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You're familiar with Hume's Problem of Induction? I like how Stephen Law puts it here: > It’s a good test of whether someone has actually understood Hume’s arg
by monktastic1 6y ago
You're familiar with Hume's Problem of Induction? I like how Stephen Law puts it here:
> It’s a good test of whether someone has actually understood Hume’s argument that they acknowledge its conclusion is fantastic (many students new to philosophy misinterpret Hume: they think his conclusion is merely that we cannot be certain what will happen tomorrow.) ... [But] if Hume is right, the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is as unjustified as the belief that a million mile wide bowl of tulips will appear over the horizon instead. We suppose the second belief is insane. But if Hume is correct, the first belief is actually no more rational. ... [T]he onus is on these defenders of “common sense” to show precisely what is wrong with Hume's argument. No one has yet succeeded in doing this (or at least no one has succeeded in convincing a majority of philosophers that they have done so).
Contrary to the other response to your comment, no amount of evidence should ever increase one's confidence, in a strictly rational sense. It is, in that sense, a matter of faith. Similarly, Sean Carroll on radical skepticism:
> There is no way to distinguish between [metaphysical] scenarios by collecting new data.
> What we’re left with is our choice of prior credences. We’re allowed to pick priors however we want—and every possibility should get some nonzero number. But it’s okay to set our prior credence in radically skeptical scenarios at very low values, and attach higher prior credence to the straightforwardly realistic possibilities.
> Radical skepticism is less useful to us; it gives us no way to go through life. All of our purported knowledge [...] might very well be tricks being played on us. But what then? We cannot actually act on such a belief [...]. Whereas, if we take the world roughly at face value, we have a way of moving forward. There are things we want to do, questions we want to answer, and strategies for making them happen. We have every right to give high credence to views of the world that are productive and fruitful, in preference to those that would leave us paralyzed with ennui.
- tines 6y agoI think this is a different line of reasoning from the one everyone else is on. Hume seems to be saying that there's no such thing as evidence at all, there's just a sequence of unrelated events. But faith (in the Christian sense, at least) is believing something apart from, or in spite of, evidence, whereas reason is believing something because of evidence. Point being, both of them require that the concept of evidence has some value. So saying that there is no evidence for _anything_ does not support faith (again, in the Christian sense); it undermines them both. It's like that quote from the movie The Incredibles: "When everyone's super, no one will be."
- zaphar 6y agoMy personal definition of faith is believing something in the absence of evidence and it is the sort of faith I strive to practice. However I know others who definitely practice their faith in spite of evidence. It is this latter that I regard as dangerous. But if one want's to make any sort of progress in the world the former definition is, I would argue, a necessity.