Challenges to Inductive Arguments

Hume's Challenges

David Hume was an 18th Century Scottish enlightenment philosopher and staunch empiricist. He criticised Inductive arguments (among others) for the existence of G-d in, "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion." as well as Inductive arguments as a whole. While he wrote this before Paley wrote Natural Theology, it is likely Paley read his arguments and did not see them as a threat.

The Problem of Induction

This was given its best-known formulation by Hume, although he didn't create it.

Hume pointed out a problem in the assumption we make when we use inductive reasoning: the assumption that the future will resemble the past. However, Hume argues, we have no good reason to make this assumption, because there is no guarantee that something will continue to happen just because it always has.

We often assume there must be a link between things that occur simultaneously - heat boiling water, gravity accelerating objects, night following day, smoke necessitating fire. We have no way of knowing that the same laws will continue the same way in the future, no matter how likely it may be.

Bertrand Russell, 20th century mathematician and philosopher, explained this with the story of a turkey that wakes up every morning at 9am to be fed by its farmer, whatever the day of the week or weather. The turkey feels comfortable in its conclusion that the farmer will always come to feed it, until it is proven wrong, on Christmas Eve.

This principle applies to inductive arguments in the sense that, yes, as far as we know, nothing exists with out a cause... according to our observations so far. Yes, complex design necessitates intelligent designers...as far as we know.

While Hume understands that we cannot go through life constantly questioning whether gravity will continue or if the sun will rise, however, we have no logical justification for our certainty. Our empirical observation can tell us what is happening, but it cannot tell us what causes  the things we observe. Cause and effect are an assumption.

Fallacy of Composition

Hume critiques the cosmological argument by pointing out that the fact that everything in the universe has a cause is not a justification to believe that the universe as a whole has a cause.

He critiques teleological arguments similarly, saying that just because we know humans require intelligence to create things does not mean that creation as a whole required intelligence to come into being.

Russell made a similar point, illustrating that just because every human being has a mother does not mean the human species has a mother.

Other examples include every country having a capital city, but the world not having one, or atoms not being black even though they may make up a black cat.

Criticisms of Teleological Arguments

Hume critiqued the teleological argument very intensely. Experience, evidence, type.

Firstly, he said that the analogy between the world and the watch was weak because purpose and order in the world was far more obscure than in a watch. We would only stop on a heath to pick up a watch because we know it could not be natural, because such design is seen in nature. Instead, he argues the world is more akin to an enormous crustacean or a floating vegetable.

He also argued that because we had no other reference point of any other worlds or universes, we could not say with certainty that ours is particularly well ordered. He uses the example of trying to work out what is on a pair of scales if one size is hidden from us - we can only see that it is heavier or lighter than what it is, but we do not know how heavier or why it is heavier.

He also argued that if we do have order, then this might only because we would not be able to exist without it because a chaotic world would implode. 

He argued that intelligent design did not have to be the design of G-d and could have come about by chance or through natural processes. He was writing long before Darwin's theory of evolution, but his argument matches it.

Even if there is a creator G-d, it may not be the G-d of Classical Theism. Our finite, imperfect world gives no justification for the assumption of an infinite, perfect Creator. We also have no reason to assume that G-d is still around.

He also uses an analogy of a magnificent ship. We see it and think that the builder must have been ingenious, but go inito the ship yard and see a "stupid mechanic", copying the work of others, taking ages to learn, and making mistakes on the way. How do we know our world wasn't made by an apprentice, a committee, or a demon?

The problem of evil is also a big challenge to teleological arguments.

Scientific Challenges to Inductive Arguments

Cosmological - Big Bang Theory

Teleological - Evolution, Natural Selection, and Survival of the Fittest

QUOTE BANK!!

Hume: "How can anything, that exists from eternity, have a cause, since that relation implies a priority in time, and a beginning of existence?"

Russell: "Just because every human has a mother does not mean the whole of humanity has a other."

Dawkins: "The only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics."

Hume: "In tracing an eternal succession of objects, it seems absurd to inquire for a general cause or first author."

Russell: "THe universe is just there, and that's all."