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From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Hume, miracles, induction
Message-ID: <Dec.11.00.41.41.1990.7418@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 11 Dec 90 05:41:45 GMT
Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
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Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

I suppose most of us have heard of Hume's argument against miracles.
(By the way, if you can find a copy of Whately's *brilliant* parody,
"Historical Doubts concerning Napoleon Buonaparte", read it!  It is
one of the funniest things I have read.  Whately was the author of
several books on logic and reasoning, and was largely responsible
for (re-)introducing the study of logic in 19th century Britain.)
Hume's argument goes more or less like this:

    1.  Introduction of straw man:
	"A miracle is something which violates natural law".

    2.	Assume the result of the argument:
	"We have absolutely uniform experience that natural laws
	 have never been violated"

    3.	Complete the circle:
	"Therefore miracles _can't_ happen".

So far so good.  As it happens, I had never looked at anything else of
Hume's, and wasn't aware of his work on induction.  Here's what Popper
says in "Objective Knowledge":

	Hume's logical problem is [Ref: Hume, treatise on Human Nature,
	ed Selby-Bigge, Oxford 1888, 1960, Book I, Part III, section vi,
	p. 91; Book I, Part III, section xii, p. 139]:

	Are we justified in reasoning from [repeated] instances of
	which we have experience to other instances [conclusions]
	of which we have no experience?

	Hume's answer to (this) is:  NO, however great the number
	of repetitions.  Hume also showed that the logical situation
	remained _exactly the same_  if in (this problem) the word
	"probable" is inserted before "conclusions", or if the words
	"to other instances" are replaced by "to the _probability_
	of other instances".		(emphases Popper's)

Never mind what the "real" answer to induction is, the point is that
this was _Hume's_ answer:  you cannot _rationally_ conclude from any
number of repetitions that the future will resemble the past.

That doesn't so much saw off the branch Hume was sitting on in his
argument about miracles as dynamite the entire tree:  experience not
only cannot _rationally_ establish that miracles can't happen, it
cannot in _Hume's_ account _rationally_ establish _anything_.

I've seen it mentioned before that Hume's argument is circular, but
I've never seen it mentioned that Hume himself showed the major
inferential step to be invalid.

-- 
The Marxists have merely _interpreted_ Marxism in various ways;
the point, however, is to _change_ it.		-- R. Hochhuth.