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Old 11-22-2005, 03:34 PM
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Default Re: On Hume and order in nature

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I'm not sure you understand Hume's point. Hume is talking about what he calls "unobserved matters of fact"--which in the case of induction have to do with things in the future or things unobserved (like in some far away part of the universe). Observing that nature is uniform 'right now' in our corner of the universe is beside the point, because Hume is not talking about what we have already observed or seen to have happen. He is talking about the future, or about what we cannot or at least have not observed, so the observation that nature is uniform in our location at the moment is beside the point.


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Okay, thanks for the explanation. My understanding was limited to what I had discussed with NotReady, which apparently wasn't the whole of Hume's argument. NotReady was attempting to make the case that science is "faith"-based since it relies on an unprovable assumption that nature is orderly. My point here was to state that I think order in nature is true in an axiomatic sense.

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Ok, but remember science is in the business of predictions, and predictions are necessarily about the future or unobserved matters of fact. That is why Hume's skepticism about induction has occupied philosophers of science ever since.
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