn't deduction [Williams,M on Hume] |
Full Idea: All that Hume has really shown with his argument is that induction is not deduction. | |
From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) by Michael Williams - Problems of Knowledge Ch.18 |
17550 | We give a mathematical account of a system of natural connections in order to clarify them [Heisenberg] |
Full Idea: When we represent a group of connections by a closed and coherent set of concepts, axioms, definitions and laws which in turn is represented by a mathematical scheme we have isolated and idealised them with the purpose of clarification. | |
From: Werner Heisenberg (Physics and Philosophy [1958], 06) | |
A reaction: Attacks on the regularity theory of laws, and the notion that explanation is by laws, tend to downplay this point - that obtaining clarity and precision is a sort of explanation, even if it fails to go deeper. |
6552 | You can only explain the qualities of large objects using entities which lack those qualities [Heisenberg] |
Full Idea: It is impossible to explain the manifest qualities of ordinary middle-sized objects except by tracing these back to the behaviour of entities which themselves no longer possess these qualities. | |
From: Werner Heisenberg (Ancient Thought in Modern Physics [1937], p.119), quoted by William Lycan - Consciousness 8.10 | |
A reaction: Compare the similar wonderful remark by Lucretius (Idea 5713). If we accept this as a general principle for all of nature (including us) - and I do - then it is silly to complain that consciousness isn't found in basic physics. |