David Hume - causation, induction, inference

Hume represented philosophical idealism, and was an open atheist, who would have been seen as blasphemous at the time, and he would have been executed.

Logical Positivism

This was a school of philosophical thought, and a modern philosophy of science. It was an approach underpinning the approach of medicine, chemistry, physics, etc. and social science. Hume was impressed by Newton, and he tried to apply Eutonian theory to human behaviour.

Hume heavily influences journalists, his ideas that knowledge should be obtained and verified, along with synthesis and analysis.

Einstein was very different to Hume – he didn’t believe in law within the universe.

Hume, similarly to Descartes and Cartesian doubt, along with other Logical Positivists don’t believe in truth or certain knowledge, but believe that everything is a gamble, and nothing is ever certain, for example, the sunrise to Hume, was just an illusion.

Causation

The idea that one cause causes another, however Hume didn’t believe this happened in nature, but only in your mind. In the reading he uses an analogy of billiard balls to describe causation – the idea that you can hit the white ball, and yes another red ball may go into the pocket, but how can you prove it was the white ball that made the red ball go in? It is the idea of not jumping to conclusions, something a journalist can relate to, because you must find the absolute root of the story and research it in so much detail before it can go out.

Induction

Logic is a specific method for analysing claims, and we as journalists can use logic to see if a claim is internally consistent.

There are two types of logic –

-        Analytical logic – something that is always true, and the conclusion is derived from the subject. For example, all bicycles have two wheels, this is logically true, so two wheels means a bicycle, three wheels would be a tricycle and one wheel would be a unicycle. All computers run on analytical logic

-        Synthetic logic – something you can add knowledge to. An ‘axium’ is the starting point in a chain of sythentic logic. For example, “all men are mortal” can be challenged. If you accept the axium, then Socrates is a man (analytical) and therefore Socrates is mortal (synthetic).

Inference

For example, the idea that smoking causes cancer. Scientists have proved that more people that smoke get cancer as opposed to people that do not, but how can we make the direct link that smoking causes cancer? The data is inferring it, not actually proving it. Nothing is known for certain.

Hume believed you cannot derive “ought to be” from “is”, for example “It is cold today ,but it ought to be warm” – it is what it is and people are what they are.

Logical Positivism and Hume assert the independent verification principle, that there is no actual truth, just verifiable and non-verifiable – almost sounds like the idea that anything can be proved if you find the right evidence.