Document Type

Honors Project

Publication Date

Spring 5-29-2013

Abstract

This work examines philosophical solutions to David Hume’s problem of induction—a skeptical attack on our ability to learn from experience. I explore the logical, ontological, and epistemic difficulties behind the everyday assumption that the future will resemble the past. While historical solutions by philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper have been unsuccessful at tackling these complications, combining recent work on natural kinds and naturalistic epistemology has promise. Ultimately, I expand on work done by Howard Sankey, Hilary Kornblith, and Brian Ellis to create an account of nature and epistemology that explains why objects in nature have predictable behavior. I find Sankey's solution incomplete, but I fix the major I identify and show why the work by Sankey builds into a powerful solution to Hume's problem.

Level of Honors

magna cum laude

Department

Philosophy

Advisor

Thomas Ryckman

Comments

Advisor: Thomas Ryckman

Level of Honors: magna cum laude

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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