If we can't rely on logic and our knowledge because something might be different five minutes from now, then doesn't that place a major emphasis on our observations - in order to acquire that new knowledge? I mean if we already possessed all knowledge, then what use would our senses have? — Harry Hindu

You could base your faith in contiguity on observation if you have a functioning crystal ball.

Would that give us confidence or just be an expression of our confidence? — Mongrel

Confidence, except when stipulated as in statistics, is psychological, a state of mind not necessarily consistent with the logic or even the facts of the matter.

I think that our predilection for expecting and behaving as though the past is a reliable guide for the future is essentially an evolved trait--"hard-wired" if you will, into not only human, but also the vast majority of the animal kingdom that have much neurology. We are automatically predisposed simply to imitate, a very efficient and successful way of learning to negotiate our way around the world. And imitation presupposes that what has worked previously will work again.

That we cannot come up with one of our post facto confabulations couched as "rational support" for this pattern of behavior might indicate the irrelevance of such an explanation for demonstrably pragmatic success, not only for humans, but across species.

The problem of induction isn't supposed to make you stop your car in the middle of the highway because you don't know why you believe the road up ahead is going to be there when you move forward.

It's part of a philosophical conversation. It's an "Oh Shit!" moment between British Empiricism and Kant. I actually don't quite understand the significance anybody finds in Kant sans that oh-shit experience.

Past experience is an excellent guide, assuming contiguity past to future. But the challenge was to support this assumption. — Mongrel

Is the problem related to causality? If we knew that the sun would be caused to shine for billions more years, then it wouldn't make sense to say it's possible it might stop shining tomorrow.

And that is what we think is the case. The sun has the matter it needs to do fusion for a long time. In order for that not to be the case, nuclear physics would have to change. We have no basis on which to suppose to suppose that hydrogen would stop fusing under the sun's gravity, or that gravity would change.

Why think any of that is the case? Because it makes sense of the sun shining for billions of years. Otherwise, it's just one unconnected moment to the next, where the sun just happened to shine for all that time.

It's part of a philosophical conversation. It's an "Oh Shit!" moment between British Empiricism and Kant. I actually don't quite understand the significance anybody finds in Kant sans that oh-shit experience. — Mongrel

Seems to me that the lesson we might take from the problem of induction is that our ability to construct rational grounds for our behavior has hit a limit.

And our demonstrably pragmatic success in assuming that the past is a reliable guide to the futire reveals that rational grounding is not at all necessary.

It's an "Oh Shit!" moment only for those who mistakenly believe that rational grounding is somehow necessary. Seems to me that the observable evidence is that rational grounding is neither suffucuent nor even necessary. Even when rationally grounded, our conjectures, theories, hypotheses, explanations sometimes fail, and even when not rationally grounded, they can succeed.

Indeed, given that different hypotheses all assume that the past is a reliable guide to the future, we obviously have found that those with the most rigorous rational foundation are more likely to provide reliable predictions. So rational foundation is a very useful tool or method. But this does not entail that it is necessary to achieve our purposes.

If, as Kant says, our experiences are structured by features of our minds, such as time, space, cause, effect ... and our expectation that the past is a reliable guide to the future is an evolved feature of our minds, then the fact that we are not able to construct rational support for such a belief is irrelevant.

If, as Kant says, our experiences are structured by features of our minds, such as time, space, cause, effect ... and our expectation that the past is a reliable guide to the future is an evolved feature of our minds, then the fact that we are not able to construct rational support for such a belief is irrelevant. — Brainglitch

Yep. If even causality is in the end merely another reasonable (from observation) hypothesis for us, then that just strengthens an epistemology that is based openly on that kind of pragmatic reasoning. Causality can be an idea we test for.

Causality can be an idea we test for. — apokrisis

Two questions arise:

(1) Doesn't the very notion of "testing" for something presuppose the very regularities at issue in the problem of induction?

(2) When we show Hume our test data, wouldn't he simply say, "Yes, I see the constant conjunction. Where exactly is the cause?"

I think I answered this just a moment ago over in the "what do you care about thread".

But briefly, the very idea of making that measurement - claiming to see a constant conjuction (to the exclusion of everything else that is always going on) - is the tendentious step. We have already imposed a conception of "an event" on the world at that point.

This doesn't seem troublesome at all when it is a couple of balls colliding on a billiard table. But say you wanted to measure a particular whorl in a turbulent stream. Can you do that by dipping in a bucket and bringing it over for me to examine? In what way can I repeat the physics of the situation with sufficient completeness so that I can claim to understand its causality mechanically?

So causation is complex in reality. Yet Newtonian mechanics is an incredibly useful simplification of that causal reality - at least when our main interest lies is in building machines rather than building nature. And yes, the mechanical view of causation harbours paradoxes if you start to take its modelling literally. But why would philosophy do that? How could it become "a crisis"?

'Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.' ~ Bertrand Russell

Its a crisis if the philosopher seeks to look beyond the conceptual schemas. Short of asking an advanced alien, or a god what it's like, how are we to know?

If we can't rely on logic and our knowledge because something might be different five minutes from now, then doesn't that place a major emphasis on our observations - in order to acquire that new knowledge? I mean if we already possessed all knowledge, then what use would our senses have? — Harry Hindu


You could base your faith in contiguity on observation if you have a functioning crystal ball. — Mongrel

I have no idea how this answers my question. Crystal balls are only useful for seeing things outside the range of your own eyes. But then you'd need to explain how reflected light in a far-away environment gets placed in some crystal ball right before me for my eyes to then see.

I think that our predilection for expecting and behaving as though the past is a reliable guide for the future is essentially an evolved trait--"hard-wired" if you will, into not only human, but also the vast majority of the animal kingdom that have much neurology. We are automatically predisposed simply to imitate, a very efficient and successful way of learning to negotiate our way around the world. And imitation presupposes that what has worked previously will work again. — Brainglitch

Just as our senses are an evolved trait that presupposes that things aren't always the same and that the world is dynamic and we need to be constantly updated with information about the state of the world.

The fact that we rely on knowledge gained in the past and that we have senses for acquiring new, or updated information, must mean something. It must mean something when eyes evolved separately in different evolutionary branches of organisms (convergent evolution). Seeing (observing at a distance) must be a very important thing to be able to do.

The fact that we rely on knowledge gained in the past and that we have senses for acquiring new, or updated information, must mean something. It must mean something when eyes evolved separately in different evolutionary branches of organisms (convergent evolution). Seeing (observing at a distance) must be a very important thing to be able to do. — Harry Hindu

I don't see your point here.

What is the "something" that all this "must mean"--other than the uncontroversial fact that it has worked so far?

Can we really say that it has worked so far? What about illusions and misinterpretations of sensory data? Is a bee's sensory system "working so far" when it misinterprets a porch light for the moon or sun and ends up committing suicide by flying around the light until it dies of exhaustion?

Natural selection isn't perfect. It even seems to be imperfect in the same manner as our own knowledge in that it can only work with what came before. It can only manipulate existing knowledge, or existing traits, into slightly different versions - not completely new and novel ideas or traits out of the blue. This is what seems to lead to the "mistakes".

We can even explain why it has worked so far and explain when it won't work. If the Earth was covered in smog, then seeing via visible light would probably never have evolved, much less evolved separately several times. If the environment of the Earth changes in such a way, then our existing sense of vision might be of no use. Just turn off the lights in your windowless room and you can see what I mean.

What it means is that the world simply changes, but not so much, and not so fast, that we can't adapt to those changes. The fact that there are adaptations at all must mean that the world stays the same for at least a certain period of time - long enough for adaptations to evolve, become useful, and be passed down to subsequent generations because it is still useful. Natural selection seems to determine when it is no longer useful.

What if we were able to fit all of our knowledge from all the different fields of science and all the different domains of investigation in philosophy and religion into a consistent whole? There are a million ways to put a 1000-piece puzzle together in the wrong way, but only one way to do it right. If all of these different pieces were put together in such a way that they work together and even compliment each other, then wouldn't you say that we have finally attained accurate knowledge that would never need to be changed or updated?

Everything that happens has a reason, and it becomes the cause for a subsequent event. We call the analysis of this as cause and effect logic. To me there is nothing super natural.

It is just that we do not possess all the facts pertaining to any scrutiny; we have very limited knowledge. But that should not keep us from using logic, if we are willing to keep in mind that our conclusions are only probabilistic, not absolute. But if a cult tells me that by performing a ritual of cruel acts on animals I can gain power over people, I know that the probability of that being true is incredibly small, and I walk away from such ideas. This is what logic can do for me. I know with extremely high probability that two plus is two. It is the analysis of abstract truths that take me in realms of substantial probabilities. Applying logic in my sphere of knowledge is just fine. Thus even when some idea, beyond my knowledge of comfortable level defies my logic, I know with high level of certainty that that idea is wrong. Generally we do not much judgment about what doctors say. But let a doctor tell me that aspirin can cure food poisoning, I would know that the doctor is off his rockers.