Is the Humean defeated by induction?

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Many necessitarians about cause and law (Armstrong, What is a law of nature. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983; Mumford, Laws in nature. Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Routledge, Abingdon, 2004; Bird, Nature's metaphysics: Laws and properties. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007) have argued that Humeans are unable to justify their inductive inferences, as Humean laws are nothing but the sum of their instances. In this paper I argue against these necessitarian claims. I show that Armstrong is committed to the explanatory value of Humean laws (in the form of universally quantified statements), and that contra Armstrong, brute regularities often do have genuine explanatory value. I finish with a Humean attempt at a probabilistic justification of induction, but this fails due to its assumption that the proportionality syllogism is justified. Although this attempt fails, I nonetheless show that the Humean is at least as justified in reasoning inductively as Armstrong.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)319-332
Number of pages14
JournalPhilosophical Studies
Volume162
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2013
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Armstrong
  • Explanation
  • Hume
  • Humeanism
  • Law of large numbers
  • Laws of nature
  • Problem of induction
  • Regularity theory

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Philosophy

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Is the Humean defeated by induction?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this